Today is December 29th, and if you follow issues relating to freedom of speech on the internet, you might recall it’s also the day Reddit users set aside to officially be “Dump GoDaddy Day.”

If you missed it, GoDaddy became the outcast of the internet earlier this month by allowing itself to be the sole tech company on a list of more than 150 supporters of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, also known as SOPA. Alongside companies like 3M, Marvel, Disney and Estee Lauder, GoDaddy perplexingly threw down for laws that would most definitely curb their business to no small degree- but the internet didn’t take it lying down. A thread on Reddit declared that today should be Dump GoDaddy Day, and immediately, users across the web began transferring away from the web host.

As of the most recent counts, GoDaddy lost more than 72,000 registrations from when the initial call went out to abandon the company, and earlier this week. For their part, GoDaddy has withdrawn its support for SOPA, albeit blandly, but it seems web users have not been moved by the position reversal. The user behind the initial post on Reddit calling for action, user SelfProdigy, also stood behind his actions- explaining in an interview that GoDaddy’s form-letter response after a query about their SOPA support led to the post and subsequent action. He explains:

“My heart was broken. I’ve used them for years. I didn’t like the generic letter they sent back to me so I posted a call to boycott. I didn’t know it would catch on the way it did.”

Are you one of the many who ditched GoDaddy for supporting SOPA? Did their change of heart change yours?

Dump GoDaddy Day (Dec. 29) Arrives, But 72K+ Customers Have Already Fled is a post from: The Inquisitr

GoDaddy on Monday responded to claims from customers that the site did not allow for domain name transfers away from their services following the company’s controversial SOPA support.

The world’s largest registrar said they were not attempting to stall domain transfers but instead were not contacted by Namecheap in order to have their transfer access increased to handle an additional flow of transfers. According to the company GoDaddy and “many other registrars” routinely limit transfer requests to prevent WHOIS abuse and domain information requests that provide owner contact information.

GoDaddy Senior Product Development Director Rich Merdinger told TechCrunch the restriction could have easily been removed:

“Because some registrars (and other data gathering, analyzing and reporting entities) have legitimate need for heavy port 43 access, we routinely grant requests for expanded access per [a standard operating procedure] we’ve had in place for many years,” Merdinger explained. “As a side note, we have seen some nefarious activity this weekend which came from non-registrar sources. But, that is not unusual for a holiday weekend, nor would it cause legitimate requests to be rejected.”

At the time of their response GoDaddy was already actively lifting the restrictions placed on Namecheap domain name transfers but acknowledged that some issues may still arise.

For their part Namecheap didn’t seem too worried about the issue, thanking GoDaddy for their support and not directly talking about the restrictions that occurred.

Among GoDaddy’s losses was Ben Huh and his I Can Haz Cheeseburger network which was preparing to transfer more than 1,000 domains upon news of the company’s support involving the Stop Online Piracy Act.

In the meantime some customers claim to have received direct phone calls from GoDaddy to renew their services with discounts after making transfer requests, during those phone calls GoDaddy explained to customers  that they had changed their position on SOPA.

Did you move a domain away from GoDaddy because of SOPA support?

GoDaddy Responds To Blocked Namecheap URL Transfers is a post from: The Inquisitr

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?

GoDaddy Caves on SOPA, Pulls Support is a post from: The Inquisitr

GoDaddy on Friday said in a public statement that they have backed down from supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act, more commonly referred to as SOPA.

While executives at GoDaddy continue to maintain that firing internet piracy is an important part of their business they also state that the backlash felt by their customer base was enough to convince the company to back down.

According to CEO Warren Adelman:

“Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why GoDaddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation – but we can clearly do better.”

General Counsel Christine Jones followed suit, taking down a post in support of SOPA.

While privacy experts are thanking GoDaddy for their change in position the damage may have already been done as several of the company’s biggest domain holders jumped ship including the I Can Haz Cheezburger network which is run by founder Ben Huh and features more than 1,000 domains.

In response to GoDaddy’s fault in judgement rival Namecheap began actively protesting the company and offering discount codes to have users jump ship to their service.

