Jail Time for Misleading Domain Names

Bootsy Collins writes "The Miami Herald is running a story on the first-ever prison sentencing (and, for that matter, prosecution and conviction) under the Federal Truth in Domain Names Act. This act, combined into the larger Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act (PROTECT) of 2003, made it a violation of U.S. Federal law to use a misleading domain name with the intent to deceive someone into viewing obscene material -- larger penalties if attempting to so mislead minors, but up to two years even if adults are the object. In the case in question, a man was convicted for registering thousands of domain names which were close misspellings of popular web sites for kids. Attempting to surf to those sites would redirect to a site entitled 'Dorm Sex Party.' Before being arrested, the convicted typosquatter made about a million dollars for the referrals." He's been on Slashdot before.

Comments

Re:Conflicting Feelings

[Aardpig]

Ah, the soft thwack of someone dropping their parental responsibility and floating off to a cocktail party, as their babysitter is left necking her boyfriend on the couch, and the child is left surfing the web, unrestricted, in their darkened room...

Re:How about child porn, by your logic?

[Zakabog]

There's a HUGE difference in taking pictures of a child in explicit sexual activity, and showing them obscene sexually explicit material. Child pornography can damage a child psychologically. You can read this if you would like to know more.

Now exposing a child to pornography, I don't see how this can be "damaging" especially when it's a website that's mostly pictures (and nothing really bad, since you need to sign up on these pages to see that stuff.) The most these children could have seen are some sexual organs. I don't see what's wrong with that as we will all probably see stuff like that at a young age anyway (friends, father's porn collection, some delis that sell certain magazines to minors, TV.)