Imgur.com: Why We Dumped GoDaddy 279
Velcroman1 writes "On the eve of what has been dubbed "Dump Go Daddy Day," imgur.com — the massive image hosting site responsible for an astonishing 28 terabytes of bandwidth and nearly 200 million page views per day — has already changed its registry entries, foreshadowing the potential negative effect of a boycott set to begin Thursday morning. GoDaddy.com originally supported the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) but quickly recanted its position when the call for a boycott circulated. 'The outcry kind of forced our hand,' imgur founder and owner Alan Schaaf said. 'I'm against the SOPA act and imgur as a company is against it. We just feel it is terrible that GoDaddy.com would support this legislation.'"
Wikipedia also left GoDaddy (Score:5, Informative)
Just so you know. (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=prev&oldid=467377954/ [wikipedia.org])
Re:Who dumped whom? (Score:5, Informative)
Imgur was created for [reddit.com], and thus heavily used by a little site called Reddit. Godaddy is the McDonalds of domain registration.
But they DIDN’T! (Score:5, Informative)
They *said* they changed their position.
They *didn't* *actually* change it. And they won’t change it.
There's a difference.
Re:Yea, well... (Score:1, Informative)
Even as I post today Go Daddy's "general counsel and corporate secretary" has a blog posting up which clearly states her opinion in support of SOPA and is undersigned in her official role.
With obligatory:
And, I spend a great deal of my working (and non-working) hours each day working to keep the Internet a better and safer place, especially for children.
Re:THIS is why free markets work (Score:2, Informative)
I think you should realize that, for people like Adam Smith, free market literally meant "free of unnecessary charges" and a "market free from monopoly power, business fraud, political insider dealing and special privileges for vested interests". A "free market" particularly meant one free of foreign debt, as discussed in The Wealth of Nations. [blatantly taken from wikipedia]
You have confused "free market" with "market free from regulation" (a.k.a. laissez-faire or libertarian economics). In fact, I would equate a free market with the economic model of "perfect competition" (wikipedia it).
The problem is that a _truly_ free market model (on which the concept of the Invisible Hand is based on) requires several things:
a) low or no barriers of entry and exit and/or high number of participants;
b) rational economic agents/profit maximization;
c) information symmetry/perfect information;
d) the capability for means of production to adapt (long term) to market changes
e) low/zero transaction costs.
Whenever one or several of these assumptions cannot be met, the "free market model" (as described by Adam Smith) no longer works as advertised and pricing is sub-optimal: the market is no longer "free of unnecessary charges".
If you look around, there's plenty of examples of anomalous situations in (so called) free markets, such as inside trading (violation of point C), market panic and hype (violation of point B) and the establishment of monopolies and cartels (usually violation of point A and/or D), which obviously impair the correct allocation of resources in any economy.
This... just to point out that "free market" is not the same as "market free from regulation". If economical agents are rational, they WILL try to subvert free market rules as much as they can for profit maximization and I think you'll find plenty of examples of that, if you care to look around.
Now... regarding this whole GoDaddy situation... let's go back to the assumptions and see which ones were being met:
a) low or no barriers of entry and exit and/or high number of participants - nowadays... I'd say this happens... there ARE lots of domain registrars from which to choose and it's not THAT expensive to join the domain registration market;
b) rational economic agents/profit maximization - sure... in general. Although not totally... GoDaddy, for instance, is known to push unneeded services to their clients, exploiting their lack of rationality+information;
c) information symmetry/perfect information - well... this would be highly ideal... no one knows the price per domain of _every single_ registrar... nevertheless, the fact that this market works over the Internet increases information symmetry... review websites, for instance, help to propagate such information faster between economic agents... in this case, the Internet also helped to propagate information about GoDaddy's unethical/immoral actions;
d) the capability for means of production to adapt (long term) to market changes - uh... sure...
e) low/zero transaction costs - this is true... it's easy to transfer domains between registrars at zero (or near zero) cost; notice, like someone already told you, that this is only so because there is ICANN regulation that imposes that on domain registrars.
So... yeah, in general, the domain registration market _does_ seem to work like a "free market". Nevertheless, it's not a market free from regulation (and it shouldn't be), otherwise it's certain that registrars would abuse (at least) point E for their own profit. Also, notice that, despite the fact that GoDaddy has overinflated pricing for the quality of service they provide, that was not the reason that made people switch: the reason was purely POLITICAL, not ECONOMICAL. The problem of GoDaddy is _simply_ that they decided to support a law that's opposed by a vast majority of their clients and, since domain registration is a free market (although not free from regulation), and their clients are often politically-min
Re:Yea, well... (Score:3, Informative)
When the court seized domains last year, it was Go Daddy that became the new registrar and hosted the "This domain has been seized..." page for ICE. They are opportunists who have been caught with their pants down on the wrong side of an issue whose importance to their client base they did not foresee.
But then, if they had any sense of ethics in the first place, they would have known what they were doing was wrong.
Re:Yea, well... (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't change their position.
Re:Exactly (Score:4, Informative)
That comedian recently sold his video online for $5 and DRM free. Was all over torrent immediately. He made over $200k profit in 12 days, and still selling. I fail to see how copyright is required unless someone tries to re-sell his stuff or pass it off and theirs in some other way.
Re:Yea, well... (Score:5, Informative)
continuing to punish them after they've backed off of an unpopular decision
Did you even read their press release? They have not backed off on SOPA. The press release starts out stating that they consider the issue of the "utmost importance" and that they intend to continue "working to help" on the language of SOPA in some unspecified manner, and then astoundingly proceeds to declare "It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on [SOPA]". GoDaddy actually has the psychotic GALL to tell us how important it is that WE support this turd.
GoDaddy absolutely did not get the message here. The only message they got is that they are losing $$$.
GoDaddy has only temporarily withdrawn their public endorsement of the law. The press release states they feel SOPA is "worth the wait" and "Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it". GoDaddy still fully desires and intends to support SOPA in the future. GoDaddy expects US to get a clue and reverse our position to support it as soon as possible.
They haven't changed their position in the slightest. All they have backed away from is the shitstorm over their pro-SOPA press release. They are merely trying to use the new press release as an umbrella to hide under while they continue "working to help" on SOPA.
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