GoDaddy, the largest registrar of Internet domain names with over 43-million names under management, has hired a firm to shop the company to private equity groups, reported the Wall Street Journal over the weekend.

The news is of interest to deliverability and e-mail marketing professionals because of GoDaddy’s demonstrated willingness to enforce anti-spam rules in their standard terms of service. Those terms permit GoDaddy to suspend the domain names of its customers if it finds the domain is being used in unsolicited bulk e-mail.

Once the registrar decides to act, customers have the option to post a financial bond against future spam reports, or to move the domain to another registrar for a fee several times greater than the original cost of the registration.

It will be interesting to see whether the terms of service – or the willingness to enforce them – change in any way, if a deal is reached.