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Wikipedia To Dump GoDaddy Over SOPA 197

Posted by timothy from the go-daddy-yourself dept.
Reader jampola points out that Wikimedia's Jimmy Wales last week said clearly what was only hinted at earlier in the month; now "It's not only imgur (among many others) who are giving GoDaddy the flick; it also appears Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikimedia, will be making the change. While unsure to what effect Wikimedia utilizes the services of GoDaddy, I imagine this could very well be another public blow for GoDaddy in the wrong direction over their decision to support SOPA."
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Wikipedia To Dump GoDaddy Over SOPA More

Wikipedia To Dump GoDaddy Over SOPA

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  • Use Namecheap (Score:5, Informative)

    by InterestingFella ( 2537066 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:03PM (#38530802)
    I can't but happy with their service. Clean, fast user interface with no horrible upselling like with GoDaddy. They are against SOPA and have worked great for years. I can only recommend them.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I can't but happy with their service.

      Learn to spell. Perhaps you can butt Grumpy or Sleepy with their service.

      I'm sure someone who has experience with the dwarfs will chime in.

    • hover (Score:4, Informative)

      by jDeepbeep ( 913892 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:10PM (#38530904)
      hover.com/tucows is another that has come out against SOPA. UI is decent. $10 to transfer a domain. No upselling.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Demoknight ( 66150 )

      I also transferred my domains to Namecheap this week. I was happy to leave Godaddy not only because of the SOPA mess but because their interface is garbage anyway. Namecheap feels like a more modern approach to services both from a design and marketing perspective. I don't need my registrar to be flashy - just be easy to use, communicate well, and be competitive. Namecheap definitely has already won me over and I expect to stay there for many years.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by LBt1st ( 709520 )

        I would boycott GoDaddy if I wasn't already doing so.
        I'd like to give props to namecheap as well. I've been using them for a couple years now and they've been very solid. Their UI is clean and there's no bullshit to deal with.

      • Re:This just in... (Score:5, Informative)

        by asdf7890 ( 1518587 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @10:46PM (#38534846)
        They did not bow to anything. They just removed some supporting posts in the hope that would con some people (it seems to have worked in some quarters).

        They certainly haven't come out against it.

        Key members of their staff are still openly supporting it in blog posts (which the company would likely squash fairly quickly were they to be against the company position).

        • Re:This just in... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by asdf7890 ( 1518587 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @10:55PM (#38534930)
          Well, colour me corrected. Ish.

          Having actually ready your link, the word "oppose" is actually there.

          But they are not against it because they think it is wrong, they are quite literally against it because others are and it is getting embarrassing. They stated argument against it?: "there is no consensus". That is like being against mugging not because the stealing and violence are bad per say, but because they are not seen as generally accepted.

          Too little too late for many (far too late for me: I last dealt with that company some years ago, and have been recommending people go elsewhere for just as long).
          • I met a couple of execs from GoDaddy years ago (about '05) during an internet conference in Seattle. I don't remember if they were founding execs or just high ups, but they seemed pretty up there. They also struck me as slimy. Slippery. I don't know how to put it, but I wouldn't want them alone with my 6 year old daughter. I'm not kidding. They weren't... *right*.

    • How about NO BULLSHIT!? (=Gandi.net) (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      How about this instead: http://en.gandi.net/no-bullshit [gandi.net]
      This philosophy alone wins against any other business model, hands down.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You become a slightly less Interesting Fella every time you astroturf Namecheap. Every story so far, now you're FPing. Shame.

    • Re:Use Namecheap (Score:5, Insightful)

      by spintriae ( 958955 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @07:43PM (#38532988)
      I assume you're from Hacker News. I'd be very weary of Namecheap. I personally wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole. They have been very dishonest in their dealings with GoDaddy in order to make themselves out to be some David fighting Goliath. In particular, accusing GoDaddy of noncompetitively restricting their whois access. Experts have already confirmed that that's standard practice in the industry to prevent abuse, and honestly, even I, a nonexpert, already knew that. Their making an issue out of it public reeks of dishonesty. As most /.ers will gleefully tell you, no-name domain registrars can be as crooked as a barrel of snakes. If you look in the comments sections of most anti-GoDaddy stories, you'll see plenty of them spamming their SOPASUCKSALLCAPS coupon codes.

