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Go Daddy drops support of antipiracy act amid boycott threatDec 23, 2011 (The Gazette - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Go Daddy dropped its support of the Stop Online Piracy Act on Friday after a threatened boycott by customers of the domain name registrar and web hosting company. "Fighting online privacy 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," Go Daddy's new CEO, Warren Adelman, said in a statement released Friday. The bill was aimed at protecting intellectual property rights, at a time of growing concern aimed largely at foreign-based operators reproducing intellectual property on the web without obtaining IP rights. Go Daddy is the world's leading domain name registrar and one of the largest web hosting companies, with a growing Iowa operation in Hiawatha employing nearly 500. Users of the popular online community reddit had launched a boycott action, urging Go Daddy customers to switch their services to another provider. The effort had the support of some influential members of the 'net community, Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh, who threatened to pull 1,000 websites from Go Daddy to another provider. In a tweet, he told GoDaddy "We love you guys, but #SOPA-is-cancer to the Free Web." Huh was not immediately available for comment on Go Daddy's decision to reverse its position. While the Department of Justice had released a long list of some 180 supporters of SOPA, Go Daddy was reported to be one of the only supporters within the Internet industry itself. Go Daddy General Counsel, Christine Jones had worked with federal lawmakers for months to make revisions to legislation first introduced three years ago, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company said in a statement. It said Jones "fought to express the concerns of the entire Internet community and to improve the bill by proposing changes to key defined terms, limitations on DNS (domain name system) filtering to ensure the integrity of the Internet, more significant consequences for frivolous claims and specific provisions to protect free speech. Go Daddy had previously declined to comment on the boycott threat and pointed journalists to its own blog posts outlining areas of the bill Go Daddy did support. After reversing its position, Go Daddy removed the blog postings, saying it wanted to eliminate any confusion about its reversal on SOPA. Jones said Go Daddy "has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future." ___ (c)2011 The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) Visit The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) at thegazette.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |