When you get to the top, you want to stay at the top. The problem is that on the way to the top, you became big. Real big.

Big companies can't maneuver well. An elephant can't do acrobatics. They know they can't compete head-to-head with smaller companies.

So big companies start to create artificial barriers to entry. They form partnerships (i.e. Google), they begin to advertise heavily (i.e. Superbowl), and they start to lobby the government (i.e. SOPA). All of these actions are there to create lasting relationships that will help a large company like GoDaddy compete with smaller, more maneuverable firms.

GoDaddy couldn't give a damn about SOPA. They simply want to have a solid relationship with various members of congress, the senate, and parts of the executive branch. I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine down the road.

Also, although I don't believe this is a significant motivating factor, SOPA would reduce legal costs for GoDaddy. Currently, if there's a court order for a seizure or something along those lines, it has to go through a process in legal. One of the features of SOPA, is that it would take the process out of the courts, at least initially. No courts = no court orders to process.

They have been handling domain seizure orders:

http://www.techspot.com/news/46481-judge-oks-private-domain-...

    an injunction against the top-level domain name registry, directing it to change the registrar of record for the domain names to GoDaddy (!);
    an injunction telling GoDaddy to change the DNS data for the domain names so the domain names resolve to a site where a copy of the case documents are hosted (servingnotice.com/sdv/index.html);

One guess: If Congress thinks GoDaddy is the sort of company that will help them manage all this unruly internet stuff, then that's the sort of company Congress wants around.

Congressmen live and die by response to constituent concerns. If the folks get worked up about cyber-bullying or unsafe skateboard videos or kitten porn or whatever depredations those Internet freaks invent next, Congressmen want some avenue to Do Something. GoDaddy may get little from SOPA, but they could get a lot offering to help manage all of this . . .

Maybe they are planning to make money by charging fees to the government when they have to make changes to a domain name due to a SOPA action? Does the bill require companies like GoDaddy to do this for free?

Maybe they hope they will become default registrar for all the other proponents? Quite some big names on that list.

Because it sounds good to support anti-piracy -- especially when they are the ones who often host sites supporting piracy. At least, I'm assuming this is their rationale.