Story of GoDaddy’s PR Disaster Over SOPA

Yesterday we featured an infographic on SOPA, that explained how it would impact internet companies. GoDaddy.com the domain registry and hosting service was one of the few prominent internet companies that supported SOPA.
Twitter, Facebook were rife with the news that the only big internet company supporting SOPA seems to be GoDaddy and people were boycotting it. In an act of online activism, users started to move their domains from GoDaddy to other services.

The Fall out against GoDaddy

Upto 21,000 domains were lost by GoDaddy in a single day. Also with a tweet by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales suggesting that they would be moving Wikipedia domain names away from GoDaddy, has given more power to people boycotting GoDaddy.

It seems that GoDaddy’s pro-SOPA stand would not just earn it criticism but also business as if people stopped using GoDaddy to register domains, it could be a huge issue.

GoDaddy Now Goes Anti-SOPA

The CEO of GoDaddy probably realized the issue was now snowballing out of proportion and decided to change GoDaddy’s position on SOPA. The reversal in their position has also been criticized and it seems GoDaddy is moving towards a complete PR disaster.

Online Activism against SOPA

The soap opera of SOPA seems to be panning out over the new few weeks or months, depending on the outcome. Online activism is at it’s highest against the Bill at the moment. Many experts are suggesting that SOPA will be used to bring censorship to the internet. Such activism has ensured that critically important laws like SOPA do address the concerns of the internet community.
It has also led to online tools like ByeDaddy that allow people to check if domain names are registered with GoDaddy.
I am not from the US, nor understand laws like an expert, so I would not like to take a stand on SOPA. But I think even if something is perceived as online censorship; it needs to be discussed and debated a great deal. I do think there is probably something wrong with SOPA if so many internet companies are opposing it across the board. What are your views?
Do drop in your comments.