      My advice to anyone looking for a new registrar is not to go with whomever screams "Screw SOPA! Screw GoDaddy!" the loudest. Do some actually research on who provides quality service and has a long established reputation of not being a snake. I personally like eNom, but there may be better ones out there.

  • In response... (Score:5, Funny)

    by itchythebear ( 2198688 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:08PM (#38530878)

    In response, GoDaddy will now have various pictures of Danica Patrick at the top of all of their site's pages, urgently pleading people to register domains with them.

    The caption would be:

    If everyone reading this registered 5 domains with us, we could end the internet today. Please read a personal appeal. Please help.

    • Re:In response... (Score:4, Funny)

      by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:13PM (#38530954) Homepage Journal

      So long as the pictures aren't work-safe, everyone will be happy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Skapare ( 16644 )

      I just want to know where to donate to end GoDaddy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tibit ( 1762298 )

      Either Danica is fine with selling her body cheap, or GoDaddy are the only ones that would want to keep sponsoring her... I would want to say I feel sad for her, but she may simply not mind such a treatment. You never know.

      • Yeah - god forbid that a women doesn't have a problem with that fact that people find her attractive . . .

        • The problem is if the only people willing to pay your for showing your body are a bunch of crooks at some two-bit internet company run by a sociopathic jerk. Have we seen her face on makeup ads, clothing ads, or anyplace else where highly attractive women are paid for modeling work? Nope.

  • More interesting question: who hasn't (Score:5, Interesting)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:11PM (#38530934) Homepage

    A lot of people/companies movies their domains away, not just wikipedia or imgur, or the humble bundle people. A lot of people have done it. I wrapped up moving my domains today (started after the previous domain dispute wit godaddy that was reported on /.).

    It would be more interesting to see what companies, specially those that rely on user contribution, decided not to move away from the shitty registrar called GoDaddy.

    For who care, I moved my domains to Gandi. So far the service is great, the gratis DNS management is also ok (you can pretty much copy paste zone files). Gandi is a non-US company (French), they support EFF (and a bunch of other projects /.ers like), oppose SOPA: http://www.gandibar.net/post/2011/12/23/Gandi-s-Opposition-to-the-SOPA-Legislation [gandibar.net]

    • Re:More interesting question: who hasn't (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:27PM (#38531176)

      I'm also with gandi (been using them for what seems like 10 yrs now; quite a long time). just recently I decided to try their webmail (imap) and that works fine, too. after a few months testing, I moved all my gmail business over to my own domain and using gandi as mail transport, dns and occasional webmail (but mostly imap).

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      I am not sure I understand why anyone who has GoDaddy at this point. Do they have really cheap prices? Do they have better service for large accounts? Is it hard to transfer large number of domains? I dropped them years ago and have been quite happy with the switch.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by iroll ( 717924 )

        People use GoDaddy because they're big, and big = safe. Remember the old adage, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Same for Microsoft, same for big banks like Bank of America, etc.

        Being big is a recommendation in and of itself.

    • Re:More interesting question: who hasn't (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cpghost ( 719344 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:42PM (#38531370) Homepage

      Gandi is a non-US company (French), they support EFF (and a bunch of other projects /.ers like), oppose SOPA

      Nothing against Gandi (good registrar actually), but as a French company, aren't they subject to HADOPI that is similar to SOPA?

    • I was honestly shocked by who and how many people use GoDaddy. I'm talking friends that are IT folk, people that trashed their name over their well established list of shenanigans.

