The drama
surrounding GoDaddy and its stance on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)
continued this weekend, with reports of customers having difficulty dropping
their domains from the company.
Yesterday,
registrar NameCheap said in a blog post that GoDaddy was "thwarting
efforts to transfer domains away from them."
"Specifically,
GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap,
delaying the transfer process. This practice is against ICANN rules," the
company said.
In a
statement provided to CNET, GoDaddy said the delay was due to "the normal
rate limiting," which is in place to prevent abuse. GoDaddy criticized
NameCheap for failing to contact the company about the problem, and instead
opting for a blog post. "Nevertheless, we have now proactively removed the
rate limit for Namecheap, as a courtesy," GoDaddy said.
In
response, NameCheap updated its blog post to say that "all we know on our
side is that GoDaddy was preventing us from conducting normal business with our
clients, and in turn causing harm to our reputation and at the same time
overloading our support channels."
The blog
post, NameCheap said, was intended to "inform our clients," but the
press "decided to make this into some sort of story."
The debate,
meanwhile, focuses on GoDaddy's support of a controversial online piracy bill
known as SOPA. The bill would expand the ability of the Justice Department to
go after Web sites overseas that traffic in fake goods like counterfeit purses
or prescription drugs. According to the bill's sponsor, Rep. Lamar Smith, the
DOJ would have to get a court order against an infringing site, and if granted,
could request that the site be blocked. Search engines would then have to
remove links to those sites.
Critics,
however—like Google, Facebook, and Twitter—are concerned that the bill is too
far-reaching and broad, and could potentially harm Web sites that don't
actually contain infringing content or were acting in good faith.
Initially,
GoDaddy said it was in support of the bill, but after a Reddit member proposed a boycott of GoDaddy over its support—and high-profile domain owners joined
up—the company reversed course and said it will support SOPA "when and if
the Internet community supports it."
Customers
who switched their domains in the last few days reported that GoDaddy called them to explain their current SOPA stance and to get them to reconsider.
There have
been a few reports circulating about how many domains were actually dropped
from GoDaddy after the SOPA drama. Citing info from DailyChanges.com,
TheDomains.com said more than 15,000 domain names were transferred from
Godaddy.com on Thursday and over 21,000 were transferred away from GoDaddy on
Friday. Domain Name Wire, however, said DailyChanges.com data can be misleading
since domain names can take five days to transfer and DailyChanges tracks
nameserver changes, not domain transfers.
"I'm
not writing this to blast the people who have used DailyChanges as a proxy.
After all, I kept an eye on it during the elephant boycott and called it a
'proxy' for domain transfers," Domain Name Wire said. "But looking at
the data this time I think it's actually a poor proxy."
SOPA,
meanwhile, will be taken up when the House reconvenes next month. A similar
Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act, is scheduled to be addressed in late January.
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