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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.
On one hand, typing a URL and getting a "BUY THIS PAGE" page annoys the bejesus out of me.
On the other hand, going to jail for setting up a website seems....excessive. Surely just taking it down and a fine would be enough?
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What's creepy about this is how people take offense to things that are not in and of themselves offensive, such as the word "niggardly".
How can you predict what someone will find offensive? And can you be fined for "offending" someone with content that you consider acceptable ?
anata sekai o kakumei surush ga nai deshou? Anata no susumu michi wa yoi shite arimasu.
I have absolutely no problem if those sites were adult sites. My issue with these dudes is that they are delibrately TRICKING kids into viewing the porn.
Kudos to the authorities for clamping down on this dude.
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From the article: "Zuccarini admitted in court documents that one reason he preyed on websites popular among children was ''because children are more likely than adults to make spelling errors and to mis-type website addresses,'' prosecutors said.
If he had made the statement that he misspelled the domain names to attract adults, thats one thing, but in his case intention is everything. He should of received 30 years.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
"And can you be fined for "offending" someone with content that you consider acceptable ?"
Probably, thanks to things like Community Standards. Sadly, we seem to live in a world of hyper-sensitive crybabies and professional victims.
hi. welcome to the year 2004, where you can find such wonderful advancements as mozilla or perhaps firefox that have been around for some time. these wonderful free open source programs work on every major platform and contain built in pop up blocking and a google search bar. in fact with a few minutes of searching, you can even add a userContent.css file to your profile to block the vast majority of webpage advertisement images as well. thanks, and stop using IE.
- tristan
The thing that worries me about the law is this: what constitutes "use"? What constitutes "using" a misleading domain name? What this guy did surely does. But what about posting a link in which you try to trick people into seeing the goatse man by using a yahoo.com redirect. Is that using a misleading domain name (yahoo.com) to manipulate someone into viewing obscene content? The law itself does not say "use = registering a domain name and setting up a website at". I don't have any problem with this guy getting prosecuted; but I worry that the law is so vague that half the trolls on
My mom has a German Shepherd that learns faster than this for godssakes.
we go on to the net to look for Barbie's and the like
It's a bad idea to show your sister's kids how to *search* the net. Obviously you have to search BEFORE they arrive and make some bookmarks. "google.com" is the last site you want the kids to know about.
A lot of things we silly humans do is motivated by money...so take away any motivation!
Make it two million.
Oh sure... Someone could argue that partybeef.com could be typed in by a 6 year old looking for snacks for her friends, (not a real site, so use your imagination...) Next thing you know the site operator ends up as a piece of party beef in a federal prison because someone decided it was obviously misleading.
What is obvious to me is that the next step will involve going after anyone who puts objectionable material on the net without it being clearly labeled, registered, and hidden behind a credit card required brown paper wrapper page.
And what about unintentionally misleading Google results? When will they hold us liable for that? This one actually disturbs me a little.
That's just really gross. Really, if I was a porn site provider and some guy was redirecting to my site through kiddie bits, I wouldn't be very happy. Primarily because they're taking my money and just throwing it all over the place.
Beyond even the issue of being a scum bag with arguably scummy people, using sites popular with children with a method that drags in more kids than adults. I think this makes him the kingof the scumbags.
My grandfather knew someone who embezzled 5 millio dollars (that the courts knew about) he did 5 years, but did not have any money seized, because the money was all overseas by that time. He did have to make sure never to buy a house in America though. They can seize your assets. As for what the other guy said about losing your dignioty and what you put your family through, I wouldn't do that if I had a family. It wouldn't be worth the risk. You do it while you are single and young, and then you get everything out of the way.
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Really, I don't. I really could care less that he was tricking children. Sex is a fact of life. Hell, anything is, we only set ourselves up to get offended-- I was never offended much by things as a child-- I think it's really blown out of proportion.
I don't think goatse would disturb me any more if I was a young kid. I really can't see why those subjective "sex-is-bad" ideas come from, besides society and religion. I only hear vague "kids aren't ready" bullshit.
HOWEVER, he is cybersquatting, that is, playing off popular website typos to send people to his crap. That's like the mikerowesoft.com case-- although on an even worse level.
I don't care that children saw Janet Jackson's boob on TV (GASP TEH END OF DA WORLD!!!!11) and I don't care if they accidently see "DORM SEX". It didn't disturb or pervert me, and I see no scientific evidence to suggest it'll do the same for kids.