Under SOPA a media company would be able to ask that an entire site be removed even if only a very small part of that website in some way violated copyright laws. SOPA would also make it hard to contest those charges which in turn would hurt freedom of speech.

The SOPA initiative would also break internet security since the rules for DNS blocking would violate DNSSEC, a measure that the US government has promoted as a way to stop “poisoning” attacks that can take over sites.

Do you think GoDaddy can win back the trust of their fleeing customers or have they already shown their anti-privacy hand too much?

GoDaddy Backs Down From SOPA Support After Customers Flee is a post from: The Inquisitr

Short back history for those of you who have been living under a rock or all your time on Facebook. SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, and on the surface sounds like a really noble thing, except that this is a corporate funded Congress that is trying to push it through; which should be the first warning that this isn’t going to play out nice.

Now anyone who has been pay attention to the whole SOPA thing, and not spending their life on Facebook, will be able to tell you just how bad this SOPA thing really is for the web, the users, and – well the Internet as a whole.

It’s one thing to know all the usual players that have come out against it, and it is a list that is growing daily, but what is more interesting is knowing which companies, beyond the usual players, are rooting for this killer to pass through Congress and into law.

Earlier today it came out that GoDaddy, the biggest domain registar and web hosting company in the world, was supporting SOPA and the went went nuts, and rightly so. From Reddit to heavy hitting web property owners like Ben Huh (think LOLcats) and from powerful angel investors like Paul Graham – YCombinator – to influential bloggers the voice against SOPA; and those that support it, is getting louder and louder.

So who are some of these companies that are supporting SOPA?

Well VentureBeat had a post out this morning with a list of a 142 companies from the Judiciary Committee responsible for SOPA and this was followed up later with a post from Techdirt where they had the link to the list of  439 companies that was collected by Andrew Couts.

Here’s some of the gems from those two lists.

• American Federation of Musicians (AFM) - no surprise there
• American Federation of Television and Radio Artists – again no surprise
• Capitol Records Nashville
• CBS
• Christian Music Trade Association
• Comcast/NBCUniversal – totally expected
• Council of Better Business Bureaus
• Disney Publishing Worldwide, Inc
• Go Daddy
• L’Oreal – huh? why?
• Major League Baseball
• MasterCard Worldwide
• National Football League
• News Corporation
• Time Warner
• 3M Company
• Adidas America
• Marvel Entertainment, LLC
• Monster Cable Products, Inc
• Nervous Tattoo Inc., dba Ed Hardy
• Nike, Inc.
• Oakley, Inc
• Dolby Laboratories, Inc
• Electronic Arts, Inc
• Ford Motor Company
• Wal-Mart
• Xerox Corporation

That is just a drop in the bucket of the companies and individuals that support taking your Internet away from you, or do their best to totally destroy it. If you want a full run down of who supports SOPA check the links above but in the meantime – how many of those companies to you support with your wallet?

You might want to think about it and maybe like Ben Huh find other companies to spend your money with. Let them know you aren’t happy with them and their support of SOPA.

So, who else in on that list of SOPA lovers anyway? is a post from: The Inquisitr

One of the most worrisome things is happening on the web right now and with increasing frequency. Domains are being seized by the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security under the auspices of ICE. Not only are they being seized but it is happening without any notification but also apparently with the assistance of ICANN.

In a story that doesn’t seem to be getting any press from any of the major tech blogs ICE has gone on a warpath against any an all torrent types sites regardless of the fact that some of these sites don’t even list or store torrent files themselves.

TorrentFreak has the story of the newest domain seizure where Torrent-Finder.com suddenly started displaying the seizure notice from the U.S. Government and this is where it gets really bothersome. You see Torrent-Finder doesn’t provide any tracker services, carries no torrents, and lists no copyright works unless an individual intentionally searches for them. Even then the results are not displayed direct by the site but rather as in an iframe which means Torrent-Finder doesn’t touch any of the results.

The second really scary part of this is that the seizure was down without the participation of GoDaddy, the actual host of Torrent-Finder.

