Gotcha! DNS Popup Scammer Fined $1.9 Million

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."

Comments

The best is yet to come?

[00_NOP]

Can they be jailed if they refuse to pay?

Re:The best is yet to come?

[PepsiProgrammer]

Yep, would probably fall under 'Contributing to the delenquincy of a minor' then you just have to check his weblogs, and see how many thousands charges to bring him on :)

Re:The best is yet to come?

[spike hay]

I use Opera, and I am not familiar with these "pop-up windows" of which you speak.

1.8 Million ...

[fire-eyes]

The court also has barred the defendant from participating in advertising affiliate programs on the Internet, and has ordered him to give up more than $1.8 million in ill-gotten gains.

People like this will always keep doing shit like this as long as there are enough morons out there to manage to give this dude $1.8 million.

Come on people, wake up.

Re:1.8 Million ...

[brinticus]

The article noted that the guy "FTC nvestigators said Zuccarini makes from $800,000 to $1 million per year by charging advertisers whose ads appear on the browser windows." So he got banged for two years salary. If he's been at it for three years, then given the huge payoff, I'd say it was worth it. FTC needs to put more bite into its rulings.

Re:1.8 Million ...

[Fishstick]

>The other day, intending to buy some Dr. Pepper, I accidentally picked up some Mr. Pibb instead. I am so scammed

More like...

the other day, intending to call my friend on the phone, I dialed the wrong number and got 42 phone calls from telemarketing companies trying to sell me phonecards.

Re:1.8 Million ...

[n9hmg]

More like...

I flipped the DirecTV to "Mick" instead of "Nick" and suddenly, my tv began showing my kids "Hot Shemales who love Goatsex - Part XVII", removed all my programming restrictions, tried to subscribe me to all the pay-per-views, and every time I tried to change the channel or turn off the TV, it came back.

How is this illegal?

[Clue4All]

Sure, it sucks that you get hit with a bunch of pop-up ads, but what did he do that's illegal? You typed in the wrong URL that led you to a perfectly valid site and pull down data from it. Be more careful typing next time.

Re:How is this illegal?

[smart.id]

How about because it is illegal showing pornography to children under 18? There were porn pop ups on websites that children mistyped. You have to ask if the person is 18 before you can show them that content.

Re:How is this illegal?

[smart.id]

Well if you are a 10 year old walking down the street, find a VHS tape labeled "Scooby Doo Cartoon," take it, then watch it, you have just stolen something which is a crime.

And, what do you think, these 10 year old kids know what JavaScript is? Even what "pop-ups" really are? Give me a break, the majority of the people who get these popups don't know a thing about computers, HTML, JavaScript, popups, or even the Internet in general.

Re:How is this illegal?

[fmaxwell]

The first illegality is trademark infringement. The defendant, in many cases, used registered trademarks of companies in order to bombard people who attempted to visit a web site related to a product that they owned or were considering the purchase of. He had already lost 200 such sites through court cases.

The next illegality is the use of malicious code to bombard people with pop-up windows when they did things as innocuous as hit the back button. Many people were reduced to restarting their computer to escape from the mess that the defendant created. Exploiting a weakness in a computer, whether to spread a worm or pop up dozens of unwanted windows, is illegal.

It is illegal to display porn to children. That's why porn sites have an "I-am-over-18" button (so I am told). The defendant's web sites had no such protections.

Finally, "typosquatting" is illegal. The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act became law in November of 1999 and made it illegal for a person to register or use, with a "bad faith" intent to profit from, an Internet domain name that is "identical or confusingly similar" to the distinctive or famous trademark or Internet domain name of another person or company. No one should know that better than John Zuccarini, against whom the third district court upheld that law in a decision rendered in June of 2001.

On a side note, I spoke to John Zuccarini (the defendant) about a year ago. I tracked down his phone number after being pissed off about being hit by his scam when I typed in a URL in the form of "www.{product name}.com". I informed him that the URL contained a registered trademark. He was a rude asshole and I am just sorry that he's being fined rather than jailed.

Re:How is this illegal?

[sjames]

Yeah, and if you are 10 year old walking down the street and find a VHS tape labeled "Scooby Doo Cartoon"

Actually, The trademark owners have a good case against whoever made the tape if it was for commercial gain. The FTC has a good case for fraud if the confusion was deliberate. The parents and DA have a good case since if they can show that the tape's maker was aware that children would likely find the tapes and watch them.

