Your Web Service, WordPress and SOPA

Featured, Law, The Internet — By kurteng on December 23, 2011 8:59 am

There has been a lot of talk around the interwebs about SOPA, the new Stop Online Piracy Act that was sponsored by R-TX Lamar Smith. But how does this affect you? Well, if you happen to use GoDaddy as either your Domain Registrar or Hosting provider, you may be in for a surprise! GoDaddy is a stout supporter of SOPA and SOPA is not a good thing!

If you want to read more about SOPA, you can go here, here, here, and  here.

Go Daddy has a long history of supporting federal legislation directed toward combating illegal conduct on the Internet. For example, our company strongly supported the Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008, the Protect Our Children Act of 2008, and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP). Go Daddy has always supported both government and private industry efforts to identify and disable all types of illegal activity on the Internet. It is for these reasons that I’m still struggling with why some Internet companies oppose PROTECT IP and SOPA. There is no question that we need these added tools to counteract illegal foreign sites that are falling outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law enforcement. And there is clearly more that we could all be doing to adequately address the problems that exist.

But it is more than just theft of IP in this situation.  It is about complete censorship.  For a company like GoDaddy to support a bill of internet censorship when its main business purpose is to allow people to create their own sites is ridiculous.  There are even more companies who support this bill.

But there have been dozens of large companies that are speaking out against SOPA.  Ben Huh of Cheezburger, has vowed to move over 1000 domains from GoDaddy over the support of SOPA.  Will this matter to GoDaddy?  Of course not, but news is spreading!  There have been support from a number of hosting providers including our own sponsor HostGator.  It is nice to know that our sponsor sides with us!

So what can you do?  Move from GoDaddy to another registrar or hosting provider.  Here are a list of codes that you can use [Reddit]

• Name.com Use “NODADDY” for 10% off transfer ins (COM, NET, ORG, TV, INFO, IN, US, CO, ME & TEL) and also receive 40% off any of our hosting plans. They also oppose SOPA:  http://blog.name.com/2011/12/getting-on-our-sopa-box-and-saving-you-money/
• HostGator.comis doing 50% off Shared / Reseller / VPS first month. Coupon code: NOSOPA http://blog.hostgator.com/2011/12/22/sopa-must-die/
• Namecheap.comIf you use the code “BYEBYEGD” Namecheap makes a donation to Save The Elephants or use“SOPASucks” for $6.99 transfers.

So what next?  That is up to you!  For now, there may be some interruptions in services here but it will be temporary!  Just until I migrate my domain from GoDaddy to another registrar.

[Wired] [Reddit][TechCrunch]

Tags: Censorship, Internet, SOPA, Your Rights content from single.php