Go Daddy pulls support for SOPA amidst backlash, too late to fulfill Wikipedia

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Dec. 23, 2011) – Go Daddy is not any longer supporting SOPA, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” currently working its way through U.S. Congress.

“Fighting online piracy is of the maximum importance, that is why Go Daddy have been working to assist craft revisions to this legislation – but we will clearly do better,” Warren Adelman, Go Daddy’s newly appointed CEO, said. “It’s totally important that every one Internet stakeholders interact in this. Getting it right is well worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the web community supports it.”

Go Daddy and its General Counsel, Christine Jones, have worked with federal lawmakers for months to assist craft revisions to legislation first introduced some three years ago. Jones has fought to specific the worries of the complete Internet community and to enhance the bill by proposing changes to key defined terms, limitations on DNS filtering to confirm the integrity of the net, more significant consequences for frivolous claims, and specific provisions to give protection to free speech.

“As a corporate that’s all about innovation, with our own technology and in support of our customers, Go Daddy is rooted within the idea of First Amendment Rights and believes 100% that the net is a key engine for our new economy,” said Adelman.

In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the net. With the intention to eliminate any confusion about its reversal on SOPA though, Jones has removed blog postings that had outlined areas of the bill Go Daddy did support.

“Go Daddy has always fought to maintain the intellectual property rights of third parties, and could continue to take action someday,” Jones said.

About Go Daddy

Go Daddy is a number one provider of services that enable individuals and businesses to ascertain, maintain and evolve a web presence. Go Daddy provides a whole lot of domain name registration plans, in addition web site design and hosting packages. Go Daddy has a broad array of cloud-based services. These include products including SSL Certificates, Domains by Proxy private registration, ecommerce hosting, blog software, search engine optimisation utilities, email marketing tools, web design services, website security software and online storage solutions. Go Daddy has greater than 51 million domains under management. Go Daddy registers, renews or transfers multiple domain name every second of each day. GoDaddy.com is the biggest worldwide mass-market hosting provider by annual revenue consistent with Tier1 Research (Mass-Market Hosting Report-Winter 2011) and is the world’s No. 1 domain name registrar based on Name Intelligence, Inc. Go Daddy registered a couple of-third of all new domains created in 2010 for within the top six generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, including .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .mobi.