Then, there's the fact that a mechanism in the browser is being knowingly misused to prevent the user from simply clicking back or close to rid themselves of the offending material. For your analogy, the tape would have to be somehow rigged to disable stop, eject and power off on the VCR as well.

Re:How is this illegal?

[cicadia]

...I typed in a URL in the form of "www.{product name}.com". I informed him that the URL contained a registered trademark.

And what, exactly, is wrong with that? (Please tell me you're not one of those people who believe that such domain names should automatically go to the owner of the trademark?)

Re:How is this illegal?

[cicadia]

Well, first off, we'll have to assume that I not only created the product, but I have registered the trademark 'Cicadia' in the relevant domains.

Now, please correct me if necessary, but I thought that the only way to infringe on a trademark, even a registered one, was to use that name, or something confusingly similar, to compete against me in the same trade domain. Unless I am in the porn industry, and have registered my trademark in that domain, I don't think my trademark is being infinged.

Similarly, you could create a new line of network switches called 'Matrix', and Toyota (or AOL-TW) couldn't do anything about it. You could create a new clear softdrink and call it 'Windows', and Microsoft couldn't dispute it. You could even register those words as trademarks. No infringement.

Perhaps, being the capitalist person I am, I would consider my best course of action to be to offer Mr. Zuccarini enough money to sell me cicadia.com. My solid belief in capitalist economic principles suggests to me that there must be some amount I could offer which would be more than he would expect to gain by keeping the domain to himself, and he would sell it to me.

Re:How is this illegal?

[bmajik]

You mean like DVDs that dont let you stop, eject, fast forward, or anything else while they display 5 minutes of fucking bullshit warnings ?

Sometimes i just shut the DVD player off, because thats the only permitted operation. Does _anyone_ make a DVD player that doesn't suffer from this complete bullshit ? It is _ridiculous_ that the DVD spec seems to include the ability to say "you cannot fast forward this".

Maybe Apex or someone lets me retain control of my own property. Anyone know ?

Re:How is this illegal?

[fmaxwell]

My solid belief in capitalist economic principles suggests to me that there must be some amount I could offer which would be more than he would expect to gain by keeping the domain to himself, and he would sell it to me.

Ah, the capitalist beauty of cyber-blackmail: buy the domain from me, or all of your customers will be bombarded with smut when they try to find you online. Maybe there is not "some amount [you] could offer Mr Zuccarini" given your financial situation and the income he derive from the domain.

Fortunately, we have wise people in the legislature that recognize that capitalist greed does not provide an answer to every problem. In this case, it is what caused the problem.

Re:How is this illegal?

[epsalon]

How is "showing" content legally defined?

Lets trace back the process of images being shown to the minor from this site.

• Photons emitted from the monitor reach the childs eye. Is the manufacturer of the monitor responsible? Unlikely, because it was not advertised as to prevent that.
• Computer hardware sends a signal to the monitor to show given explicit image. Is the manufacturer of the hardware responsible? Unlikely, due to the same reason as above
• Software running on the hardware manifets an image of the explict data and commands hardware to display given information on the screen. Is the manufacturer responible? Depends if it was advertised to be suitable for unattended use by minors. My guess is - no.
• Software retrieves data from misspelled address as requested. No complaints to software here.
• Minor requests misspelled site from software by typing the address. The minor is assumed not to be responsible.
• Parent allows minor to use internet-connected PC unattended. The parent is clearly responsible, as the internet connection and the PC are not advertised to by suitable for unattended use by minors!

Notice that nowhere in this chain of responsibility do we see the website owner. If I own a porn site called http://qwerty.com/ (not actually a porn site), and some child decides to type some characters on the keyboard when unattended, it's only the parents' responsibility.
So, why regulate misspellings and not all short names? It's better to make sure parents understand that the Internet is not "safe" for children (if they see viewing porn as an unsafe activity for children, which I don't).

Re:How is this illegal?

[fmaxwell]

Haha. Stupid Windows users.

Just because some people are not expert in the use of computers does not make them "stupid". Nor does the fact that they use the same OS (family) as the vast majority of computer users on the planet. What *is* stupid is judging a person's intelligence based solely on their computer expertise and OS choice. I have worked with absolutely brilliant people who just view the computer as a tool. They learn enough to make it work for them and concentrate their mental prowess on things that interest them more. You may well be more skilled in the use of computers than, say, Stephen Hawkings, but I assure you that you are not his intellectual better.

