An effort by GoDaddy customers to boycott the domain registrar over its support for Hollywood-backed copyright legislation has sparked allegations of foul play.
NameCheap, whose chief executive last week likened the Stop Online Piracy Act to "detonating a nuclear bomb" on the Internet, said today that GoDaddy has intentionally thrown up technical barriers to prevent its customers from leaving. It lost over 70,000 domains last week.
NameCheap has seized on a dispute over the Stop Online Piracy Act as a way to lure new customers.
It's not alone: at least half a dozen GoDaddy rivals have seized on their competitor's pro-SOPA lobbying to lure its customers away. NameCheap dubbed December 29 "move your domain" day, offering below-cost transfers with the coupon "SOPASUCKS" plus a $1 donation to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Other registrars such as Dreamhost, HostGator, and Hover.com, and Name.com have offered similar SOPA-related promotions.
"GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete Whois information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process" in violation of rules established by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, NameCheap wrote in a blog post today. By this afternoon, the company said that GoDaddy had "finally unblocked our queries" and that transfers should now "go smoothly."
Read more.....