      To me this is another sign of how screwed up things are. GoDaddy has a history of being shady, but people don't care. They ignore the evidence until something like SOPA hits, then it's all "GoDaddy is GoBaddy! Boycott! Boycott!"

      And it isn't like it will do much to anyone but GoDaddy. The RIAA/MPAA companies, the real villains, are

      • And it isn't like it will do much to anyone but GoDaddy. The RIAA/MPAA companies, the real villains, are who we should be boycotting. Why aren't people canceling their cable and Netflix or Hulu+. [Boycotting GoDaddy is] easy and costs $7-10 dollars.

        Well, you said it. It doesn't make *that* much difference if you choose another registrar, whereas if you were to boycott the large movie or tech companies, you'd have to actually sacrifice seeing the latest geek-friendly blockbuster or not have the latest shiny tech gadget or console.

        And while people here are happy to complain about how Sony or whoever are going to lose their business or whatever because of some dick move they made, when it comes to the crunch and making a *real* sacrifice (like those ab

      • I'm not canceling my Netflix because it's television on my terms. If it becomes a value proposition with which I don't agree I'll go back to not watching television. We dropped DVDs when they raised the price. Netflix doesn't want to give the bastards money, but the bastards have the content we want to watch. As they make more of their own content that we want to watch, we'll be able to watch more without giving money to the worst scum. (Yes, I realize Netflix is a Microsoft puppet...)

    • What really surprises me is why so many companies bought their domains from GoDaddy in the first place. I can understand if an unexperienced user buys a domain or two from them, not knowing that there are alternatives (maybe even being impressed by their "add an antivirus to your domain for only $19.99 more"-style advertising), but anyone who knows what they are doing should be immediately turned off by GoDaddy's horrible interface and all the bullshit you have to go through to register a domain there. It's

  • Coupons! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Scutter ( 18425 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:16PM (#38531002) Journal

    A few hours after I finished transferring all of my domains away from GoDaddy, they spammed me with an advertisement offering 25% off my next purchase of $75 or more. Not, "Hey, we'd like you back. What can we do to change your mind?" No, it was "Hey, you were a customer once and we'd like to milk you some more. Here's a not-very-good incentive to buy more services from us."

    • I am ignorant on the loss that GoDaddy is incurring. Is there any monthly recurring fees that they are losing for all of this, or is everyone just making a point of moving now to get their attention, and then the simple renewals with fees will then go to a competitor? It seems that teh competition is getting a great deal of transfers and making money from it, but I dont see where GoDaddy is losing yet. Am I wrong? I dont know their service offerings, but I am enjoying the rage and activity around all of thi

      • Re:Coupons! (Score:5, Informative)

        by Just Brew It! ( 636086 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:49PM (#38531502)
        They're losing future revenue (due to current customers moving domains) and future customers (due to bad publicity). Presumably some of those moved domains were up for renewal in the very near future (possibly even within the next few days); so they are losing the revenue from the automatic (by default) credit card charges for the domain renewals.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by syzler ( 748241 )
          They also offer VPS services with monthly fees. There may not be as many VPS subscribers moving to a new provider due to the pain and time required move to a new service, however I hope there are enough of us moving to new VPS providers so that they do feel the loss in recurring monthly revenue.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by CanHasDIY ( 1672858 )

      No, it was "Hey, you were a customer once and we'd like to milk you some more. Here's a not-very-good incentive to buy more services from us."

      Unless they're sending Danica over to do the milking, I'm not interested.

  • They don't mention GoDaddy, but it seems they are also moving away from it:
    http://xbmc.org/theuni/2011/12/29/possible-unreachable-time-tonight/ [xbmc.org]

    In their case they are moving altogether from the US. Are they paranoid, or is this the right move? With the US control of the ICANN, I wonder how much better would it be to use a non-US name registrar

    p.s.: How can I change the text displayed when I use URL tag?, couldn't find that anywhere in the FAQ.