Let's keep our personal morality out of it (this creates problems. FCC guidelines, for example, require "community standards of decency". Oh joy, isn't that just a nice, fine, "freedom-of-expression" friendly phrase?) and focus on the real issue, which is cybersquatting.
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Okay, what's this hypothetical law you're supporting. "It is illegal to use a word that someone else may use, if they may not want to see your site"? Or is it "You cannot use a word on your site unless you have a well-considered topical essay on the subject indicated by that word"? Or is it "As the author of a site, you are responsible for how third party software decides to present your URL"? Please do clarify, I'm quite curious.
I've had this sig for three days.
I, unlike most /. posters, can comment on prison based on experience. I have spent time there, as an inmate.
It's my firm belief that sending non-violent criminals to prison
does more harm than good.
There are many other ways to punish someone, besides sending them to prison : home confinement, community service, probation, fines, are all better options for a large percentage of offenders.
Prison should only be the punishment of last resort. It is far from a solution, and the notion that sending some people to
prison acts to prevent others from committing crimes is childishly naive, and doesn't stand up to statistical scrutiny.
Sending non-violent offenders to prison is only one more
in a long series of huge mistakes made by the US government.
Of course, this will not be news to intelligent, well-read people.
All you "law and order" types need to consider this : when someone is sent to prison, unless they die there or have a life sentence, they WILL eventually be released. And when they are,
the rest of society will very likely pay some sort of price for the damage this person has incurred while in prison. Thus, society is
screwing itself by sending non-violent offenders ( or offenders who don't present an actual danger to society ) to prison. Far better to keep these people OUT of prison and punish them in some other way. NOTE : I do believe that crimes *should* be punished, but the point is, it's possible to punish people without
permanently damaging them, that sending someone to prison is quite likely to result in permanent damage.
Any of you out there who haven't done time are not sufficiently informed to comment on the advisability of sending non-violent offenders to prison. You can of course write what you like, but keep in mind that your thoughts might have the same level of
validity as those of a man describing what pregnancy feels like.
Oh, and the invasion of Iraq was about preserving access to oil,
and the "anti-gay marriage" stance the current administration has embraced is an attempt to pander to the religious right
and gain votes.
Don't let YOUR government sucker you into accepting policies that end up screwing YOU.
Thanks, and good evening.
That's what I've been wondering about. According to an article over at The Register he got from ten to twenty-five cents from the porno sites for every re-direction. I realise that the more you make on one customer the more you can spend per potential customer but how many kids that mis-spell Disney or Teletubby or whatever just happen to have access to a credit card or checking account number and how many parents looking for something for their kids are going to decide to postpone that search so that they can buy access to materials they probably won't be sharing with those kids? If the last step is "Profit!" the next to last is a big ol' question mark.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
This is a sick person. He targeted children. Not only that, but if people can make a stink about Lindows because it sounds too much like windows and causes confusion in adults at computer stores, then how can they let this slide where he tricked children to watching porn? What the hell is this guys value system? Making 10 cents off each child he tricks to going to a porn site? Was the 10 cents worth it for him? I would like to hear what he has to say in prision, when he is forced to look at jail porn, live and first hand.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
So really at the end of the day this person has pocketed $1 million USD for 30 months jail. No wonder he pleded guilty. I would trade a short holiday to jail for that....!!!
i think corporate america is even more guilty of pushing their products down kids throats than this guy. corporate america doesn't even need to rely on mispelled words, just some clever marketing techniques.
i'm not sure what's worse, seeing some naked chicks - or convincing children to be mindless consumers to feed the bankrolls of greedy corporations.
America is becoming less & less "American" all the time.
The government is -not- your mom. They shouldn't be required to take these kinds of measures because some soccer mom saw her child get re-directed to some hot fisting action.
If there's any 'america' left in Americas geeks, some smart kid will capitalize on soccer mom paranoia; by writing an app which catalogs all these re-directs and makes sure that the user never sees the end result of that offensive URL. Then sell it for mucho coin. Yay for Free Enterprise and not Socialism!
Instead of diagnosing mental illness, maybe you should respond to his arguments intelligently. You were on the right track with your last sentence, but the ad hominem doesn't help your case. As I see it, the original poster makes a lot of sense.
i think the clear distinction is not just capitalizing on mistakes.
