12.23.11
Boycott GoDaddy
Guest post by iophk
Summary: Despite an attempt to respond to public backlash, GoDaddy is an enemy of your Internet freedom
GoDaddy has gone from supporting SOPA to a more luke warm position of not supporting it. Not supporting is not the same as actively opposing it. It might help fight SOPA to encourage users to move their domains from GoDaddy now and send them a note to help *prevent* this bill being passed. E-mail them directly.
There are many other registrars available. Listed below in no particular order are some of them, to get the ball rolling. Some are offering coupon codes related to SOPA or GoDaddy for further discounts.
+ http://internet.bs/
+ http://www.domainsite.com/
+ http://www.dynadot.com/
+ http://www.namecheap.com/ SOPASUCKS
+ http://order.1and1.com/
+ http://www.hostgator.com/ NOSOPA
+ http://dreamhost.com/ NOTOSOPA
+ http://gandi.net/
+ https://dnsimple.com/goodbye-godaddy
+ http://www.networksolutions.com/
It is possible to transfer even if recently renewed or registered. Years paid in advance for a domain will always transfer to a new registrar.
Vote with your wallet. █
NB – This site was originally registered with GoDaddy, but we dumped them last year.
Update: A contributor of Techrights has just received the following:
—–Original message—–
From: Fight For The Future info@fightforthefuture.org
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 14:29:58 -0500
To: -
Subject: Boycott GoDaddyHappy Holidays — we have some great news to share.
We’ve just won two huge battles in the fight against Internet censorship — everything you are doing is working! First off, the House of Representatives failed to move SOPA out of committee! Why? Because their offices got swamped with phone calls and overwhelmed by the snowballing opposition. Thank you for helping make that happen.
Second, in response to the boycott of GoDaddy, the web hosting company just made a public announcement that it’s dropping its support of SOPA. Amazing what you have made happen.
Yet, we can’t let GoDaddy off the hook just yet. GoDaddy supports the Senate version of SOPA, called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). The boycott has to continue — Please click here to pledge to join it:
www.godaddyboycott.com
Please join us in holding GoDaddy accountable, until they drop any and all efforts to support not just SOPA, but also its Senate cousin, PIPA. The boycott already worked to get GoDaddy to change their position on SOPA, now we urgently need to hear from GoDaddy about PIPA too.
So what’s next?
The PIPA bill is still alive and strong in the Senate, and could be voted on in January. Like SOPA, it threatens free speech, innovation, and the basic structure of the Internet.
Keep transferring your domains from GoDaddy until they fully come out against PIPA and SOPA. They need to send a letter to Congress making their opposition to both bills clear — Click here to join the cause.
www.godaddyboycott.com
Thank you for all that you do — it is working!
Tiffiniy & Phil
Fight for the Future
Michael said,
December 23, 2011 at 5:14 pm
I use GoDaddy… with Linux hosting.
They serve me very, very well… great tech support, excellent prices, etc.
Adrian Malacoda said,
December 23, 2011 at 8:20 pm
GoDaddy has since backed down
http://www.godaddy.com/newscenter/release-view.aspx?news_item_id=378&isc=smtwsup
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 8:28 pm
We already took that into account. It was not sincere and they still do not oppose SOPA.
Michael Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 8:58 pm
It is not good enough that they back down, as asked, they *must* work to do as Roy wishes or they are evil. Unless they are Google… then they are good no matter how much evil they do.
Welcome to Techrights… where technology is rarely discussed and what is deemed “right” is based on Roy’s religion.
George Hostler said,
December 24, 2011 at 8:19 am
Roy, I see you’ve been having some malicious trolling going on from what appears to be a few c.o.l.advocacy Usenet trolls.
I just wanted to say, keep up the good work of keeping the public informed on Linux advocacy and on opponents to Linux.
Merry Christmas, George Hostler
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
December 24th, 2011 at 9:45 am
This is still being debated in IRC, where there are no trolls. Someone has just brought up:
http://gizmodo.com/5870920/brave-godaddy-ceo-says-hes-neither-for-nor-against-sopa
Title: Brave GoDaddy CEO Says He’s Neither For Nor Against SOPA
So he is for it, but his wallet is not.
iophk says: “He’s for it, but perhaps only working behind the scenes.”

DaemonFC says “they’re just being less stupid now… they probably never figured on this kind of blowback”
There have been other reasons to boycott GoDaddy, but this post did not focus on those other reasons. This was merely the last straw.
DaemonFC said,
December 24, 2011 at 9:03 am
What he’s said is….
With the abundance of companies that do not want SOPA to pass and have spoken out against it, why should we do business with a company that wants it to pass and shouted out their glowing support for turning the US internet into something that more closely resembles China’s?
GoDaddy still wants it to pass, they just realized that the louder they were about that, the more trouble they were going to bring down on themselves in customers becoming disgusted and leaving. Hiding under a rock (deleting your posts in favor of SOPA and shutting up, for now) is not the same thing as having given up.
