I have joined the tens of thousands of sites that have switched their domain registration away from GoDaddy this week. If you have a private domain registered with them, I encourage you to do the same.
GoDaddy, probably seeking to curry favor with the big media companies, had themselves listed as a sponsor of the SOPA legislation, a law which would give the government total control over what content can be placed on the internet. Intended for control of sites that disseminate copyrighted works, just how long do you think it will take before sites that don’t hew to the Washington approved version of things get included?
This legislation is the most serious challenge to free speech on the internet to ever come down the pike. If it is not defeated, the days of free information on the net are over.
It is regrettable that the internet has proven to be a ready made conduit for distributing copyrighted material without proper license, but at least some of the blame for that sits squarely on the media companies that insist on maintaining an archaic business model that does not address the reality of an interconnected world, charging prices that are far out of line with the perceived value of the works. I can understand their frustration that the internet has made it more difficult for them to maintain their supply of girls and white powder nose candy.
But SOPA goes far beyond simple regulation of copyright. The methods it authorizes are equivalent to tearing out the road that may lead past a drug house. If one site on my hosting company is suspected, not proven but just suspected, of hosting copyrighted works the entire server can be taken down, along with the hundreds or thousands of innocent sites that have the misfortune of being hosted in that server.
Please tell your congressman and senators to oppose this legislation, and if you are registered with GoDaddy, consider moving to a registrar that doesn’t want to stab the internet in the back.
For more information on SOPA and the danger it poses, see this page at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If you agree that this bill, and its companion bill in the Senate, pose a danger to the free exchange of ideas on the internet, take a moment to send your representatives an email through their contact form.
If they can take away the internet, they can take away your radio, so act soon and act often.
