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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.
But i would do a coupl years in prison if I recieved a couple million dollars, as long as I got to keep it when i got out. I would just write a book while in jail, and chill out. I would also lift weights, so no one would try to make me their bitch.
He's in jail for taking one million dollars from the porn industry in exchange for directing people to their sites who have no credit cards and can't make them any money.
Whitehouse.com and goatse.cx are in big trouble.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
It's about time the typosquatters are getting squeezed. I'm tired of getting shipped over to some obscure "search engine" site with 45 popups and popunders. (Thank the Maker for the popup blocker in the Googlebar!) However, I wonder how long it'll be until it goes over the end the other way - we've already seen the mikerowesoft.com story, and there's always whitehouse dot com (instead of whitehouse.gov).
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
It's just shameful how many people abuse the internet... Re-directs, pop-up ads, spam, retina-searing flash ads, and so forth-- my non-techie neighbors can barely stand to be online... until I installed Firefox for them.
Mucho Gracias to the kind folks who wrote the main apps and extensions for Mozilla and the like... people don't surf the web or use email only to be bludgeoned with it. Moz and family puts users back in control!
I really didn't intend to make a blatant ad for Mozilla, was just recalling recent trauma from using IE 5 on an unpatched Win2K machine, and I was merely trying to find a happy place...
When does this law apply to SiteFinder?
When my sisters kids come over and we go on to the net to look for Barbie's and the like; the amount of times something a little 9 year old shouldnt be seing is incredible. Thanks goodness someone is looking to combat this problem. Although I do question whether going to jail is in order. Making them take down the website and if the then keep re-affending THEN slap them with some jail time.
The other day, a friend and I were using google to try and locate sites that had a demo of simant (actually, we were hoping for a free download, but that didn't happen). Using the terms "+simant+download", I was rather dismayed to see that the vast majority of results were PORN sites that used the term simant in their keywords. I'm all for freedom of the internet, but if you can't be responsible enough to be honest about what your site contains, you really don't deserve the freedom. What I saw was just plain pathetic, and I don't think I'd be against a law that forbid this kind of misleading characterization of content.
someone should inform wikipedia then
National Fruit Products in Winchester, Virginia (hometown of my Virginia office) is talking about buying the whitehouse.com domain name.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
he made a million dollars apparently?
And Mitnick did $300 million worth of damage.
That's no deterrent... Make a million, someone tells you to stop. You still have the million. Where's the deterrance?
On the other hand, most people don't want to go to prison. Prison is bad. It scares people who aren't already criminals. What are you going to answer on the next job interview about what you were doing the past two years? "Oh, I was in prison because of a stupid federal law. And I learnt all about the bizzare kinds of sex that I was redirecting people to first-hand." Or first-arse. Whatever.
They should've fined him for a million dollars instead of throwing him in jail, no doubt.
I'm not sure about this law specifically, but the government can usually seize illegally gained funds for this very reason. Otherwise, people would do illegal things to make millions, go to jail, then enjoy life. So it is highly likely they'll take what he made on this scam.
Nope, there is no such thing as Parole in the Federal Prison System. He can get time off for good behavior, but for a 3 year sentence, he won't get more than 4 months shaved off.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Kiss a tit, it's an X. Hack it off with a sword, PG-13 --Jack Nicholson
No problem.
My wife and I are stricter than most (even in Utah, where we live). We don't even like our children (daughters: 5, 3, 1) to watch Sponge Bob Square Pants and other cartoons like it. We both enjoy watching and discussing cartoons and movies with them.
Same with the internet. Much of the time one of us will be right there surfing and playing with them. I'm self-employed and write software from home and my computer is 5 feet away from theirs, so it's easy to be involved, which we try to be.
My hope is that as they get older we'll have armed them with the knowledge to make proper choices and choose not to view pornography. ( Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6).
The girls are very intelligent, and when the time comes I trust them to do the right thing or be willing to take the consequences that come along with their actions. But I hope to be involved in the decision making, even if just as a friend and advisor, until they're driving at least (a father's wishful thinking...).
