Another day, another crazy patent. DomainNameWire has the story that GoDaddy has successfully received a patent on "Announcing a domain name registration on a social website." The patent, 8,276,057, was filed back in September of 2009. Take a look at the claims for yourself to understand exactly what's being claimed, but reading through them, I'm at a complete loss as to how this is considered worthy of a patent. It has been common practice that after you do something online that options be presented to allow that action to be posted to a social networking site. It's done so often that I actually find it kind of annoying these days. But basically any programmer could implement variations on that, and nothing in what GoDaddy describes appears to be anything unique or special or out of the ordinary. Thankfully, with StackExchange's new prior art crowdsourcing effort, folks are already finding prior art. Unfortunately, that effort is supposed to be for patent applications... and this patent has already been approved for reasons that defy any logic.

As you may have heard, yesterday web host/domain registrar GoDaddy had some serious downtime, taking tons of sites down. Much of the news coverage focused on a single hacker who tried to take credit for bringing them down. However, now that GoDaddy is back, it insists the problem was entirely internal and not the result of a hack. The company was quite explicit on that point:

The service outage was not caused by external influences. It was not a "hack" and it was not a denial of service attack (DDoS). We have determined the service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables. Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and GoDaddy.com. We have implemented measures to prevent this from occurring again.

At no time was any customer data at risk or were any of our systems compromised.

While my first reaction to all of this was to wonder who would still use GoDaddy, my second question is to wonder whether GoDaddy looks better or worse if it was its own fault that the service went down so broadly. Mistakes happen, but a company like GoDaddy survives on its ability not to make mistakes at that level. I guess, in the end, it's just yet another reminder of why people might want to look for alternatives.

One of the key principles behind the growth of the internet was belief in protection against secondary liability claims. That is, if you set up a website where users can post stuff, the people who post stuff are liable for the content -- not you as the service provider in the middle. This is the core purpose behind Section 230 of the CDA (and, to a lesser extent) the DMCA's safe harbors. But there are some loopholes where technically there are no official safe harbors (though common sense says you still shouldn't be liable). The website JotForm.com, which allows individuals to create their own forms easily, has had its main domain, jotform.com "suspended" by the US government, due to "an ongoing investigation." Because of this JotForm is forcing all of its users to change their forms to use their .net domain rather than their .com.

Many people on the comments assumed the content was posted by us. This can happen to any site that allows public to post content. SOPA may not have passed, but what happened shows that it is already being practiced. All they have to do is to ask GoDaddy to take a site down. We have 2 millions user generated forms. It is not possible for us to manually review all forms. This can happen to any web site that allows user generated content.

I'm at a loss as to how this possibly makes sense. Even if the forms were being used for some illegal purpose (and it's important to note that Section 230 does not apply to criminal activity -- just civil offenses), I still can't fathom a reason why it should lead to everyone else getting censored and an internet startup facing a massive hardship wherein tons of users have had their service disrupted with millions of useful forms being suddenly disappeared.

And I won't even bother spending any time on the fact that apparently it was GoDaddy who helped the US government "suspend" the domain.

For a government that insists it's trying to help small businesses and startups, to go and disrupt one and all of its users over some possible illegal usage by a small number of users is just crazy. It's this kind of overly broad censorship (and, yes, this is clear censorship) that is what people were afraid of under SOPA. As JotForm notes, it's important to recognize that the US government already believes it has these powers. And the damage here for a small business is massive. JotForm has been filling its Twitter feed with customer service attempts at helping upset customers, and making it clear it has no information on why the .com disappeared. It looks like the US government asked, and GoDaddy just took away the domain. If you've never worked for a startup, perhaps you can't imagine just how insanely disruptive and destructive such a situation can be. Everyone is so busy working and building a company -- but something like this means suddenly all of their time has to switch over to help all of those upset customers (and doing so without being able to use the site that everyone will go look at first!).

Activities like this will chill innovation and entrepreneurship in the US. Why locate here or even setup under a .com if the US government might kill your business with no explanation at any moment?