This is not the first sleazy thing GoDaddy has done. Google it and you’ll find tons of horror stories. From GoDaddy bending over for ICE, selling domains to spammers without giving the owner a chance to renew, to their CEO shooting that elephant, to those borderline pornographic television commercials that portray women as sex objects.
There’s plenty of hosting companies that charge about the same or less and have the same reliability or better that aren’t run by slimy unethical toads.
walterbyrd said,
December 24, 2011 at 1:39 pm
The story was also discussed on slashdot, there where some great comments posted.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/12/23/0253207/god%E2%80%8Baddy-backs-sopa
There are indeed many reasons to boycott godaddy (as I did years ago). Below is a slashdot post that lists more reasons:
————————————
Here are more reasons. These are stories about GoDaddy on Slashdot, in order by date, to 2010-09-11:
Go Daddy Usurps Network Solutions [slashdot.org] (2005-05-04)
GoDaddy Serves Blank Pages to Safari & Opera [slashdot.org] (2005-12-08)
GoDaddy.com Dumps Linux for Microsoft [slashdot.org] (2006-03-23)
GoDaddy Holds Domains Hostage [slashdot.org] (2006-06-17)
GoDaddy Caves To Irish Legal Threat [slashdot.org] (2006-09-16)
MySpace and GoDaddy Shut Down Security Site [slashdot.org] (2007-01-26) That incident prompted this web site:
Exposing the Many Reasons Not to Trust GoDaddy with Your Domain Names [nodaddy.com].
Alternative Registrars to GoDaddy? [slashdot.org] (2007-02-03)
GoDaddy Bobbles DST Changeover? [slashdot.org] (2007-03-11)
850K RegisterFly Domains Moved To GoDaddy [slashdot.org] (2007-05-29)
According to this March 11, 2008 story in Wired, GoDaddy shut down an entire web site of 250,000 pages because of one archived mailing list comment: GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com [wired.com]. See below for Slashdot’s story about RateMyCop.com.
GoDaddy Silences RateMyCop.com [slashdot.org] (2008-03-12)
ICANN Moves Against GoDaddy Domain Lockdowns [slashdot.org] (2008-04-08)
GoDaddy VP Caught Bidding Against Customers [slashdot.org] (2008-06-29)
KnujOn Updates Top 10 Spam-Friendly Registrars List [slashdot.org] (2009-02-06, 80 comments) GoDaddy is on the list.
R.I.P. FTP [slashdot.org] (2009-07-13, 359 comments) The GoDaddy web site is extremely complicated. Quote: “In that case, why don’t more people switch to administering their sites via SFTP instead of FTP? Here are the steps it took me to enable SFTP on my GoDaddy hosting account. Feel free to use this as a reference, but the obvious point is that as long as this many steps are required, it’s safe to say that most users won’t be switching: 1) Go to the ‘Hosting’ menu and pick ‘My Hosting Account.’ 2) Next to the name of your website, pick ‘Manage Account.’ This will open the Hosting Control Center. 3) In Hosting Control Center, click to expand the ‘Settings’ options. 4) In the ‘Settings’ control panel, click the ‘SSH’ icon. 5) You will see a page saying ‘SSH is not set up’, and prompting you to enter a phone number so that their automated service can call you with a PIN number. After you enter your phone number, the phone rings a second later, and you enter the PIN in a form on the GoDaddy website. 6 ) You will then see a page which says: Current Hosting Account Status: Pending Account Change — Your request to enable SSH is being processed. This upgrade may take up to 24 hours.” [Punctuation and emphasis changed for clarity.]
Registrars Still Ignoring ICANN Rules [slashdot.org] (2009-07-22, 122 comments) Quote: “GoDaddy (and their reseller arm, Wild West Domains) have a different problem: They still block transfers for 60 days after a registrant’s contact update, even after the ICANN update specifically prohibited doing so. They freely admit it, too.”
GoDaddy Wants Your Root Password [slashdot.org] (2010-02-24, 236 comments)
Massive Number of GoDaddy WordPress Blogs Hacked [slashdot.org] (2010-04-26, 112 comments)
GoDaddy Up For Auction [slashdot.org] (2010-09-11, 191 comments) http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1867456&cid=34221268 [slashdot.org] The Ascendancy of .co [slashdot.org]
Michael said,
December 25, 2011 at 8:24 pm
Thought you might like to know: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57348183-93/21000-domains-transfer-out-of-go-daddy-in-1-day/
Needs Sunlight said,
December 26, 2011 at 6:35 am
GoDaddy lost 21,000 domains in a single day:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57348183-93/21000-domains-transfer-out-of-go-daddy-in-1-day/
The real boycott is scheduled for the 29th.
http://gizmodo.com/5870779/december-29th-is-leave-godaddy-day
GoDaddy has until the 29th to grow a pair and openly oppose SOPA.