Grow up.

Re:How is this illegal?

[fmaxwell]

Mind posting his phone #? I'm sure there are quite a few people here who would like to share some of their feelings with him.

If I had saved it, and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was still his, I would do so. It was available through domain registry lookups on some of his domains and you might still be able to find it, but please don't post it until you have verified that the number you found is his. I would not want to see some innocent bystander being called 24/7 by Slashdot readers.

Re:How is this illegal?

[fmaxwell]

And what, exactly, is wrong with that?

Because Mr. Zuccarini was using the name in "bad faith" and in violation of Federal law to tar-pit people's browsers once they entered the domain.

Please tell me you're not one of those people who believe that such domain names should automatically go to the owner of the trademark?

If the domain is being used in a legitimate manner, I do not believe that someone should be forced to give it up. For example, if someone is using www.firestone.com to provide information about volcanic rock, I do not think that it should automatically go to the tire company. If they are using it to tarpit someones browser with endless pop-up windows and capitalizing on the trademark's recognition, then I do believe that the trademark owner deserves to get the domain.

This reasoning was the basis of the ACPA (see link in earlier message) and I think that law is fair, reasonable, and in the interest of the common good.

Re:How is this illegal?

[cicadia]

...given your financial situation

I considered that, but I was replying to an AC who began by asking me to assume that "your product is making you lots of $$$" which I figured would be at least enough to offer Mr Zuccarini more than he would make from one measly domain name (considering that he only makes $800K - $1M annually from all his domains combined).

I was further asked to take the position of a 'capitalist person', and purchasing the domain name, at whatever cost necessary, seemed like the ideal capitalist solution. Interference from your wise people in the legislature certainly seems contrary to my (assumed) capitalist ideals :)

Re:How is this illegal?

[jxs2151]

I would not want to see some innocent bystander being called 24/7 by Slashdot readers.

Beautiful.....a new form of slashdotting.

"Jeez, I've been answering this phone for the last five hours and it's nothing but a buncha pissed off geeks looking for some zuchinni fellow."

Re:How is this illegal?

[cicadia]

I was worried that your only beef with Mr. Zuccarini at the time was that he held a domain name with someone else's trademark in it, and "you can't do that -- some nice company owns that word!" (not your words, obviously, just an argument I've heard here before, and one I was concerned you were making).

I agree completely that he was using the name in bad faith, and that's the point that needs to me made against him, not just that he was using the name at all.

Re:How is this illegal?

[ffatTony]

Just because some people are not expert in the use of computers does not make them "stupid". <snip>

You're absolutely correct, assuming of course the original poster was speaking frankly. I am of the opinion that his intent was to be humorous; and that your sense of humor needs a little overclocking.

Re:Sweet

[dattaway]

Justice servced? I don't think so.

I was hoping to read it as 2 million lashes. Except these lashes wouldn't be served automatically by a script, but administered by real people who just don't like spam.

Warez

[3ryon]

From the article:

The new windows returned to the screen even after they were closed, the FTC said.
"After one FTC staff member closed out of 32 separate windows, leaving just two windows on the task bar, he selected the 'back' button, only to watch the same seven windows that initiate the blitz erupt on his screen," FTC lawyers said in the complaint.

Just wait until the FTC goes surfing for warez. Maybe they'll shut the bogus warez sites down as well and we'll finally be able to download Microsoft Bob by doing a search on Google.

Re:Warez

[the_quark]

I thought that quote in the story about the back button was a little bizarre. "I loaded this page, and it popped up these windows. Then I loaded this page again and it popped them up again!"

Well, duh....

What I fail to see is this.....

[Chardish]

This website pops up 64 popups every time you visit it. Which is likely to be once, after you realize your mistake, you won't come back.

This is considered criminal behavior. But what about companies like X10 or Casino-On-Net that you see about 30 ads an hour for, every time you try to use the web? In the end it is those companies that make you close more ad windows. I think that those are far more guilty. What about the pr0n ads that won't let you use the back button to leave, and if you try to close the window, they re-open themselves? I shudder to think how many thousands of popups from those companies I've closed in my lifetime.

