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Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

That's nice, but it remains to be seen if this is not just cheap (no pun intended) exploitation of sentiments. Some registrars, such as Gandi have always supported various causes (such as EFF, Creative Commons, Debian, etc.). How much does Namecheap donate of regular domain registrations, etc.? What have they done in the past for digital rights?

Also, as some people said before. This attack on Godaddy maybe a godsent diversion for SOPA supporters.

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Namecheap has a history of ignoring and fighting abuse complaints from lawyers trying to shut down free speech with spurious trademark and libel claims without a court case. GoDaddy has a history of immediately pulling DNS of a domain after spurious complaints without a court order. This is in line with how Namecheap has operated for years.

I don't understand the notion that this is somehow a distraction to the real SOPA fight. Maybe I'm alone in this issue having heightened my knowledge, opposition and action against the bill?

Go Daddy is totally insignificant in the scheme of things. The list of SOPO supporters is very deep and monopolizes many industries. Can you work out an effective boycott of all major record and movie producers, all major television networks, publishers (Elsevier, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and various coalitions), pharmaceuticals and beauty products (Pfizer, PhRMA, L'Oreal, Revlon, etc), banking (Visa, MasterCard, American Bankers Association), sports (NFL, MLB), Apple, and Microsoft?

http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/Rogue%20Websites/SOPA%20Su...

Hurting Go Daddy over this is fine, but I suspect it is inconsequential to whether SOPA passes, and most of the key supporters aren't concerned about boycotts anyway.

The point isn't how significant GoDaddy is. The point isn't how much business damage GoDaddy is suffering, if any.

The point is about how much awareness this event is raising and how much of an impact it is having on encouraging people to do something (anything) to express opposition to the bill. One example: I had not seen SOPA on the nightly news until now.

I don't think this event has been or will be considered "inconsequential". There's a small chance it will be one of the more important events in the opposition.

"Also, as some people said before. This attack on Godaddy maybe a godsent diversion for SOPA supporters."

Are you taking a position on this? Or are you content to just hint that others might possibly have done so elsewhere...maybe.

I don't think that it is Namecheap's duty to donate any portion of their profits to the EFF, CC, Deb, etc... If I want to support those initiatives, I will make the donation myself (and get the tax refund).

Namecheap does quite a bit more than GoDaddy in terms of protecting you.

To GoDaddy, you are some cow that needs milking. (re: fines for various "infractions" that GoDaddy writes up themselves).

To Namecheap, you are a valued and respected customer. This means requiring proof to back up accusations.

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