    • They provide software that can play media without DRM. I'm not surprised they're moving their hosting out of US/**AA control.

      p.s: There's a url tag? I use <a href=""></a> tags for urls

  • Hey, dickheads, yeah you, Mr Shakedown Artist politician. You and your dipshit friends jumped the shark tank with this one.

    GoDaddy is just a precursor of what is going to happen to your political careers. It's a snack for us, a little bit of blood to tithe us over until we can mash the vote button for the other guy so hard it breaks. You can tell the other bums huddling around the burn barrel keeping warm. "I was a rich Congressman until I got fucking stupid and greedy. GOD DAMN YOU SOPA....I had a life!"

    Y

    • Whats the name of this "other guy" who isn't going to do the exact same thing?

    • Uh, the phrase is "jump the shark", not "jump the shark tank". And your knowledge of politics seems as shallow as your knowledge of internet memes. Frankly, we've seen things like this come and go many times in our day. In a couple months, after SOPA and PIPA have passed, been reconciled, and the reconciled bill passed, this will be forgotten. And no one in Congress will suffer an iota from it, because the majority of citizens really don't give a damn as long as they can get to their Facebook accounts and c

  • Two messages being sent by GoDaddy desertions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Morgaine ( 4316 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:32PM (#38531228)

    1. Politicians and government no longer represent what the people want. The bribary by the copyright lobby has gone way beyond the pale, and the political corruption of government seems unstoppable.

    2. Politicians and government are now costing businesses money. While traditionally the government has supported businesses more than individuals, this has now reached the point where business finds itself at odds with the customers that provide its income, and that is a terminal situation.

    The messages are pretty clear. What's unclear is where this is going, other than sending SOPA to hell.

    • 1. Politicians and government no longer represent what the people want. The bribary by the copyright lobby has gone way beyond the pale, and the political corruption of government seems unstoppable.

      2. Politicians and government are now costing businesses money. While traditionally the government has supported businesses more than individuals, this has now reached the point where business finds itself at odds with the customers that provide its income, and that is a terminal situation.

      The messages are pretty clear. What's unclear is where this is going, other than sending SOPA to hell.

      Unfortunately, it's not a terminal situation for big business. Take a look at the telecom and to an extent the cable industries. When they start losing customers, they lobby to get "fee" attached to their bills (and other companies bills WTF!) that directly benefit them. Universal Service fund immediately springs to mind, but there are lots of other examples. Just pick up a bill and read it carefully.

      Canada has that goofy law where you pay taxes on blank media... which goes directly to the recording indu

    • Usually when the government does something to help some business it hurts another, this isn't new. The biggest difference here is that usually it's the big business vs. the little business (and the big business always wins). Now it's one mammoth industry vs. another. The MPAA et al are well entrenched in government, but they're going too far and forcing the tech industry to flex its muscles. It's not that the businesses are at odds with their customers - a quaint thought, thinking the customers are somehow

  • What does a $10 registration mean? (Score:3)

    by BlueCoder ( 223005 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:37PM (#38531304)

    Losing these a handful of big websites doesn't cost Godaddy more than $100 a year. The negative publicity affects them much worse.

    I think what is really needed is to get all the big name companies together and sponsor research into an alternative to DNS that can't be touched by any government and you can't sue for trademark infringement. Perhaps some combination of public key encryption and p2p. Then webpages the world over could provide links to the public key to search for. Instead of being able to directly go to a website you would need to go through (gasp) a search engine, then forever hence your web browser could find the site. Perhaps the public keys could even be encoded in those newfangled 2d bar codes.

    • Re:What does a $10 registration mean? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cpghost ( 719344 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:45PM (#38531422) Homepage

      I think what is really needed is to get all the big name companies together and sponsor research into an alternative to DNS that can't be touched by any government and you can't sue for trademark infringement.

      The problem ist't DNS blocking, it's the capacity of Gov't to block any website at the BGP level right in the main routers of Tier-1 backbones. That's the whole point of the uproar: the copyright lobby and their politicians have embarked on an arms race with us, the Internet Community, and who knows where all this will lead to?

