Ripped off from RAL

abcnews.go.com/sections/s...11217.html

Taken Over by Porn

Porn Purveyors Grab Expiring Web Sites From Previous Owners

By Matt Markovich, Tech Live Seattle bureau chief

Dec. 17

— You won't find any Bible scripture on the Brooklyn diocese website. Instead, visitors will get links to plenty of skin from a pornography operator in Europe.

"We were shocked," said Carole Martin, webmaster for the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York.

According to Martin, the pornographer picked up the parish's domain name after it expired earlier this year. The parish didn't find out about the switch until visitors who had bookmarked the old site found links to various adult entertainment websites.

"We found out there was nothing we could do," Martin said. "They had legitimately bought our old domain name and while we tried to contact them to see if we could get it back, figuring they would be very nice about it, they informed us they wanted $1,500."

Entertainment of a Different Sort When patrons logged on to the Ballet Theater of Maryland website to buy "Nutcracker" tickets they got performances of a rather unwholesome variety.

"It's sad that a business would do this kind of thing," said Henry Holtz, the ballet's executive director.

An old domain of the Ballet Theater of Maryland was bought by a pornographer just after it expired. On its website, the pornographer let the company know it could buy the domain back for $500.

"We are not willing to do that," Holtz said.

Growing Trend

These websites are not alone. Domain registries such as VeriSign do not track the number of cyberspeculators who are taking over domains as soon as they expire.

Internet filtering software maker N2H2 of Seattle claims these domain grabs are on the increase, saying the trend began roughly a year ago. It says the domains of hundreds of websites are being picked up by operators of overseas gambling and adult websites every day.

"I've seen one is in Armenia and another is in Russia," said David Burt, public relations director of N2H2. "They are registering domain names that aren't trademarked legally and it looks like there really isn't much that can be done about it."

Domains of websites that aren't trademarked are harder to reclaim in court. Often these are websites of religious and civic groups, local governments, and nonprofit organizations that can't afford to buy back their names. "I think they took our site because it had over 500 links attached to it," Martin said. "We had it up for three-and-a-half years and there were links attached to it from all over the world."

Speculators look for websites with lots of links attached to the domain name so it scores high in search engines such as Google.

"If you go to a search engine such as Google or AltaVista where you can do a search with a link, you can look and see how many sites are linked to a particular site," Burt said. "You can see hundreds of sites still linking to these pornography sites, because they haven't changed, they haven't found out about it yet."

Playing the Name Game

SnapNames of Portland, Oregon, wars with these speculators on a daily basis.

"There's massive competition globally," SnapNames CEO Ron Wiener said. "This is one of the stealthiest industries around."

SnapNames works with the registries to capture expiring domain names for a fee for clients who have forgotten about them. Despite SnapNames' close relationship with registries such as VeriSign, it still competes with well-financed speculators for expired domain name.

"They typically have fast computers, very sophisticated algorithms, and high-speed connections to the central registry where the domains are held," Wiener said. "As the name is deleted, they are sending thousands of pings to that database in a second trying to pick it up."

Martin and the parishioners she works for have learned a tough lesson about renewing a domain name.

"Legally they can do what they are doing," Martin said. "Morally what they are doing is wrong."

Copyright 2001 TechTV, Inc.

Copyright © 2001 ABC News Internet Ventures.

-- Anonymous, December 17, 2001

Answers

I found that out some time ago when I saw an article on Hillary Clinton's changing hairstyles. It remarked there was actually a site dedicated to the many changes of hairstyle, called HillaryClintonsHair.com. Well, it was about a year after the article was published and by that time the site had gone porn. I thought it quite funny, but I can see how such a practice might not be funny.

-- Anonymous, December 17, 2001

OG

Don't forget about the wood burning hot water heater site. I was sad to see that it was taken over.

-- Anonymous, December 18, 2001