Less than a day after having the loaded web-pistol of Reddit pointed at their heads, web hosting company GoDaddy has revised their controversial position of supporting the ill-conceived Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), detailing the withdrawal of their support for the legislation.
The fact that GoDaddy- a company whose bread and butter is largely dependent on the free and open web- supported the internet killing legislation was kind of surprising in some ways (because it would undoubtedly harm their business) but not so much in others (the company has shown a relatively large disregard to customer sentiment in the past and boasts a fairly difficult to navigate user interface, for instance.) But the company was listed among the 142 that support SOPA, and became one of the targets for web-wide boycotts as users sought to stop the legislation in its tracks by not supporting companies that support the act.
In a blog post , GoDaddy CEO Warren Adelman admits, basically, that SOPA sucks, and doesn’t really explain why GoDaddy supported it in the first place, except a vague mention of the importance of combating piracy. He says:
“Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation – but we can clearly do better… It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it.”
Adelman continues:
“As a company that is all about innovation, with our own technology and in support of our customers, Go Daddy is rooted in the idea of First Amendment Rights and believes 100 percent that the Internet is a key engine for our new economy.”
Have you boycotted any of the companies that publicly support SOPA?