    • Agreed. The negative publicity is the main thing, since the publicity will get more people to think about transferring their domains. That's why it is a big deal.

  • I transfered a dozen domains today. But know this (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:42PM (#38531380)

    I wish I knew a few things before transferring my domains. I hope you find this useful.

    There are at least 2 registrars who will donate $1 to EFF for each domain transferred to them:

    1. namecheap.com (use coupon code SOPAsucks for a nice discount, I paid $7.17 per domain transfer + whois privacy)
    2. gandi.net ($8 for domain transfer + free SSL cert + free whois privacy + ...)

    I wish I knew that:

    1. namecheap.com offers SSL cert for $1.99 extra -- that you can use for ANY domain including ones you don't register with them.
              Since I didn't need SSL for the domains I transferred, I skipped this offer and am kicking myself for not getting a few certs

    2. gandi.net offers SSL cert for free with each transfer and it only costs $8 (US) and they provide whois privacy
              there were posts about gandi.net being more expensive than others, so I assumed the worst and found otherwise today

    Now you know of 2 registrars giving you a domain name, SSL cert and whois privacy for under $10, PLUS they donate a buck to EFF.

    I transferred around 12 domains to namecheap.com for $7.17/domain and will transfer additional domains requiring SSL to gandi.net for $8/domain.

    If you know of other registrars (not owned by godaddy) who will donate $1 or more for each transfer, then reply here with their coupon code, etc.

    Things to remember when transferring from godaddy:

    1. First, unlock your domain at the godaddy website
    2. Get your authorization codes from godaddy website
    3. Cancel your whois privacy at godaddy's: DomainsByProxy.com
    4. Make sure your Administrative Contact's email address is correct so you can respond
            (note that some changes like Company Name, etc. will lock your domain for 60 days!)
    5. And finally, initiate the transfer at your new registrar

    I found these instructions helpful when transferring my domains today:
    http://www.sitepoint.com/godaddy-supports-sopa-heres-how-to-transfer-your-domains/

    Here's your chance to vote with your wallet AND save money. If you procrastinate, you'll probably end up renewing with godaddy the night before your expiration and pay them a heck of a lot more than these prices. Transfer today and benefit.

  • So help fund them (Score:5, Informative)

    by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @05:43PM (#38531392) Homepage

    Funny coincidence, five minutes ago, the Wikipedia funding request hit my mailbox. Says they stop asking for funds every year once they hit a goal...but alas this year did not make it.

    Really, it is a very impressive service to offer with, as the letter says, 679 servers and 95 staff. They keep it all very, very tight. I felt good donating this year, and that was BEFORE the SOPA thing.

  • It would be really handy to be able to easily identify web sites that are registered with GoDaddy. That way we could politely request that the admins use an alternative registrar.
  • I personally recommend Name.com [name.com]; they have a nice, clean interface, and they're giving a discount for transfers from GoDaddy [name.com] with the code "NODADDY".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mc10 ( 2402526 )
      Oh, and of course, they're against SOPA; they've written an entire article [name.com] about SOPA. From the previous article [name.com]:

      Name.com opposes SOPA and calls on Congress to search for a new way to protect intellectual property rights, while maintaining the freedom from which we all enjoy and benefit.

  • in a few weeks. i have 4-5 domains there.

  • Donate to Wikipedia (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday December 29, 2011 @06:43PM (#38532282) Homepage Journal

    Now donating money to Wikipedia [wikimediafoundation.org] is especially powerful. It supports a public benefit org that sticks to its principles of openness, and takes money from GoDaddy which is a scumbag operation. And gives that money to GoDaddy's competitors, which sticks it to GoDaddy some more.

    Want to help kill SOPA and the rest of the slaver culture working against us? Give to Wikipedia now. And help pay for all those articles you've been reading, too.

  • Does anybody know where 1&1 is on the whole SOPA thing?

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