Last night I finalised the transfer of this domain name away from GoDaddy (to Gandi.net). This follows my decision last year to move my website from a data centre in Orlando, USA to servers in the United Kingdom.
The controversial American law SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is to blame – GoDaddy not only endorses it, but is exempt from its effects due to the simple fact that it assisted in its creation. PIPA is another controversial act that GoDaddy endorses.
The SOPA law has too much power. In theory, if a person posts something on Facebook which is considered a copyright violation, the DNS servers of Facebook could legally be blocked. Effectively an entire site can be blocked because of the actions of a single user. The only people who benefit from the law are the greedy billionaire multi-nationals, who will happily sue over the download of a pirated £7 album.
We must not allow the internet to fall under the control of bureaucracy, and certainly not under the control of such a power-hungry government as the United States. I prefer not to have my website or domain hosted in a jurisdiction that can legally shut them down without appeal or notice, nor will I do business with any website endorsing such laws.
I encourage others who have domains with GoDaddy to transfer to another registrar. Read on to learn how…