Of course, it's the browsers themselves that are allowing these popups to happen. I would bet that companies like Doubleclick are paying M$ and Netscape not to develop protection from popups within their browsers. But I'm a conspiracy theorist.

-Evan

Re:What I fail to see is this.....

[kkith]

I would bet that companies like Doubleclick are paying M$ and Netscape not to develop protection from popups within their browsers

Then use Opera.

1. www.opera.com

Re:What I fail to see is this.....

[PepsiProgrammer]

Microsoft doesnt need any outside incentive to ignore that feature, msn is loaded with popups as well, and they are getting their fair share of income. Besides, as someone said earlier, as disabling ads becomes easier for regular users, the advertising companies will make it harder for all of us to get around.

Re:What I fail to see is this.....

[efagerho]

That's why I surf for pr0n using lynx...

Re:What I fail to see is this.....

[akandels]

Disable javascript. Or use the security zones to block javascript on every site except for sites that you explicitly enter as trusted. Or download popup stopper. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but it's not that difficult to stop that sort of activity.

Re:What I fail to see is this.....

[cicadia]

None of those options represents a valid MIME type, though. You may get a 406 Not Acceptable response from the web server, or you may get whatever content the server decides is best.

Try:
GET / HTTP/1.0
Accept: text/html, text/plain

For .zip files, try curl or wget, unless you want to cut and paste all of that 8-bit binary from your terminal window.

Re:What I fail to see is this.....

[Restil]

Say what you like about the annoying X10 ads. Yes, they're annoying. Yes they're smutty. But they do have one redeeming feature that I have yet to find in any other popup ad. They give you the option to disable it, without resorting to technical measures that otherwise limit, even in some small way, the capabilities of the browser.

Other ad companies should pay attention here. Since X10 ads are so prevelant, its only safe to assume that X10 is profiting from them. Its also safe to say that the site owners are getting paid from the impression of them, otherwise you wouldn't see them everywhere. So X10 had a great idea to win on both fronts. For those people who most certainly do not want to see them, X10 can save impression costs. And after disabling the ads, a whole lot of people will quit bitching about those annoying X10 ads. X10 gets to keep advertising to an audience that's a more willing potential customer than those who curse the day X10 was born everytime another ad pops up.

At least this is a better form of market research than gathering random bits of private information about people. And probably far more effective.

-Restil

Re:What I fail to see is this.....

[Tony-A]

I would bet that companies like Doubleclick are paying M$ and Netscape not to develop protection from popups within their browsers. But I'm a conspiracy theorist.
Now the monopoly status of Microsoft begins to get interesting. Seems like there are laws about doing something on a computing device contrary to the intent and desires of the owner of that computing device. The problem with being a monopoly is that "everybody does it" is no defense when you are "everybody".

Re:What I fail to see is this.....

[Phroggy]

...and Netscape not to develop protection from popups within their browsers.

Uhhh... they did.

Re:I hope they make Gates pay half of it.

[wo1verin3]

Since when does people who can't spell count as a design flaw?

Re:glad

[MillionthMonkey]

They actually do, by disabling Javascript. The only you are missing is the purdy tabulations and hypertext links changing colors, oh the humanity!

Well that, and the ability to log into "dot net" sites like Hotmail so you can do your daily chore of shoveling the day's accumulation of ~100 pornographic spams into the trash. (If you don't, Microsoft will clear room for the spam by deleting the juicy old letters from ex-girlfriends you have in there.)

The advertisers are getting screwed

[Fizzlewhiff]

From the article: FTC investigators said Zuccarini makes from $800,000 to $1 million per year by charging advertisers whose ads appear on the browser windows.

In this case the advertisers are getting screwed more than the poor sap who fat-fingered the URL. My question is "Do companies who advertise on the web have any control over how their ads are used?" Cupcake is getting paid by the popup and is really sticking to these advertisers and even moreso because the ads aren't really reaching a target market. I would think the advertisers have more to lose than the person browsing. With that in mind, how hard would it be to script a browser to feed off these popups by creating false hits and start bankrupting advertisers who really don't care how their ads are used.

Re:The advertisers are getting screwed

[PepsiProgrammer]

that sounds like an interesting idea for some type of distributed network, donate your bandwidth to the destruction of the advertising firms.

So use Mozilla...

