GoDaddy Loses Over 72,000 Domains Over SOPA Stance

By Cynthia Herbert :: 11:58 PM

It seems as if GoDaddy’s about-face on support for SOPA did them no good once the Internet lynch mob was released on them earlier this week. All accounts point to GoDaddy losing around 72,000 domains – and that’s only for this week.

“Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why GoDaddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation – but we can clearly do better. It’s very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. GoDaddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it,” said Warren Adelman, GoDaddy’s CEO in a statement released on December 23rd.

According to a PC Magazine report, GoDaddy customer service representatives are now actively reaching out to former customers who transferred domains away before the company reversed their stance.

“I just got a call from GoDaddy. The rep said he noticed that I’d transferred my 60+ domains away […] and wanted to know if I’d tell them why. I got to tell them that it was because of their SOPA support, and that I couldn’t in good conscience give my money to a tech company that would support legislation like that,” Mashable’s chief architect Chris Heald told the publication.

A number of web communities, most notably Reddit, piled on the negative PR campaign after the CEO of I Can Has Cheezburger?, Ben Huh, tweeted that he would pull 1,000 domains from GoDaddy’s service if the company continued to support the legislative bill.  Many in the community even put together instructions and FAQs for transferring domains away from GoDaddy.