As I wrote on Twitter last night, I am very surprised to see GoDaddy supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Let’s remember. This bill aims to give to entertainment companies the rights to censor websites that according to them are encouraging infringement. Using a shortcut, forget remixes, guitar covers and bootlegs, forget movie parodies, forget using your favorite song for your YouTube holiday movie and so on because these use rights the entertaining companies own.

The above is why so many protesters fight against the bill, many Internet companies such as Facebook, Mozilla, Twitter and others are opponent. But what is GoDaddy doing supporting SOPA? What a poor decision from a company so close to Internet users and not the least engaged. Buying a domain name is more engaging than creating a YouTube account and it shows a sense of involvement. These people care about the Internet and do not want entertaining companies to control it.

My guess would be that GoDaddy saw a big financial opportunity in supporting SOPA. There is a lot of big buckets of money at stake in this story as well as a shift in the Internet’s control. That’s therefore the moment for GoDaddy to join the ones it thinks will win.

I’m glad the Internet has been able to pressure GoDaddy to withdraw from the supporting list, but the idea is still there. GoDaddy’s CEO did not change his mind.