We have a sleazy TLD already. It's called ".biz". The reputation of ".biz" is so bad that there are spam filters that reject anything related to a ".biz" domain.
My wife and I are stricter than most (even in Utah, where we live). We don't even like our children (daughters: 5, 3, 1) to watch Sponge Bob Square Pants and other cartoons like it. We both enjoy watching and discussing cartoons and movies with them.
I'm guessing, from your comment about Utah, that you guys might be from the Mormon faith. Each to their own, I say -- I myself am a staunch atheist. But your comment about Sponge Bob caught me. A few years back, I was out in Africa (Ghana, to be specific), teaching high-school level physics to kids and young adults in a small village (with a UK organisation called VSO, similar to the US Peace Corps). I was meant to be there 2 years, but I quit after 7 months.
The reason why I quit ties in with Sponge Bob. I left Ghana early because my life was missing discourse and debate -- the stuff which makes us feel part of a community. But, surprisingly, the discourse I was lacking was not related to the big ideas such as politics, economics, science, etc. Although I had frequenct discussions on these topics with my local friends, I still felt that I was lonely out there.
It transpires that what I missed in Ghana, and why I decided to quit, was a longing for the trivia of the world I had grown up in -- what had happened that week in my favourite soaps, etc. I detest celebrity cultrue, but what I found in Ghana from interacting from my Engish (i.e., same-culture) friends is that celebrity culture, and other manifestations of trivia, is the lubricant on which much of Western -- and indeed, all -- civilization runs. That is what marked the cultural divide between me and my local friend Tommy -- not our debate about whether colonialism had benefitted Ghana or otherwise.
So, while I agree that I'd far rather my future children grew up on books rather than television, I would offer this advice: No matter how much weight you put on the intellectual advancement of your offspring, this will always be eclipsed by the weight that they attach to understanding, digging, grokking and being part of the growing-up of their generation.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
You do realize that statement somewhat undermines the point of your sig? It is very difficult for Americans to emigrate to India, at the very least for protectionist if not more emotional reasons, the equivalent of an Indian "green card" is far more rare than the American one.
You have got to understand the difference between immmigration and what Germany refers to "gastarbiter" (guest worker). One is a right to settle permanently in a country and enjoy the fruits therof, the other is a limited permit to earn money, so long as it benefits said country -- but with the understanding that when things go tits-up, you get chucked out. The latter would adequately describe the fate of an Indian (or Pakistani, or Khazak, or Turkmen, or whatnot) H1 visa holder.
My discourse, however, is getting away from the fundamental point, which is this: if Indians appear to be stealing jobs from America, then let's not start commenting how black, or how ignorant, or how bad at programming the Indians are (at least, through our own prejudices eyes). Indeed, to do such would be racist. Instead, let's ask why all of these companies are outsourcing labour to India (or wherever), but at the same time offering none of the job protections that are enjoyed in the USA?
On a final note, as disclosure of my non-Indian yet pseudo-immigrant position: I am a J-1 (exchange) visitor to the USA. I am currently applying to get permanent residence (i.e., a green card) through my marriage to a very lovely US citizen. Ethnically, I am from Anglo-Irish stock.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Simply put, this law and the sentence are pure bullshit. The kind of people who support it are the same kind of people who got all worked up over Janet's Right Tit.
The first BIG problem with this law is the typical slippery slope thing. Here's just one example: What if someone is a really big proponent of gay marriage and instead of redirecting these typo-sites to porno, he redirects them to a bunch of gay marriage propaganda -- nothing pornographic at all, just stuff designed to convince adults and children alike that the "gay lifestyle" is OK. With recent events, it is clear that there are a LOT of people in America who consider homosexuality to be obscene. Should a guy like that get 3 years in the slammer?
The second big problem is this American attitude that sex is bad. First off - kids who haven't reached puberty don't care diddly about sex. Left to their own devices, pre-pubescent kids will take a look or two at porn, and then click on to something that they care about. It just doesn't mean anything to them. On the other hand, kids hitting puberty are going to seek out the porn all on their own. If anything, this scam will convince them that on the internet, porn costs money and maybe delay them from finding some of those free all-you-can-eat-and-then-some porn sources like alt.binaries.erotica.
