GoDaddy Lost Over 70,000 Customers Due to SOPA Support

One of the largest domain name registrars lost over 70,000 customers. The company's customers boycotted it after GoDaddy's support for the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), an anti-piracy law currently under consideration in the US Congress, became public.

The company's management posted a note on its website explaining GoDaddy's position on the bill. This note indicates that GoDaddy not only supports SOPA but is actively involved in its development.

The English-language blogosphere has seen a flurry of posts from users who have decided to transfer their domains from GoDaddy to other registrars. The authors of these posts urged others to do the same.

In less than 24 hours, more than 2,800 people accepted the offer. Numerous IT publications covered the anti-GoDaddy campaign. Over the past week, the company has been losing thousands of customers: 8,000 on Monday, 14,000 on Thursday, and 21,000 on Friday.

The SOPA bill allows companies (payment systems, providers, and domain registrars) to be required to stop cooperating with resources that distribute pirated content without a court order.

Many owners of user-generated content resources, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, spoke out against the bill.

Today, it was announced that GoDaddy is withdrawing its public support for the SOPA anti-piracy bill after listening to its users.