;)
but misleading children to pornography.
i am not one to pretend porn is the most damaging thing for kids. but come on, the kids didnt even look for it
tricking children to visiting porn sites is a very large line and is pretty easily defined by, target/expected audience, and content being provided. this isnt like whitehouse.com where visitors of all agess, but certain words that are easily associated with kids.
its not like it has to be absolute, but common sense has supposidly been a part of the law, ie "reasonable person"
so send this asshole to jail, as a sexual predator in my opin. (hey the dirty old man down the street that gets caught givng porn to children can be classified as that). take away his money, house, car and make him live in prsion to spend time with criminals, since he is one.
It's just bad business sense more than anything else. Who is the potential customer? How many people are heading to, say, slashdot or nytimes.com to read the news or such, make a typo, get one of these sites, and say "oh, this looks good! i think i'll get out my credit card and subscribe to this!"
Of course not! You're going to just close the window and try again to type in the site you wanted to go to in the first place.
If you wanted porn, it's easy enough to find yourself. Even if you were the type to pay for it, would you really go to the source with in-your-face pop-up advertising? Jeesh.
I wouldn't make it illegal, but I can't see ANY possible financial benefits for porn sites to justify this practice.
I was quite disappointed when ICANN did not set up a ".xxx" domain. The purveyors of smut in the past has gladly taken up the X or XXX rating so that customers could be sure of the quality of the product that they were getting. I am sure that the internet generation would be more than happy to do the same thing because the .xxx domain would tend to drive traffic to their sites.
Oh, well, another reason to get rid of ICANN.
Isn't theory a great place? Everything works in theory.
"Child porn is illegal because it does hurt the children (Whether you're causing it to happen, or distributing it, etc.)"
The same way I guess that rape videos, or news and movies about murder also hurts people; and since rape and murder is also illegal, like childporno, I guess you are infavor of censoring action movies and the news.
What's with this expert-worship in culture nowadays. Sheesh. As if it takes an expert to understand kids.
I guess I can't support America's paranoia about its own sexuality.
Okay. So you agree with him. What are you agreeing with? What possible law can you imagine that would provide any benefit at all, without totally destroying the web? Please, I do want to know.
I've had this sig for three days.
Firefox is great. I've got half a dozen extensions loaded, and the search bar is more than enough justification to install it (I've got everything from Google, eBay, to Wikipedia, all in one click.) Not only that, but it's way faster than Mozilla, or even IE, for that matter. Being able to customize the interface is another cool feature - I've got three checkboxes at the top of the window that allow me to toggle JS, Cookies, and Images, on and off, without having to go through a labyrinth of menus. Oh, and did I mention tabbed browsing?
Now, if someone would please backport it MacOS classic, so I can run it on my ancient PowerPC machines (running MacOS 7.6.1, 8.5.1, 8.6, and various flavors of 9)...
This guy doesn't seem too bright to have ended up in jail over this.
He should claimed he was doing it as a social sciences research project to track mistyped names and the reactions bad typists have toward sex. And therefore the goverment is seeking to restrict his speech. (First Amendment)
Or made the arguement that the infomation againist him was obtained illegaly. (Fourth Amendment)
Or said nothing except and let his lawyer plant the seed of reasonable doubt. (Fifth Amendment)
The government can't tell people they can't purposely mispell names and much of Congress's pornogrphy law has struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court because it was overly broad.
Where was his counsel?
hah. the pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. first, the consequences never, i repeat, never stop potential criminals who decided to do a crime. even death penalty don't.
second, in the jail, criminals learn quite a lot interesting things and they meet other criminals. and after they are released they have more than enough knowledge and contacts to do much much bigger crimes.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
I think it is readily apparent to any sane, thoughtful person that our justice system in the US is broken.
We have too many ideologues on the bench, trying to legislate when they should merely consider the facts and the law.
The courts regularly overturn the constitution. Where in the world did they find the "right" for a woman to have an abortion? Did they totally ignore the 10th amendment?
Too many judges give lenient punishments. Some do it because they don't believe that punishment is the best thing to do. Others do it because they are afraid of being overturned by a higher court.
Too many criminals walk away scott-free. Take a look at this Joseph Smith character. He committed a crime he was already convicted of.
We should be impeaching a lot more judges than we do now. We should have a more powerful president who refuses to enforce unjust decisions. We shouldn't let the judicial branch make decisions for the executive branch or the legislative branch. There has to be a balance between the three.
Right now, judges issue executive orders. Judges write new law, or they order new laws to be written. They disobey current laws.
Our system is broken, and it needs to be fixed. Whatdoyabet that this marriage amendment gets passed, gets ratified, gets adopted, and they overturn it anyway? Heck, it's happened to the 10th and the 2nd, why not the 28th?