Yesterday, we noted that it appeared that the "GoDaddy boycott" concept may have been losing steam, thanks to the company's decision to move away from supporting the bill... combined with a new aggressive advertising campaign. Finally, on Thursday morning, the company went a step further: saying it hadn't just stopped supporting SOPA but now directly opposed SOPA. Even though the company notes that it saw "a spike in domain name transfers," it looks like the actual "boycott" day fizzled out. Looking at the results from DailyChanges shows that GoDaddy actually had a strongly positive day, netting 20,748 more domains at the end of the day than the beginning. On transfers alone, there were nearly double the number of transfers in as out (27,843 in to 14,492 out) as well as more new registrations than deleted domains (43,304 new registrations compared to 35,907 deletions). This isn't that surprising, really. There was a big burst last week, which is what resulted in GoDaddy changing its stance on the bills. In other words, it seemed like most people jumped to make the move immediately, rather than waiting a week. On top of that, GoDaddy's change in position very likely did ease the concerns of many. And, many made the quite reasonable argument that continuing the boycott after GoDaddy officially changed positions would be counterproductive, since it would discourage other companies from changing their position as well. Of course, a counter argument would be that the goal of the boycott was less about convincing others on the list to change positions as it was to make sure that no other companies decided to support SOPA or any similar future regulations.

Either way, it appears that for those who were hoping for a big boycott on Thursday, that didn't happen. I'm sure some SOPA supporters will use this as fodder to suggest the whole effort was a failure, but that's ridiculous. The whole thing still got a large company that was a huge supporter of these terrible bills to switch its position and recognize that it can't run roughshod over the wishes of its customers. It also helped draw more attention to the overall issue, and helped in getting other companies to back away from supporting the bill. It also got some attention among elected officials about how supporting this bill could get the internet activated. It may not be enough to kill the bills yet, but more politicians are aware of the issues. All in all, getting GoDaddy to change its position was a huge victory against SOPA and PIPA, but remains just one battle in a long and still ongoing war.

Update: There are a bunch of comments insisting that this can't be true, and I'm happy to see more data. NameCheap claims that it had 32,000 domains transfer in, and it's true that Daily Changes isn't a perfect proxy for domain transfers -- but it's a pretty good one. Some are suggesting that delays in processing will show more transfers over the next few days. We'll be watching. It's possible that there were a lot more transfers, but just because people want it to happen, doesn't mean it actually happened. Update 2: NameCheap says in the last week they've received around 80,000 transfers.

We've always been a bit baffled by GoDaddy's original support of COICA/PIPA/SOPA. As we noted in the fall, under the original definitions in SOPA, GoDaddy itself was almost certainly a rogue site. If you do searches on various trademarks, its recommendation engine certainly appeared to facilitate infringement by suggesting possible domains that would likely be infringing. What I actually forgot was that GoDaddy was already being sued over this very issue (which, you would think would make its legal team hyper-aware of this issue), and (even better) that lawsuit is coming from Hollywood, its main partner in pushing SOPA/PIPA through Congress.

Yes, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), better known as the folks behind the Academy Awards (the Oscars), launched a lawsuit against GoDaddy back in May of 2010 over this very issue. And, just last week, as GoDaddy was coming to terms with the complaints from the public, AMPAS was in court trying to force GoDaddy founder and ex-CEO Bob Parsons to give a deposition about the company's practices.

The article linked above, by Eriq Gardner at THResq, notes that many people believe that the completely mixed messages come from Parsons'... unique style of managing the company:

... in advance of a February cut-off date for discovery, AMPAS wishes to depose Parsons, whose “fingerprints are all over GoDaddy’s domain name monetization programs,” according to the brief.

And in the process, perhaps get some answers about why Parsons has seemingly been two-faced on the piracy front.

One example given is a post that Parsons wrote for his personal blog. In it, Parsons takes issue with the practice known as “kiting,” where registrars take advantage of a 5-day grace period to put up mini-Web sites loaded with search engine bait. Later, on his blog, Parsons discussed a trademark lawsuit against Dotster – “a registrar who hasn’t exactly been a stranger to domain kiting,” he said – for registering many misspellings of trademarked names, and associating them with search engine pages.

“This is exactly AMPAS’s complaint in this case,” says the plaintiff. “That its marks are famous and well-known; that GoDaddy monetizes domain names incorporating AMPAS’s trademarks – having received 60 cease/desist letters from AMPAS – yet continues to park domain names incorporating AMPAS’s marks.”

Now, as I stated when AMPAS filed the lawsuit, this case seems pretty ridiculous, and it seems pointless to blame GoDaddy for the actions of its users registering these domains -- even if (as the lawsuit contends), GoDaddy makes money from people parking these domains. We called it "absurd" at the time... and we stand by it.