[Inoshiro]

Or write something yourself, yeesh. There are solutions. Life is not a conspiracy theory.

Re:So use Mozilla...

[yorgasor]

This is called competition. If mozilla allows you to block bandwidth-sucking ads and prevent malicious pop-ups, that is a huge feature! I personally just visited the site to see how mozilla handled it. I was redirected a couple of times, but saw only the last page. When I hit back, I returned to slashdot.

Now go tell all your family and friends that Mozilla can protect them from having their web experience from being hijacked by malicious users, that they can save their precious bandwidth by blocking annoying ads and that it has beautiful tabs so they can multitask the web. No, they don't have to change browsers, but once they see all the neat things they can do with it, they'll want to change browsers. And then if Microsoft discovers they're losing customers because they don't have these features, only then will they change.

Re:So use Mozilla...

[Inoshiro]

Actually, it's as simple as a regex if you use the new Privoxy for Windows or UNIX.

Go check it out.

But it already comes with a few regexes for killing popups, so all you'd have to "write" is a one-line change in a CFG.

Re:So use Mozilla...

[Mr_Silver]

Or if you really want to use the IE engine try CrazyBrowser.

It uses the IE dll's for rendering and it's what IE should have been. It's also free (as in beer).

Some of the scamms

[loconet]

Here are some of the scammed domains they are talking about ..

http://www.caroonnetwork.com
http://www.cartoon networ.com
http://www.artoonnetwork.com
http://w ww.cartoonnework.com
http://www.cartoonnetork.com
http://www.cartoonnetwrk.com
http://www.catoonn etwork.com
http://www.cartoonnetwok.com

How ironic

[corbosman]

What's funny is that MSNBCs website actually pops up an ad when you go to that URL ;)

Rather ironic.

Cor

Happens all the time....

[BerserkDog]

What's wierd about this is that whenever I, er, my friends go to pr0n sites, loads of windows pop up in much the same fashion as described in the article...heck, I, my friends I mean, think it's just more quality content than they truly deserve.

Re:glad

[alphaseven]

I'm glad only a few people use browser's that block pop-ups. If everyone blocked pop-ups, then advertisers would just use harder to get around schemes, such as putting the content of the page in the pop-up and the ad in the page your browser goes to, or larger ads in the page.

Slashdot knows a lot of their users block pop-ups so they put their ads on the pages they serve, plus they serve them from images.slashdot.org so that people can't block it on their hosts file.

As long as only a small percentage of people block pop-ups and use hosts files I can surf the internet without seeing X-10 ads ever, so you should tell people that they shouldn't block pop-ups and that it hampers their web surfing experience.

A Day In The Life Of Cupcake's Lawyer

[Bowie J. Poag]

Cupcake's lawyer: "Good news, Cupcake. I just got back from a meeting with the prosecution.

Cupcake: Ok, and what did they say? I'm anxious to know just how bad off I am. Fill me in."

Cupcake's Lawyer: Sure thing. Here's the deal -- The have decided to SEE HOT CHIXXX WITH YOUR NEW X10 CAMERA!!! FREE!!!!!!!!! HOT!!! FREE!!

Cupcake: Yeah, very funny. Now get serious, i'm paying you by the hour. What happened at the meeting?

Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!! HOT NOW!!!! FREE HOT!!! NOW FREE!!!! NOW FREE HOT!!! "

Cupcake: "Stop it!!"

Cupcake's Lawyer: "So, we're not going to have to worry about the fact that the judicial process in these sorts of matters can tend to take HOT XXX HORNY SLUTS!!!!! "

Cupcake: "STOP!!!!"

Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!! HOT HOT FREE HOT NOW!!!! NOW!!! NOW!!!!!!!! FREE NOW!!!! so, you wont be going anywhere for a while. In the meantime, i've asked the presiding judge to look into the prosecutions CASINO ON-NET!!!!!!"

Cupcake: "STOP!! STOP IT!!! JUST STOP IT!!!! NOW!!"

Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!! HOT FREE XXX!!!! XXX NOW!!!! XXX NOW FREE!!!! FREE!!! HOT CASINO!!! HOT CASINO FREE!!!!!!!!!! FREE HOT XXX NEW CASINO!!!! FREE CASINO!!!, so gimmie a call when you decide what to do, and we can go from there. Talk to ya HOT!!!! XXX!!!! FREE HOT!!! then."