“My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!” the exasperated owner of Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak this morning.

“I firstly had DNS downtime. While I was contacting GoDaddy I noticed the DNS had changed. Godaddy had no idea what was going on and until now they do not understand the situation and they say it was totally from ICANN,” he explained.

via TorrentFreak

So in other words ICANN totally bypassed GoDaddy and assisted the U.S. Government in the seizure of the site.

Now you still might be wondering about the title of this post but the fact is that Google can produce the same results that Torrent-Finder, or any torrent search engine out there, as you can see by this very simple search (instant as well) for Mad Men torrents on Google:

Or how about Hey Jude by the Beatles:

The fact that Google can perform exactly the same types of searches and probably return even better results why are the sites doing the same thing being seized?

By the reasoning currently being used then Google should have its domain seized.

Why has there been no outrage over this obvious outrageous abuse of the legal system?

Where are the major news sources like TechCrunch, Mashable, New York Times or any of the other powerful media voices?

Where is the Electronic Freedom Foundation and this case obviously deserves to be hauled before the courts.

What has been done here is wrong and is proven to be wrong every time Google is used to perform a search.

If it is this easy for the U.S. Government, and ICANN, to totally bypass due process in this way who is next? Your site, my site, or some site that might piss off a government?

Where is the outrage because that is exactly what this is – an outrage.

So, when is the U.S. Government going to seize the Google domain? is a post from: The Inquisitr

Internet domain name registry and website hosting company GoDaddy.com is going up for sale at private auction. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the privately held company hopes to fetch upwards of $1 billion.

Qatalyst Partners has been hired by the company to overlook the auction and find interested parties. It’s expected that Private equity firms will be among the various organizations seeking to purchase the company.

Founded in 1997, GoDaddy claims to hold the domain registrations for more than 43 million websites, with 2009 revenues listed between $750 million to $800 million.

Let’s just hope when they’re sold that Danica Patrick stays as the companies official mascot, because let’s face it, we register with GoDaddy because she’s smoking hot.

GoDaddy Goes Up For Sale At Private Auction is a post from: The Inquisitr

It doesn’t take much skill in prognostication to figure out when I got up this morning and started perusing my morning feeds that the whole China vs Google and their coattail riders would still be hitting the news. It was also easy to figure out that much of the talk would be about the good that Google was doing by setting a stance like this against the evils of censorship.

If only that were truly the case then this might be a discussion worth having. The thing is that as much as Google and the press might want us to believe that and revel in the righteousness of what was happening this whole smokescreen of battling censorship has nothing to do with the right of the Chinese people to free and unfettered access to the Internet than it had to do with business – making money.

One only has to put down the rose colored glasses for a moment and really read what is being put out there.

Take the news that Dell is considering leaving China and moving it’s operations to India. As James Johnston reported here this morning Dell is looking to shift to safer environment with a climate that is more conducive to enterprise with a security of legal system. James notes

Dell isn’t the first company to shift or consider shifting their manufacturing away from China, a country that has become increasingly hard to do business with due to governmental regulation and interference, the once powerful manufacturing hub of the world has seen many of their manufacturing plants close down or cut staff drastically in the last several years.

See, no blaming censorship as the cause for the possible move – it’s all business related.

Now let’s take a look at the freshest news of companies looking to leave China over supposed censorship concerns – GoDaddy.

Once more there is this overlaying connotation over the news that GoDaddy is joining Google in its supposed pissing contesting with China and that it will no longer be doing business in China. Wow .. the snowball is beginning to roll against China now eh.

Ya. Sure. Now let’s put down the kool-aid and get a reality check done.

That reality check can be found in a post over on ReadWriteWeb that for the most part seems to be toeing the current warm and fuzzy viewpoint. However halfway through the post Mike Melanson provides us with what is probably closer to the real reason for GoDaddy pulling out.

GoDaddy’s move, however, is not the purely altruistic act of solidarity it might first appear to be. A new Chinese policy enacted last December upped the ante, requiring registrants of .cn domain names to submit photos and business identification, which would then be forwarded to the government. The law would require GoDaddy to retroactively gather information from domain registrants.