But it's even more absurd in the context of SOPA/PIPA. You would think that, being subject to such absurd lawsuits over enabling infringement (oh, and don't forget the other similar lawsuit against GoDaddy from the Michael Jackson estate...), the company would be extra sensitive to laws that would put it at greater risk. It really calls into question what people are thinking over there, even if they have "backed down" from their support of the bills.

Well, today was the day originally scheduled as the GoDaddy boycott day, in which people who had registered domains with GoDaddy were going to transfer them out. With GoDaddy officially dropping support for SOPA, there have been some questions about whether or not that boycott will still happen in significant numbers. There have already been some high profile transfers, such as from the Imgur folks, and there are still plenty of people talking about going through with the boycott as planned.

However, GoDaddy seems to be focusing on what's worked for it in the past: advertising with scantily clad women (and Danica Patrick in particular). Apparently it's been putting full page ads in the NY Times (and other papers?) with Patrick covered strategically by a sign.

And... the strategy may have worked so far.

While tons of domains transferred out at the end of last week, this week has been a bit of a different story. On Monday, it looks like GoDaddy basically broke even, with 18,401 new registrations and 14,853 transfers in... vs only 8,862 transfers out and 24,120 domains deleted. That netted out to an increase for GoDaddy of 272 domains. Tuesday was even more positive for the company. Even though another 16,662 domains were transferred out and another 27,564 were deleted, there was a big bump in new registrations: 31,574 (perhaps driven by new ads?) and another 15,452 transferred in. Net change? 2,800 in the plus column for GoDaddy. Finally, that same trend continued for Wednesday: an impressive 33,251 new registrations and 17,549 transfers in. That goes against 15,524 transfers out and 30,634 deletions. Net: 4,642 more domains under GoDaddy control.

Left unanswered: is this a lull before a bunch of transfers today? Or has the whole boycott issue subsided?

There was some concern that GoDaddy had only said they were pulling their support for SOPA, but hadn't actually done so. However, the company is now pointing out that it officially asked to be removed from the Judiciary Committee's list of SOPA supporters and that's now been done. I will note, however, that despite the claims that it is no longer supporting SOPA, the Graphic Artists Guild is still listed. Add to this the Judiciary Committee having to scrub the list of a bunch of law firms who never agreed to support the bill, as well as companies like Gibson Guitar, and it seems that the Judiciary Committee is going to be kept busy whittling down this list.

Of course, it's unclear why the Judiciary Committee only puts up a list of (rapidly shrinking) supporters. If it wanted to present the various opinions on the bill, shouldn't it actually show the large and growing list of SOPA opponents?

Having GoDaddy back off its support for SOPA/PIPA is one thing, but it hardly kills off these bills. Politicians are still very much in support of the bills, and both bills are poised to move forward in Congress when it comes back into session in late January. Of course, 2012 is an election year, which means that all of the members of the House who are supporting SOPA are up for re-election, and 1/3 of the Senate is up for re-election. If I were a candidate looking to challenge the incumbents, I'd be paying close, close attention to what happened to GoDaddy, and seeing how the "netroots" community was willing to band together quickly to make things happen. I'd be especially focused on this if I were running against one of the key supporters of SOPA, like Lamar Smith, John Conyers, Bob Goodlatte or Mel Watt (whose opponent should just play that video of him saying he doesn't understand technology, but believes the experts are wrong anyway, over and over and over again).

Perhaps a little crowdsourcing is in order. Can we figure out who's already registered to run against the incumbent supporters of SOPA and PIPA, and reach out to get their opinions on the bills and of censorship of the internet?

Here's the full list of the current co-sponsors for SOPA. If any of their opponents in next year's election are paying attention, they should be using this as a key issue and reaching out to the internet community, ASAP. What happened to GoDaddy can happen to a politician in an instant:

• Mark Amodei [NV2]
• Joe Baca [CA43]
• John Barrow [GA12]
• Karen Bass [CA33]
• Howard Berman [CA28]
• Marsha Blackburn [TN7]
• Mary Bono Mack [CA45]
• John Carter [TX31]
• Steven Chabot [OH1]
• Judy Chu [CA32]
• John Conyers [MI14]
• Jim Cooper [TN5]
• Ted Deutch [FL19]
• Elton Gallegly [CA24]
• Robert Goodlatte [VA6]
• Tim Griffin [AR2]
• Tim Holden [PA17]
• Peter King [NY3]
• John Larson [CT1]
• Ben Lujan [NM3]
• Thomas Marino [PA10]
• Alan Nunnelee [MS1]
• William Owens [NY23]
• Ben Quayle [AZ3]
• Dennis Ross [FL12]
• Steve Scalise [LA1]
• Adam Schiff [CA29]
• Brad Sherman [CA27]
• Lee Terry [NE2]
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz [FL20]
• Melvin Watt [NC12]

And here's the list of Senators who are both supporters of PIPA and are up for re-election in 2012. Wikipedia lists who's already registered to challenge them.

