-- By SamSalyer - 12 Jan 2012
Powerful and prominent interests have lined up both in support of and opposition to SOPA and its Senate counterpart, the PROTECT IP Act. Industries based around selling content, most notably the film and music industries, claim the Act is necessary to protect them from the revenue and job loss that accompany internet piracy – despite evidence to the contrary. A wide coalition of companies and advocacy groups opposes the bill, ranging from web-based companies, to human rights and libertarian organizations. In recent days, however, the most effective anti-SOPA activism is being marshaled and directed on the user-generated news site Reddit.
On December 22 a Reddit user named “selfprodigy” created a post announcing that he would be transferring 51 domains he had registered with GoDaddy? to another web registrar based on the company’s support of SOPA, and asked the Reddit community “Who’s with me?” The post quickly shot to the top of the Reddit rankings and drew thousands of comments, many from other users pledging to move their domains from GoDaddy? to a competitor. Rapidly, GoDaddy? ’s competitors seized on the opportunity, announcing their opposition to SOPA and offering Reddit users steep discounts to switch their domain registration. Web organizations opposing SOPA also quickly joined in. Wikipedia among others announced that it would be transferring its domains away from GoDaddy? . While Reddit users began recruiting for a December 29 exodus, GoDaddy? lost over 50,000 domain registrations in three days.
GoDaddy? was particularly vulnerable to this sort of attack because of the type of service they provide. There are many companies offering essentially identical domain registration services at essentially identical prices. Indeed, GoDaddy? ’s market position is based more on a successful, if controversial, marketing campaign than the service it provides. Its customers, the IT officers at companies or individuals who maintain their own websites, are likely to be particularly interested in issues affecting the web and likely to participate in online communities like Reddit.
The company’s response to this threat was rapid. On December 23, just a day after the initial Reddit post, GoDaddy? announced that it “no longer supports SOPA.” When this announcement failed to stop customers from transferring their services, GODaddy stepped up its language, announcing on December 29, “GoDaddy opposes SOPA," and criticizing the bill. Other tech companies which had initially supported SOPA took note of the backlash against GoDaddy? and quietly withdrew their support.
Analytically, this was a somewhat peculiar position to be taking. SOPA never mattered at all, because the House is merely the bat-shit crazy vestibule leading to the Senate. The only two documents that ever mattered were the MPAA wishlist and what the Senate would pass. So it was only PIPA that mattered, and PIPA represented the effort by Chris Dodd and Patrick Leahy to finance the Democrats' campaign to hold the Senate using Hollywood money in return for legislation that wouldn't pass in the end, but could be reintroduced (in return for more money) after the election. In the end, what was really important was the staggering extent of Google money that turned out to be deployable, was deployed, and was put at the service of the White House, which upended the Chris-and-Pat show, leaving Hollywood feeling pretty uneasy.
There were some subplots, mostly concerning Rupert Murdoch's effort to get other "content" companies to help him buy a Republican Senate, which they refused to do, leaving Murdoch bitterly tweeting about how everyone had surrendered to Google, which was pretty much the case.
So what had Reddit to do with it? Just providing astroturf for Google, as usual. Even if that wasn't apparent to you in January, wouldn't it have justified some revisions during the spring?