All this law does is "protect" parents who were long ago indoctrinated with the sex-is-bad meme from feeling embarassed when they sit down with their kids at the computer and end up at one of the porn sites.
Don't take the above statements to mean that I condone what the guy did, but it is just a minor annoyance -- on the level of pop-up ads, nothing more. The saying about freedom not being free is directly applicable here - true freedom of expression means people using that right to express stuff that disgusts you in ways that disgust you but for the greater good of society we all put up with the disgusting stuff. If we didn't, then all we'd ever have is politically correct, but effectively lifeless expression in public.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The redirector guy made profit because he was paid by the porn sites for the traffic. They don't care (or bother to check) how he gets the traffic to the site, they just count the impressions and pay the money (usually).
So, as with a lot of nefarious or nebulous web "businesses" (porn sites, spam, mortgage leads, etc.), the problem arises because of a disconnect in interest and accountability between the site owner who pays for impressions, and the scumbag who does scummy things to get them. To be clear: the guy mentioned in the article wasn't acutally running any porn sites himself, as far as I can tell, he was simply creating redirect sites that sent people who made typos to porn sites. The independently-run porn sites would pay him for each visitor he sent their way.
Of course, you're right in the long run that the porn sites will lose money on the deal (they pay scumbag, but his leads generate few or no closes). Maybe eventually it'll catch up to them and they stop paying for such useless leads (or at least to him in partuclar, until he changes his name or identity and does is all over again), but probably not. I remember the days when even reputable companies would pay a few bucks per 1000 pageviews, regardless of how you got them there, but that's long past, and the only sites still able to (promise) to pay such fees for visits are porn sites,
everything in moderation
This is the last place to look at when you've got a situation at hand - and it comes up as the first link when you google for "morning after pill". Shouldn't these guys be charged for seriously misleading people?
BTW, this site has all the correct information about this topic. In case you didn't know, Emmergency Contraception (EC) is a method of birth control when something bad happens, like your rubber breaking.
Why do we send non-violent criminals to prison to bunk with violent criminals?
I'm sorry, but if you believe that using force to commit crime is a good idea, I don't think you belong on the earth anymore. I certainly won't miss anyone who brings a gun into a store and threatens to kill someone if they don't hand them a wad of cash. I will feel a lot safer knowing that somewhere down the road, said criminal won't be getting out on "good behavior". In fact, said criminal won't even get a chance to execute his elaborate escape scheme.
Prison time is useful -- it's a way to send a message to people that no matter how much money you have, you only have so much time, and if you want to spend that time ruining other people's lives, you're going to pay with your time.
But when you threaten someone else's life, or take a life, you are going to pay with your life. It's that simple.
The jury knew the consequences of their decisions, and they weighed the facts and opinions and emotions better than anyone else could. In the end, they knew without a shadow of a doubt that the criminal was guilty, and they put him down for good. The jury will be held accountable in their own way, whether in their conscience or in the afterlife. But there is no more just way of trial than by jury or your peers.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
No ? - well then how the hell is it that you think its fine to leave an unfirewall-unwhitelisted account for your children to use when surfing the net ?.
Having a unfiltered/unfirewalled PC at home should be a criminal offence of the parents. Anyone who complains about Internet junk and their children is missing the point. The internet isn't some sort of big electronic library but an electronic analog of humanity. With it comes all the variety of life.
I just think anti-typosquatter laws are one of those laws that'll be used to catch parody sites like *insert politician here*sucks.com. He only made money because the referals paid on visits or click-throughs. Go for those that paid him the money.
I disagree. I've also done time, for a non-violent offense. In my case, it straightened me out big time. Being behind bars is a horrible feeling, and I came away with a healthy respect for the law. Hell, to be completely honest, I came away with a raw fear of the consequences of ever breaking the law again.
You never seem to hear this point of view - I don't know if my experience was uncommon or not, but in my case prison had precisely the intended effect. Punishment and deterrence.