What recourse will the people have then, if we can't even amend the constitution to hold the courts in check?
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
"There's no way that you can justify child porno in our society."
What I asked was:
"The same way I guess that rape videos, or news and movies about murder also hurts people; and since rape and murder is also illegal, like childporno, I guess you are infavor of censoring action movies and the news."
I take your (non)response as a "I am a hypocrite since some illegal things are ok to video tape and promote (like violence) and others are not ok", unless of course you would actually like to reply this time with your arguement as how some illegal things can be censored and others not.
There are so many things wrong with this. First of all, I didn't read the article. But that's not even important. My opinions matter way more than me having to read some article on Slashdot.
Number one, the fact that somebody is registering domain names that are spell-alikes of real domains is questionable. The fact that they get linked to some porno site is sleazy. The part where he made a million dollars helps draw things into focus a bit, though. Before that I thought this guy was some sort of pedophile psycho. But apparently he's just trying to make a buck off the Internet, and who here hasn't tried that. There are plenty who have cyber-succeeded and not been sleazy, sure. But it's the Wild West, baby!
But does this particular sleazy incident warrant Congresional action? It seems to me like it's only a handful of people registering these URLs. Heck this guy must have done quite a few to net $1mil. (Maybe I'd know that if I read the article. Who cares.)
I'd like to know what sort of research Congress did before passing the PROTECT Act of 2003. Did they attempt to finger this dude? Apparently not or he surely would have been dragged before some committe, somewhere. Or did Congress hear horror stories of kids trying to find Pokemon on line only to find something that made them ask their parents uncomfortable questions.
Speaking of which, what the *fuck* are kids doing on the Internet in the first place? That is a dumb idea, it's neglectful for parents to let kids surf without watching over their shoulder. Of course the flip side to that is there should be some sort of decency standards, and without a doubt the Internet has been wrestling with that since, well, how long has alt.talk.abortion been around? For that matter I'm pretty sure I signed the "save goatse" petition.
Okay, I just read the article, it doesn't really answer any questions. I'd love to know what he had that got him the "one count of possessing child pornography."
You know what, this law sucks. This basically makes registering a domain name that might be mistaken for disney a federal crime. How about fuckdisney.com? Couldn't that fall under this umbrella? I thought that any company with half a brain would just register all the spell-alikes anyway; it's cheap and there's no way they'll get the wrong message then. This stinks like the 1998 NET Act, which made copyright infringement a federal crime too. What the fuck, Congress, is there no room for civil proceedings anymore? Let's just make everything a crime? Do you know how much money that is going to cost? We'll need a ton more federal lawyers, and prison space once you're done with the trials.
Criminalizing shady behavior is a slippery slope. It's perfectly legal to lie, in fact that right is pretty much guaranteed by the First Amendment. We should be working towards a society where issues like cybersquatting and redirecting kids to porn sites don't require contfrontational, litigational, Congressional intervention. We should be able to work this out without some bureaucrat deciding it's time we take heed of the power he wields.
The guy should have been aware of this law and just registered all these domain names from his villa in the Mediterranean, free of Uncle Sam's long arm. Aside from that, he probably deserves the 2.5 years he gets, even if the law he broke is totally for the benefit of Disney, Nickelodeon, and a few other exploitative corporation that prey on the young. They don't sell sex, but they pump a hell of a lot of sugar into the veins of young America. Why one is reprehensible and the other is condoned is anybody's guess.
The only comment that I have seen that touched on the real issue here. People taking responsibility for their own actions. What are kids doing unsupervised on the Internet in the first place? Surprise! We adults know that there are "dangers" out there just like in the real world. Is the guys intent slimy? Of course. But, I'm blaming the victims parents here, for without them, there would be no victim.
The internet is full of dodgy stuff, you cant make it a safe haven for kids, period. So if your worrid about kids seeing something objectionable dont let them on the internet its simple. The 'digital learning revolution' is a myth, you dont need google to learn the alphabet or basic maths and if you want to show them something, download it first.
You cant go sending people to prision for this sort of thing its just stupid, next they'll be exicuting spammers and sending VB-script virus script-kiddies to camp X-ray. This guy was just trying to make a fast buck and if thats a crime then lets start thinking big *COUGH* ENRON *COUGH* there are hundereds of bigger basterds out there who have done far far worse and instead of rotting away behind bars end up being senators or presidents.
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