Cupcake: But wait a minute! You havent told me......

Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!!!!!!!! HOT XXX CASINO!!! FREE CASINO HOT!!!"

Cupcake: "But!.... But wait!! Dont go yet! You havent..."

Cupcake's Lawyer: "HOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Not a troll, or a flaimbait, but..

[t_allardyce]

No, i'm sorry but i don't see the crime here. Sure the guy is a complete f*cking asshole, but thats still legal (unfortunately, as there are many many assholes around). If you type in the wrong url, thats your fault. If he was spoofing other sites or using they're graphics, thats a copyright issue. But opening pop-ups no matter how many is the fault of the browser.. and seeing as most people use IE, its Microsofts fault, just like with vbs virii (funny how its always their fault)

"Victims of the scam should contact the commission"

What victims??!? the stupid users who used stupid browsers that have bad security? (yes pop-ups are a security issue when they start eating your resources). What about the stupid advertising companies? he was in breach of their contract, they should have cancelled it.

Apparently the FTC got ticked after having to close 64 separate browser windows! - judging by the use of the word "task bar" lets assume he was using MS Windows

Well thats what you get when you use MS windows and IE. I would be pretty ticked too, but not at the site, at the appalling software design of Microsoft who hand the responsibility off saying "ohhh trusted system" no it isn't, its simple. Don't let sites spawn 100's of windows with your browser. Put in the necessary function to filter this, let the user say yes or no, let them close all the spawned windows at once, make the browser scan the script for this stuff. stupid developers.

Re:Not a troll, or a flaimbait, but..

[beanyk]

If you type in the wrong url, thats your fault. If he was spoofing other sites or using they're graphics, thats a copyright issue.

But how would you feel if Slashdot started directing extra pop-up ads at posters who can't spell "that's" and "their" correctly?

Re:Not a troll, or a flaimbait, but..

[pjrc]

No, i'm sorry but i don't see the crime here. Sure the guy is a complete f*cking asshole, but thats still legal

As a matter of fact, it IS A CRIME. Laws have been passed with very specifically make it illegal to do register domain names in bad faith and deceive users for commercial gain.

This particular criminal lost other cases and appeals and there was slashdot coverage (well, linking to real news sites, who themselves just rehash the AP wire). If you search, you'll find those articles and the linkage to the appeal court's findings of the specific law that was broken. (If I cared more about slash moderation, I'd go to the trouble to find the old article and links, but you can easily do this yourself)

The point is that there is a law against this specific actitivity. He broken it. It IS as crime. It's about time the FTC finally got around to persuing criminal charges (he's lost dozens of civil cases and knew very well he was breaking the law).

Re:Not a troll, or a flaimbait, but..

[Black Perl]

But how would you feel if Slashdot started directing extra pop-up ads at posters who can't spell "that's" and "their" correctly?


Then there'd be no more Slashdot, as Cdr. Taco and crew would be too lost in pop-up windows to post any new stories!

Re:Not a troll, or a flaimbait, but..

[Kanasta]

What's worse, getting 64windows popup when typing in a wrong URL, or , actually buying something from one of the 64 windows and being scammed?

When you know what you're doing is very wrong...

[erroneus]

...you should be punished to a VERY VERY high degree and with severe criminal penalties.

It is inexcusable for people to be able to perpetrate such fraud and deception against people and expect to get away with it through denial and clandestine methods.

He KNOWS he was doing something wrong and took extensive measures to hide himself from prosecution. These are not mistakes. These are not errors of judgement. These are not crimes of passion nor momentary lapses of reason. This is an evil bastard who, without remorse wanted to turn a buck at everyone's expense.

People who unintentionally kill someone are more severely punished than this malicious person. It just seems to me that people don't "hate" crime enough to care about really addressing the problem.

And it's also sad that with the millions of complaints by millions of citizens (and consumers) that it takes some annoyed government official to really get the ball rolling to address the problem of scum on the internet.

So the message is that it's okay to piss off anyone except the people who can personally do something about it. The government doesn't represent the people any more... the government just represent themselves for their own purposes.

Excellent. This guy is a scumbag.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Excellent. This guy is a scumbag.

