The drama surrounding GoDaddy and its stance on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) continued this weekend, with reports of customers having difficulty dropping their domains from the company.

The drama surrounding GoDaddy and its stance on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) continued this weekend, with reports of customers having difficulty dropping their domains from the company.

Yesterday, registrar NameCheap said in a blog post that GoDaddy was "thwarting efforts to transfer domains away from them."

"Specifically, GoDaddy appears to be returning incomplete WHOIS information to Namecheap, delaying the transfer process. This practice is against ICANN rules," the company said.

In a statement provided to CNET, GoDaddy said the delay was due to "the normal rate limiting," which is in place to prevent abuse. GoDaddy criticized NameCheap for failing to contact the company about the problem, and instead opting for a blog post. "Nevertheless, we have now proactively removed the rate limit for Namecheap, as a courtesy," GoDaddy said.

In response, NameCheap updated its blog post to say that "all we know on our side is that GoDaddy was preventing us from conducting normal business with our clients, and in turn causing harm to our reputation and at the same time overloading our support channels."

The blog post, NameCheap said, was intended to "inform our clients," but the press "decided to make this into some sort of story."

The debate, meanwhile, focuses on GoDaddy's support of a controversial online piracy bill known as SOPA. The bill 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.

Initially, GoDaddy said it was in support of the bill, but after a Reddit member of GoDaddy over its supportand high-profile domain owners joined upthe and said it will support SOPA "when and if the Internet community supports it."

Customers who switched their domains in the last few days reported that to explain their current SOPA stance and to get them to reconsider.

There have been a few reports circulating about how many domains were actually dropped from GoDaddy after the SOPA drama. Citing info from DailyChanges.com, TheDomains.com said more than 15,000 domain names were transferred from Godaddy.com on Thursday and over 21,000 were transferred away from GoDaddy on Friday. Domain Name Wire, however, said DailyChanges.com data can be misleading since domain names can take five days to transfer and DailyChanges tracks nameserver changes, not domain transfers.

"I'm not writing this to blast the people who have used DailyChanges as a proxy. After all, I kept an eye on it and called it a 'proxy' for domain transfers," Domain Name Wire said. "But looking at the data this time I think it's actually a poor proxy."

SOPA, meanwhile, will be taken up when the House reconvenes next month. A similar Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act, is scheduled to be addressed in late January.