The problem is our prison systems. There are plenty of asian countries where the probability of returning to prison decreases significantly. Most of these prisons are run like military schools and are tailored for training people to conform to society.
Our prisons are simply an unhappy place to be, where bad people do more bad things and have more bad things done to them. None of this promotes reform.
I agree with your assessment, and I think that your solution is valid but only temporary. I think our prisons should be run like reform schools where people have to do back-breaking work and conform to a strict etiquette.
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
Young kids need a restricted subset of the net.
Not a troll, and certainly not a defence of domain-name scams, but something a number of people have apparently failed to grasp: a basic censor should be mandatory for young, kids, particularly where unsupervised. There's no way anything with "hot teen sex" in the page should be getting through to their browser in the first place.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
...taking pictures of children naked isn't a crime. Nudist/naturist vids end up having them all the time. Often not in secret (that's surreptitiously btw, if you want to be a quibbler), but I don't imagine they go around asking everyone around them for permission either. Or watch "Pretty Baby" or some other cinema movie, and you'll see Brooke Shields naked.
Then again, the US is the country that goes apeshit over seeing an adult woman's tit. I do realize that there is child porn - and yes, pictures can be child porn merely by showing children nude, if in a sexual position. But your post seems to imply that anything involving kids nude would be child porn. [Flamebait] Are you sure it's not your mind that makes that connection? [/Flamebait]
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The issue isn't free-speech, it's deliberate misrepresentation and costs users money (forcing them to waste bandwidth downloading junk they don't want).
What if it was legal to register look-a-like names and phone numbers in telephone directories? Or in Yellow Pages? Navigating through 12 spelling variations to find the number for a pizza joint would just be annoying. Kinda like wading through the crap that appears in a Google search list. Maybe every web domain registration should include a description of what the site is FOR. It would be fraudulent to host a website that varied significantly from its stated purpose. Your free speech is preserved along with the public's right to avoid your free speech.
Is this sig nificant?
Except when you look at the crime rates in the U.S. they have been falling steadily since 1993. So maybe it's time to retool that argument.
:)
Excessive government fines are simply taxation in disguise-- and in this case it sounds like those taxes will fall hardest on people who can least afford them (i.e. poor people trying to earn a living). If the drugs weren't illegal in the first place there would be no profit motive because normal market prices would drive the prices way down because the supply would go way up). And unlike prescription drugs, street drugs are unencumbered by patents, so anyone with a garden could potentially become a supplier of the plant derived stuff.
I do not have a signature
This is important information; you should write it up for Wikipedia.
Amongst other things, the Internet is a capitalistic force. Along with that comes the responsibility of legitimate business practices, whether a site exists for the almighty buck or a not-for-profit infotainment, information, or other just-fund-me-enough-so-I-can-keep-this-site-runnin gg node. That means fraudulent behavior should be punished.
Whether it was intended or not, the domain name has become an advertisement. And just as if your local shop claimed one price or feature with goods or services, but offered you something different for the same goods and services, that organization would (and should) be punishable under various laws covering fraud.
I appologize for the rude suprise, but I assumed everybody had learned from the goatse links to be wary about clicking on links, especially when at work... The question is, does this qualify as "typo squatting" or not?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
People being light on criminals are a HUGE problem in the United States. We have a guy here who is attacking our children within their own home. This guy is entering our homes and showing our children pornographic material. He is making money off the suffering of our families and all you feel he deserves is a fine? We can't even calculate the damage this guy has done to children who have wandered on his redirects and all people can think of is fining him the amount he has made off the suffering of others. What type of punishment is that? If I rob a bank are you just going to fine me what I stole? Are you delusional enough to think that this will prevent me from robbing more banks? This guy is scum and needs to be removed from society and taught that such attacks are not acceptable and punishment will be severe! You can say I am overly harsh but I don't believe so. I think I am taking the threat seriously. Instead of thinking about the poor criminal I am thinking about the poor victims. I am thinking, "How can we prevent this from happening again?" People who defend this guy are no better than he is!