Internet registrar GoDaddy on Thursday officially came out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), basically arguing that the bill is currently too polarizing.

Internet registrar GoDaddy on Thursday officially came out against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), basically arguing that the bill is currently too polarizing.

"GoDaddy opposes SOPA because the legislation has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders in the technology and Internet communities," CEO Warren Adelman said in a statement.

GoDaddy previously for SOPA but said it would support the legislation "when and if the Internet community supports it." Now, the company has officially opposes SOPA as well as similar legislation in the Senate known as .

The statement was released the same day that rival registrar NameCheap sponsored MoveYourDomain Day, an effort to get GoDaddy customers to move their sites to other registrars (namely NameCheap, of course). NameCheap said it processed at least 25,000 transfers yesterday and pledged to donate $2 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for every subsequent transfer.

Adelman said GoDaddy observed a "spike in domain name transfers" yesterday, which the company attributed to "GoDaddy's prior support for SOPA."

"Our company regrets the loss of any of our customers, who remain our highest priority, and we hope to repair those relationships and win back their business over time," he concluded.

SOPA would expand the ability of the Justice Department to go after Web sites overseas that traffic in fake goods like counterfeit purses or prescription drugs. According to the bill's sponsor, Rep. Lamar Smith, the DOJ would have to get a court order against an infringing site, and if granted, could request that the site be blocked. Search engines would then have to remove links to those sites.

Critics, howeverlike Google, Facebook, and Twitterare concerned that the bill is too far-reaching and broad, and could potentially harm Web sites that don't actually contain infringing content or were acting in good faith.

The House Judiciary Committee is when it reconvenes in 2012; the PROTECT IP Act will be considered in late January.

In a statement, the EFF said SOPA is "scary legislation that endangers our Internet infrastructure and threatens online free expression in the name of combating so-called rogue Web sites."

The EFF posted a list of other registrars that oppose SOPA.

TechDirt noted, meanwhile, that data from DailyChanges suggested "that GoDaddy actually had a strongly positive day, netting 20,748 more domains at the end of the day than the beginning."

Earlier this week, however, Domain Name Wire, said DailyChanges.com data can be misleading since domain names can take five days to transfer and DailyChanges tracks nameserver changes, not domain transfers.