Web hosting titan under fire for killing elephant

The founder of website domain hosting firm Go Daddy was under fire on Thursday for an online video showing him proudly killing an elephant in Zimbabwe.

Bob Parsons posted the vacation video to his Arizona company's website, saying this was the second consecutive year he has spent hunting "problem elephants."

"Of everything I do, this is the most rewarding," Parsons said in the video's opening message. He justified killing the elephant on the grounds it was eating a local farmer's crops.

The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) criticized the killing of the elephant and said it is shifting its peta.org website away from Go Daddy and closing its account with the company.

"Parsons has killed at least one elephant and a leopard for his personal enjoyment," PETA said at its website.

"Instead of coming up with flimsy excuses for killing these highly intelligent and social animals, Parsons should use his wealth to fund humane solutions to human-elephant conflicts."

Parsons also faced criticism on his personal blog.

"I will start by saying that godaddy.com is the best company in your field that I have ever worked with," an Arizona man wrote in a message in a chat forum at Parsons blog.

"I am faced with a decision though... There's nothing you can write here that will make it okay with me that you go to Africa and shoot elephants," he continued. "I believe it is wrong on so many levels."

Rival website name registration service Namecheap.com cited the video as the reason it is letting people transfer their online addresses from Go Daddy at a deep discount with part of the money going to savetheelephants.org charity.

"It's not often that we would disagree publicly with a competitor, but we at Namecheap are very disturbed by this video of a competitor killing an elephant for sport," Tamar Weinberg of Namecheap said in an online message.

"We've decided to throw our support behind our elephant friends by offering domain transfers at a price where we actually lose money."

(c) 2011 AFP