[dmomo]

Funny thing is, this still happens. The guy got bagged, and still, I just tried typing in that URL, and sure enough, was still bombarded with porn. A f'ing kids site?!? Legal or not, that guy is a jerk. I hope HE doesn't have any kids.

And ironically, I probably just made him a half cent. But maybe I am eligable for returns on a class action suit!!

Re:Excellent. This guy is a scumbag.

[Reality Master 101]

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.

The parents allowed the student to get suspended for a day? That's just ludicrous. If it was an honest accident (and there may be more to the story than we see here, like using it to make a big disruption in the class), then there should be zero punishment.

If it was me, I would have said something like, "Tell you what. How about NO punishment, or I sue the school for not having the proper blocking software to prevent my daughter getting exposed to porn." :)

Legal Stuff

[ltsmash]

Can they be jailed if they refuse to pay?

INAL

If the case is criminal, absolutely. If you think the fine is excessive (which is unconstitutional), you could appeal it to a higher court. If you don't get the appeal and you don't pay the fine, you definitely could be jailed.

If the case is civil, you can't be jailed for refusing to pay. However, they can send deputies to collect any property you have an auction it off. (remember OJ Simpson) However, some of your property is protected by law, for example, your house, and they can not take that.

As stated before, this case is civil.

FBI

[Skyfire]

Agent K: No, ma'am. We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor we're aware of. May we come in?

Actually it is already happening.

[aepervius]

I was browsing and tryed to downlaod a patch. And guess what ? My window suddenly resized down and all I saw was a casino ad...

After I re-enabled popup in opera Is aw what was happening : they loaded in the main window the ad, then make a popup resuming the old content of the mainwindow in a freaking pop up.

Clever. If it becomes mainstream you can forget anti popup software and opera special feature.

mozilla prevents this...

[josepha48]

it prevents someone from using javascript to open widnows by giving you the option not to allow this. I guess IE does not have this functionality. Ever since this came in mozilla I no longer get ANY popup add at all.

Re:mozilla prevents this...

[josepha48]

That is bad design. NO WEB SITE SHOULD EVER popup a window on a clients machine without the user specifing that it is okay. Visiting a site does NOT mean it is okay to resize or popup a window. The design of mozilla is such that a window will not automatically open up without the user clicking on a button to open a window.

Read 'websitesthatsuck.com' and it will tell you that popups make a website suck!

Re:glad

[MillionthMonkey]

You actually use hotmail for something other than a "convenience" email address for registering for web sites that you don't want spamming your real address?

Back in 98 I did, before the Borg took it over and promptly messed it up with their spammer-friendly systems that leak valid usernames to anyone with nothing of value to sell.

That's business with dot NET.

Re:Better Idea: We Beat the Crap Out of Them

[Dynedain]

Someone did do this for abortion doctors. Many were harassed, a couple were killed.

The guy who set up the list on his web page went down for manslaughter and accomplice to murder.

Its not a matter of being shut down, anyone associated with this list would be prosecuted.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

scary precedent

[g4dget]

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.

Re:scary precedent

[g4dget]

That's a bit of an elitist position... my family and circle of friends are mostly well-educated and intelligent, but that doesn't mean they understand the choices they have in browser selection or options. John Q. Public needs to be watched out for a bit more than those of us who do know better.

I dunno--I find your position a bit more elitist than mine. I mean, it doesn't take a CS degree to select an option in a dialog box or to use a different browser. If popup ads annoy John Q. Public too much, then John Q. Public can figure out how to turn them off easily (maybe by asking friends). And both the popup ads themselves and the mechanisms for turning them off are entirely under the control of software vendors, so John Q. Public can vote with his dollars by not buying software that annoys him too much. Isn't that the minimum we should be able to expect from every adult?

How can you kneejerk for 9 paragraphs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair enough, in the seventh you say he is a sleezebag, but what on earth does this have to do with free speech? Next thing you'll say, free speech means you can shout louder or broadcast white noise louder than anyone else; URL I dunno but there is also the argument against shouting 'fire' in a packed theatre which doesn't belong to you.

Re:How can you kneejerk for 9 paragraphs?

[CokeBear]

Its their own fault for being so gullible. If there is no fire, no smoke, what's the rush?

Some anti-spam, anti-scam FBI or FTC division...

[fortinbras47]

People like this will always keep doing shit like this as long as there are enough morons out there to manage to give this dude $1.8 million.