• Ben Cardin [Maryland]
• Bob Casey [Pennsylvania]
• Bob Corker [Tennessee]
• Dianne Feinstein [California]
• Kristen Gillibrand [New York]
• Orrin Hatch [Utah]
• Amy Klobuchar [Minnesota]
• Bob Menendez [New Jersey]
• Bill Nelson [Florida]
• Sheldon Whitehouse [Rhode Island]

Jeff Bingaman in New Mexico, Joe Lieberman in Connecticut and Herb Kohl in Wisconsin are all up for re-election in 2012... but all have announced that they're retiring. It may still be worthwhile to reach out to those running for their seats, but it becomes less of an election issue in those states. Dianne Feinstein still hasn't technically announced that she's running for re-election, but most people expect her to do so. She's also an interesting one. Despite being from Northern California, she has done almost nothing to cultivate support of the tech community, and is so out of touch that she thinks they're okay with PIPA.

It seems that anyone running against these folks would be missing out on a huge opportunity not to make the incumbent's support of censoring the internet into a campaign issue.

After GoDaddy made its very public announcement that it no longer supports SOPA, after being a very vocal supporter (despite the fact that it almost certainly violated the original version of the law), many have doubted the sincerity of the company, especially since it confined its remarks to SOPA. So after getting some more pressure, the company put out a separate clarifying statement that it doesn't support PIPA (PROTECT IP) either.

Still, there are plenty of people who don't buy it. It didn't help that the company's new CEO (though he's been at the company in other roles for a while) gave a really weak answer, when pressed on the company's level of support, suggesting that it may have just stepped back from publicly supporting the bills, but hasn't actually switched its full position:

Adelman couldn’t commit to changing its position on the record in Congress when asked about that, but said “I’ll take that back to our legislative guys, but I agree that’s an important step.” But when pressed, he said “We’re going to step back and let others take leadership roles.” He felt that the public statement removing their support would be sufficient for now, though further steps would be considered.

Either way, it appears people keep on transferring domains. Before the talk of a boycott happened on Thursday, it looked like GoDaddy was losing about 13,000 to 15,000 domains a day anyway. Then, on Friday, when people started transferring en masse, it jumped to 21,054. On Christmas Day, it looks like another 22,542 transferred out, so it doesn't look like people are all that mollified by the public change in position. Another 26,032 were "deleted," according to DailyChanges. And, remember, the "official" day that people had talked about for everyone to transfer their domains wasn't until Thursday, December 29th, so all of this was happening before the "big day." Who knows if the statements are enough to calm people down. For what it's worth, plenty of people are still registering new domains with GoDaddy and transferring them in, but the transfers out and deletions definitely outweigh the new registrations and transfers in. It was definitely enough activity to make GoDaddy realize it was going to be in trouble if it didn't change its position.

Via Tim Lee, we learn that, in the wake of the capitulation by GoDaddy, some of those who transferred domains to other providers are now receiving calls from GoDaddy customer service folks trying to win them back. Chris Heald explains what happened to him:

I just got a call from #GoDaddy. The rep said he noticed that I'd transferred my 60+ domains away... and wanted to know if I'd tell them why. I got to tell them that it was because of their #SOPA support, and that I couldn't in good conscience give my money to a tech company that would support legislation like that. I told him I was aware that they had reversed their position, but that their explicit support of it in the first place had cost them my confidence in them, as it is at the best viciously ignorant, and at worst, malicious. The rep was quite sincere in his apology to me, asked if there was anything they could do to win me back. He had a "We support IP protections, and now realize that support of SOPA is too broad" song-and-dance routine that probably came in from a PR memo today. I told him "no thanks", and that was that. I'm impressed by the customer service hustle, but it shows that this little incident really spooked them.

It really makes me wonder if GoDaddy will ever be able to win back the confidence of many who joined this boycott. Perhaps not.