37,000 Domains Desert Go Daddy Over SOPA

When Go Daddy appeared on the official list of those opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act, customers departed in droves.

The internet responded by staging a wide-spread boycott where people would switch their domains to another registrar, which Go Daddy initially dismissed as having little impact on their business. Now it seems that assessment wasn’t entirely accurate.

Although Go Daddy reversed their stance on SOPA, it wasn’t before 37,000 domains were transfer off of its service, according to information reported by The Domains. The report indicates that over 15,000 domains were transferred off Thursday and another 21,054 domains on Friday. If you factor in the $6.99 to $10.99 fees associated with each of those domain registrations, Go Daddy is losing a significant amount of money.

Here is the problem with this law:

The bill, introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith in late October, gives both the U.S. government and copyright holders the authority to seek court orders against websites associated with infringing, pirating and/or counterfeiting intellectual property. So for example, a website that provides a collection of links to sites that illegally stream copyrighted video content could get shut down and taken to court under SOPA, despite the fact that the site isn’t streaming the content itself.

If the government had the sole responsibility of policing websites that violated copyrighted intellectual property, it would be a much different scenario. However, because the copyright holders also get to enforce the law (under SOPA), it allows them to push around anyone who may compete with them under the guise of upholding the law. Giant media companies — music labels, television networks and movie studios in particular — could easily take advantage of this situation.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.