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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.
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
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.
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.
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.