So in other words – business. It is becoming more expensive for GoDaddy to service China based accounts than what they would be profiting from the sale of domains to people in China.

Now, let’s look at the ringleader of this supposed change of heart – Google.

To get at the real heart of the matter here one just has to read Google’s testimony to the Federal Commission on China to see exactly why Google is flashing the evil and ungodly censorship flag like some mad fool. Jennifer Valentino-DeVries at the Digits blog has some of the better parts of the testimony from which you can easily pull this little gem:

On censorship globally:
“More than 25 governments have blocked Google services over the past few years. Since 2007, YouTube has been blocked in over a dozen countries. We have received reports that our blogging platform has been blocked in at least seven countries, and that our social networking site, Orkut, has been blocked in several countries.”

As far as Google is concerned censorship only does one thing – blocks their pages from being delivered which means they are losing advertising dollars. It might not be hurtful in isolated cases but when it happens in the case of a huge population base like China this definitely impacts Google’s bottom line.

There is nothing altruistic about Google’s moves, just as there isn’t in the case of GoDaddy or Dell. It all boils down to business. Censorship hurts the bottom line.

Does China really care about all this noise?

Sure it might bother them on a diplomatic scale when it comes to how the world perceives them but beyond that I sincerely doubt it. After all as David Barboza from the Globe and Mail nicely pointed out China doesn’t need any of these companies in order to maintain their Internet or Internet services.

What this all boils down to is that far from being directly because of censorship any dissatisfaction with China boils down to strictly one of dollars and cents.

Tech giants rising up against China over censorship … Ya, Okay … would you like to buy a bridge? is a post from: The Inquisitr

First, the Facts
The appeal here is in the one-stop shopping, hand-held approach — one that’s presumably geared more toward a novice Web user. At the same time, though, the pricing actually isn’t that bad. The service runs about $5 a month, which includes hosting. You do pay domain registration fees on top of that. At the moment, GoDaddy is dropping .com domains to $1.99 a year when purchased with the SmartSpace option.

Once you activate a domain, you get access to a content generation control panel that lets you click to add a ready-made blog, podcast hoster, chat room, or photo gallery to your site-in-a-box. You can stream in any RSS-based feeds as well as any Facebook profile, Flickr content, or YouTube content. The interface also has options to import your own non-site-specific content.

Impact Analysis
Some reviews are calling SmartSpace “amazing” and painting it as a real game-changer. I’m not sure I quite agree, at least not to that extreme. It’s a smart service and does bring 2.0 functionality to the non-tech-inclined masses in an easy-to-understand, nicely wrapped package — but I don’t suspect we’ll be hearing endless oohs and ahhs about it any time soon.

With that being said, I can think of plenty of Net novice friends who have long sought a simple, hassle-free way to build a basic (but function-full) Web site for themselves or for a project, but didn’t know where to even begin. In fact, I’ve had two such acquaintances approach me in the past few weeks with that exact kind of query. This sort of service could be right up their alley.

SmartSpace Aims to Make Social Media Simple is a post from: The Inquisitr

So what’s the real story here? We checked with the folks at GoDaddy, who initially acknowledged having seen the reports but ultimately came back with a “no comment” on the matter. Moonlight speculates the move may have an Olympic connection, and its logic makes sense: The Chinese government had banned anyone but the nation’s Olympic gold medalists from registering domains based on the athletes’ names within the “.cn” suffix. It even “advised” anyone who already owned such a domain to turn it over to the medalist “as a gift.”

Moonlight says the government wants to go a step further and force people to turn over those domains if they don’t do so on their own. If the domain is registered with an outside company such as GoDaddy, however — as opposed to with China’s own CNNIC domain registry service — the government won’t be able to gain control and seize the name.

That theory, of course, is no more than speculation at this point — though, from the looks of it, an official explanation may not be in our sights any time soon.

Report: GoDaddy Banned in China is a post from: The Inquisitr