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Gotcha! DNS Popup Scammer Fined $1.9 Million

Posted by timothy on from the and-the-people-say-bite-me dept.

Mister B writes: "A scam artist who trapped surfers mistyping their URLs (including those for children's websites) and barraged them with popup ads for pr0n and gambling has been busted to the tune of about $2 million. Apparently the FTC got ticked after having to close 64 separate browser windows! The FTC has a sense of humour nevertheless: the case name is 'Cupcake Party' (the scammer did business under 'Cupcake') :-) . More details at MSNBC and the FTC."

4 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. The best is yet to come? by 00_NOP · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Can they be jailed if they refuse to pay?

  2. Excellent. This guy is a scumbag. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A few weeks ago, my boss' 8-yr-old daughter was at school, in the computer lab. She went to go to Yahoo's kid site, Yahooligans, but mistyped it - www.yahooligons.com. She got the porn ad page. So, to her credit, she backed out. To her ANTI-credit, though, she went back, called a friend over to check it out. I can imagine this girl going "Look! BOOBIES!" *laugh*. Another nearby kid saw this, and told a teacher. The principal wanted to suspend her for a week - the parents (who rushed to the school when they heard about this) managed to talk them down to a day.

    A couple of days later, I start sniffing around WHOIS records, and whose name do I find attached to the domain? John Zuccarini.

    Glad to see this scumbag getting what he deserves.

  3. Re:glad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    you ever tried tweakxp program? it has popup blocker and ad blocker feature under internet tweak bar? it works for me i was so sick of damn ads and popup that it waste my time
    on 56k modem!

  4. scary precedent by g4dget · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Sure, it isn't nice to pop up dozens of pages when people mistype web addresses. But if you aren't completely clueless (like the guys at the FTC apparently are), you should be using a web browser that doesn't allow that sort of thing to happen.

    I just find the precedent that someone gets fined $1.8M for having domains that are kind of similar to the domains that some big companies have scary. A figure that large seems to come out of thin air. I mean, who got harmed? The advertisers got their money's worth, and no kid is going to confuse the product of "cartoonnetwork.com" with a bunch of big breasted women.

    Particularly chilling is that WIPO considered registration of "guinesssucks.com" a trademark violation in his case (trademarks are only intended to identify a specific product; they are not intended to let trademark owners control what people say about the product).

    I think this is a dangerous threat to free speech. Sure, this particular guy isn't particularly nice. But what if you or I want to create a web site "sony-service-sucks.com", where we exchange grievances about Sony service and perhaps organize a class action lawsuit? What if your domain name happens to be confusingly similar to someone's trademark and they don't consider your business legitimate and have the legal dollars to "prove" it?

    Trademark holders are trying to expand their right from being able to merely control that a trademark refers without confusion to their product to a right of complete control of who uses the trademark under what circumstances in any domain, and to prohibit any kind of negative speech about their product. And they are succeeding. That should worry us all.