By Chad Henderson

A few weeks ago, I wrote a bit about SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. Luckily for us, congress has not passed the act yet, but will continue to debate it when they return from their winter break. There are good indications that the act will not pass as it is currently written, which is good news for anyone that likes the internet as it now exists.

Supporters of SOPA, such as notorious domain registrar and hosting company GoDaddy, continue to come under scrutiny, however. GoDaddy was recently outed as a supporter of SOPA and apparently even had a hand in guiding the creation of the act. GoDaddy is the only real 'internet' company to appear on the list of supporting businesses that was released by the House Judiciary Committee and the fact that any internet company would support the act has surprised and baffled the professional internet community. 

Since being revealed as supported of SOPA, GoDaddy has seen a mass exodus as outraged customers transfer to other domain registrars and hosting companies, losing over 37,000 domain names in the first few days. Users of the popular community news site Reddit even organized an official "Move Your Domains Day" on Dec 29th, 2011 and created a Boycott GoDaddy website to encourage others to make the move.  The total number of domains moved away from GoDaddy so far is not known, but it is thought to be as many as 80,000 or more.

The Boycott GoDaddy movement gained enough momentum and garnered enough national press that GoDaddy, which had originally reiterated their support for the act, has decided to bend before the storm and have their name officially removed from the list of supporters. On Friday the 23rd, they released an official statement reversing their course. They did not say they would oppose the act but did state that they would support the act only "when and if the Internet community supports it". 

This sudden change of course for the most powerful domain hosting company in the world speaks to the power of community sites such as Reddit to organize and empower customers to be heard at national and international levels. Because of this, involving your business in politics can be very dangerous and should be done with care and thoughtfulness, especially when you attach yourself to controversy such as SOPA. 

Will you move, or have you already moved, your domains off of GoDaddy? Let us know in the comments.