That's precisely the problem, people out there really do call Miss Cleo, buy "make my penis 25% larger" products etc... These schemes are nothing but looting of dumb people.

Just because there is no shortage of dumb people, I don't think we all have to resign ourselves to death by porn spam. Maybe this actually exists, but I'd like to see some online division at the FBI or FTC which aggressively goes after SPAM groups which don't honor remove requests, and scams designed just to take people's money. I'd really like to see Miss Cleo, fake human growth hormone pseudoscience, etc.... all put out of business. I wonder what percent of the American economy is just bs scams.

This may be an impossible problem, given it's global nature, but there is so much **** just in the US, there's plenty that could be done.

Re:Some of the scams

[Jucius Maximus]

Scammers:

Here are some more evil scammers sites that are out to get us:

http://www.slahdot.org/
http://www.slasdot.org/
http://www.slshdot.org/
They try to sell you domain registration and mail-shipped OS ISOs.

:-P

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What a joke...

[Kiwi]

There is a difference between making the porn in question available and deliberately marketing the porn in question to children.

It is not a question of free speech but a question of boundaries; he crossed my boundaries and violated my space when he typo squatted this domain name in a form that my nieces could easily accidently access.

I guess you don't have kids (nor nieces), so you can't understand.

- Sam

Re:glad

[pjrc]

...plus they serve them from images.slashdot.org so that people can't block it on their hosts file.

Privoxy (formerly JunkBuster Internet Proxy) does a great job of blocking the slashdot ads, and ads from most other sites on the internet. Even if you have a fast internet connection, time invested to install it is greatly paid back in not waiting and being annoyed by ads!

Privoxy is once again under active development... which is a true success story of the GPL, where a group of interested individuals picked it up after JunkBuster's decided to abandon further development (partly over concern for liability in creating derivitive works of web pages by suppressing the ads)

Re:Read the comment again.

[Reality Master 101]

When I was in high school it was like a dictatorship you have NO rights what so ever.

I should add that I actually agree with the philosophy of running a tight ship and not allowing the "inmates to run the asylum". I take a very dim view of class disruption (which is why I made the caveat that we didn't know the whole story). However, there is so much "death of common sense" in school districts where they completely turn off their brains when interpreting the rules. Things like suspensions when a six year old makes a pretend gun out of paper and things like that. Stories like that make me want to strangle the school administrators.

Anyway, that's why my kids are going to private school. :)

Re:What a joke...

[Theodore Logan]

There are no exceptions, ever. None.

*Ahem*

There are a gazillion exceptions (think child pornography, nazi propaganda, copyright...) I hate to break it to you, but the world isn't black and white. There are exceptions to every rule, even this one.

Besides, pretending like there is some profound ideological difference between a) fining this man for using pop-ups and b) removing the means for this man to use pop-ups is just plain silly.

But this rant is pointless, since the obvious point of course is this: this has nothing to do with free speech. It has to do with the medium he uses to convey his "message." He is entitled to say "FREE XXX PORN!! HORNY XXX SLUTS!!" all he wants, he just can't do it this way. Very much like someone can't be allowed to go to a schoolyard where 7-year olds are playing and start screaming "HORNY TEENAGE SLUTS."

Were this not moderated to 5 it would not be worthy of a reply. Actually, it isn't now either. I should have modded you to hell instead of writing this tedious rant.

Re:What a joke...

[Tony-A]

This is not about free speech. It's more like free typos which is NOT up for grabs by sleazeballs. It's more like misleading billboards which look like hiway signs. It's more like false and deceptive advertising which doesn't look like advertising. Free speech does not include my right to sell your email address to spammers and your home telephone number to telemarketers.

Ethics (Warning, vaguely off topic)

[ffatTony]

Someone who obviously missed the CS ethics class.

It does pose a very interesting question. If you could become quite wealthy due to sleezy and underhanded action(s) which would ultimately damage your reputation and that of the Internet, would you? Perhaps this would make a good poll question.

Re:I hope they make Gates pay half of it.

[Tony-A]

The design flaw is assuming that everybody spells everything correctly and is prepared to accept the consequences of any typos.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What a joke...

[Theodore Logan]

People like you are ignored in any serious debate. Politics is about compromises. Get over it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

what accident?

[hawk]

Where in calling another kid over to see it and going back forward do you find an accident?

hawk