Following criticism from customers for its support of the Stop Online Piracy Act, domain registrar Go Daddy today said that it's no longer backing the legislation.
"Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation - but we can clearly do better," said Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman in a statement. "It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it."
In addition, the company has also taken down blog posts where it outlined its support for portions of the bill.
Introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith in late October, SOPA quickly became a source of controversy. It would allow the Justice Department to seek an order making allegedly piratical Web sites virtually vanish from the Internet.
The legislation has created a divide amongst several major technology companies with support from businesses like Adobe, Comcast, Dell and Sony, with opposition from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, eBay, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, and LinkedIn.
Go Daddy's place in the debate became of particular significance given its place as an Internet domain registrar. Just yesterday, the creator of icanhascheezburger.com, among other sites, vowed to move 1,000 domains held by parent company Cheezburger, Inc. to another registrar if Go Daddy did not change its stance on the matter.
That move was preceded with an anti-Go Daddy thread on social site Reddit, which drew more than 3,000 comments and the creation of godaddyboycott.org, a site set up to let users voice their disapproval with the company's support of SOPA. And today, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales tweeted that the company was moving away from using Go Daddy given the company's support for the bill.
CNET News Senior Editor Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.
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