Ask HN: Why did GoDaddy support SOPA?

8 points·alexmr··5 comments

I know they pulled their support to try to save face/business, but why did they support the legislation so publicly in the first place? In other words, what was their angle? They must have known it would cause some measure of backlash (though they probably didn't expect this much) but what do they as a company personally get out of SOPA, from a profit perspective?

View on HN

1. Seized domains might be a de-facto transfer to GoDaddy

2. GoDaddy seems to be exempt from shutdowns under SOPA [1]. So this would mostly hurt their competition.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3387960

Did not realize they were exempt. That explains it.

It seems odd to me as well. They would be impacted by the legislation because as a domain registrar and DNS server, they'd have to invent and implement the technology to comply with SOPA (e.g., taking down a website).

You might think they have something to gain monetarily, but I'm having a hard time thinking of what that might be. They may take control of revoked/blocked domains, but those domains would have little to no value (since they are blocked) to resell.

The only thing I can think of is just that Bob Parsons or senior management agrees with it on a personal level and used the company name to back it up.

I do know that Go Daddy pretty aggressively defends it's own trademarks and copyright, but even that seems like a stretch to justify supporting it.

They helped write it, and exempted themselves. Huge competitive advantage, while currying favor with Congress and media industry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com