Go Daddy No Longer Supports SOPA – Is It Enough, Or Too Little Too Late?

Contributor: Bill Klump | Daily Disruption | December 26th, 2011

If you are not familiar, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors.  The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.  Now before the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the Protect IP Act.

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement.  Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators’ such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites’, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites’.  The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for 10 pieces of music or movies within six months.  The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.

As with every bill there are usually issues that need to be addressed, however if this bill were to pass it would have a chilling effect and could be the end of the internet as we know it.  Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws especially against foreign websites.   Opponents say that it infringes on First Amendment rights, is Internet censorship, will cripple the Internet, and will threaten whistle-blowing and other free speech.  The House Judiciary Committee held hearings on SOPA on November 16 and December 15, 2011. The Committee is scheduled to continue debate when Congress returns from its winter recess.

Last week Twitter was a blaze when Ben Huh, CEO of Cheezburger made this statement directed at Go Daddy “We will move our 1,000 domains off of @godaddy unless you drop support of SOPA.  We love you guys, but SOPA -is- cancer to the Free Web,” said Huh via his Twitter account.  That statement set off communication all over the web showing the swift, quick, power of the internet, and the impact on how we view the company’s we do business with.

Last Friday Go Daddy put out a press release stating they no longer support SOPA.  REALLY?  I guess I don’t blame them for doing what they did, what else could they do?  But is this too little too late, and do they really think we are so gullible to think they just “changed their minds” in the last couple of days?

So you may be asking why is this such a big deal?  Journalist Rebecca MacKinnon in a New York Times op-ed argued that making companies liable for users’ actions could have a chilling effect on user-generated sites like YouTube. “The intention is not the same as China’s Great Firewall, a nationwide system of Web censorship, but the practical effect could be similar”, she says.

The EFF has warned that Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo all seem likely to shut down if the bill becomes law.  According to critics, the bill would ban linking to sites deemed offending, even in search results and on services such as Twitter.

Christian Dawson, COO of Virginia-based hosting company ServInt, predicted that the legislation would lead to many cloud computing and Web hosting services moving out of the US to avoid lawsuits.

Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), whose district includes part of Silicon Valley, has called the bill “the end of the internet as we know it”, An editorial in the San Jose Mercury-News agreed with Lofgren, stating, “Imagine the resources required to parse through the millions of Google and Facebook offerings every day looking for pirates who, if found, can just toss-up another site in no time.”

A news analysis in the information technology magazine eWeek stated, “The language of SOPA is so broad, the rules so unconnected to the reality of Internet technology and the penalties so disconnected from the alleged crimes that this bill could effectively kill e-commerce or even normal Internet use. The bill also has grave implications for existing U.S., foreign and international laws and is sure to spend decades in court challenges.”

Art Bordsky of advocacy group Public Knowledge similarly stated that “The definitions written in the bill are so broad that any US consumer who uses a website overseas immediately gives the US jurisdiction the power to potentially take action against it.”

On October 28, 2011, the EFF called the bill a “massive piece of job-killing Internet regulation,” and said, “This bill cannot be fixed; it must be killed.”

Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, spoke out strongly against the bill, stating that “The bill attempts a radical restructuring of the laws governing the Internet,” and that “It would undo the legal safe harbors that have allowed a world-leading Internet industry to flourish over the last decade. It would expose legitimate American businesses and innovators to broad and open-ended liability. The result will be more lawsuits, decreased venture capital investment, and fewer new jobs.”

Lukas Biewald, founder of CrowdFlower, stated that “It’ll have a stifling effect on venture capital… No one would invest because of the legal liability.”

Booz & Company on November 16 released a study, funded by Google, finding that almost all the 200 venture capitalists and angel investors interviewed would stop funding digital media intermediaries if the House bill becomes law. More than 80 percent said they would rather invest in a risky, weak economy with the current laws than a strong economy with the proposed law in effect. If legal ambiguities were removed and good faith provisions in place, investing would increase by nearly 115 percent.

I do give Go Daddy credit though, at least they are listening to what their customers are saying, unlike some company’s, here’s what Go Daddy’s newly appointed CEO had to say:

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

I guess time will tell if this will be enough, or if it was too little too late.