UbiSoft Goof Lets Porn URL Into Rainbow Six

Thanks to CNN Money for their article revealing that an enterprising webmaster has purchased a URL featured in UbiSoft's tactical action Xbox title Rainbow Six 3, and constructed a pornographic website hub around it. According to the story, a "level set in a garage with posters adorning the wall" features a specific website address, and "Texan Tony Ashcraft was one of the early buyers of the game and noted the URL as he played. Thinking the link might feature ancillary information on the game, he told me he typed it into his browser, only to find no one owned the domain. On Nov. 22, he bought it and immediately filled it with porn links." Ashcraft, interviewed for the piece, says: "My intentions were to try to build up traffic and then sell the domain... If they ask me just to change it... they would have to have a pretty compelling reason. If they were interested in buying the domain, then we could talk."

Comments

Re:Cybersquatting?

[phraktyl]

Not the same.

The game advertised a URL, at that time not owned by anyone, in the game. As internet-oriented as we are today, this seems very irresponsible on their part, and I think got what was coming to them.

If JK Rowling had said, `Get your class schedule on hogwarts.com' in a book, and then fail to register hogwarts.com, *that* would be closer.

Reminds me of a King of the Hill episode where someone was making videos of Peggy's feet for a fetish site, and they mentioned peggysfeet.com (which is not owned by fox anymore, by the looks of it). But at the time of the episode, fox had an entire website up for Peggy's feet.

Re:And that's why...

[mobby_6kl]

another example is Pets Overniht and Love Media from GTA3, as well some more I can't recall.

Ubi soft should....

[culain]

In their first patch modify the texture so it refers to a different website. And make sure they register that site this time. From memory XBOX Live forces people to patch straight away, right, so that should completely skirt the problem, and annoy the hell out of the guy who bought the domain :)

Re:Cybersquatting?

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

Once on the Simpsons, Homer mentioned his AOL screenname - and people who e-mailed that address got replies...

Tim

Similar experience from friend

[Masem]

I have a friend that , while sick at home one day, caught a fake URL on Sesame Street (or some other children's program), and went and registered it, then put on the front page where the URL came from and that if the compare that owned the show wanted the domain, he'd gladly give it to them for free, and was only grabbing the domain as to prevent the case in this article from happening. I think he also fired an email to the company as well. I believe that the company did ask for the domain, but thanked him for his observation. Of course, some others were prepared. The episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, called 'Inter-fection', featured a URL, but Cartoon Network was ready, as the site (still active last I checked) was a perfect addendum to the episode. Hint: if you are going to post a fake domain as part of a show, make sure you actually own it before airing.

Re:GTA

[Imperator]

I don't know about GTA3 but in VC there are (at least) five phone numbers advertised in radio ads. I first thought to try calling one because it was an 866 number, and a game so faithful to the 80's would have used 800 numbers if they weren't meant to be called. (For non-US people: 800 was the area code for toll-free (callee-pays) calls for the longest time. They ran out of 800 numbers in the 90s and started handing out toll-free numbers in area codes like 888 and 866. Thus RockStar ended up with 866 numbers because 800 numbers were too scarce and expensive.)