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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?
Maybe they will finally put some goat sex up at goatse.cx?
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.
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Well, hopefully he'll be able to redirect Bubba...
Who doesn't like free music?
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?
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.
You have no idea how many times I try to type in hotmail.com and my fingers slip and hotmom.com comes out. Or even worse when I try to visit whitehouse.gov and mis-spell it as goatse.cx.
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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.
"Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Today Act (PROTECT) of 2003"
And the PATRIOT act as well...
Do they have some software that generates acronyms that also happen to be (seemingly) appropriate words??
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
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
There is this one site called www.hornyteens.com , and after very careful research, I think some of those girls are actually probably in their early twenties, or late twenties. I want my money back.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
"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.
My mom has a German Shepherd that learns faster than this for godssakes.
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.
Yes, they do.
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Been there done that. There is no money worth staying in prison for. I know guys who defrauded banks for millions who would have turned the other way if it meant saving their families the embarrassment, and hardships they'd suffered by being locked up. So you mean to tell me you would put a price on your wife and kids, family, dignity? If so, then you my friend will be a lonely sad person in the future. "making you a bitch" is reserved for prisons, not white collar places, you'd have to be in a USP for something like that to happen. Club Fed as we called it is Camp Cupcake, think of a college with no chicks, and no gates (for the camps), for the lows, same shit. Medium - High you'd run into things here and there, but what your thinking of via conditioning you've seen or read about is limited to high security prisons, and state prisons. Club Fed is as they call it Club Fed.
MoFscker
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.
The deal he had with the porn sites had him getting paid for referrals. Not for referrals that actually sign on, but simply the number of referrals. So he was screwing over the people who were paying him, as well.
In fact, that's apparently why he targeted the kids. According to his admission, it wasn't that he had some thing about making kids see porn. It was that kids were more likely to make spelling errors, so they were more likely to come across his typosquatting websites; so if he targeted kids, his referral numbers would be higher.
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.
I think Hotmail.com should be prosecuted for diverting traffic off of Hotmale.com. Some kids expecting gay pr0n might be offended by the usual "Enlarge your penis".
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.
You are either the gaotse guy or you know way too much about the goatse guy... either way, I need a shower ;)
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.
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."
Most crimes do not have one and only one possible sentence. Generally, the court has leeway. The law perscribes maximum and sometimes minimum sentences for a given crime. This is so there is some additonal deterrence for repeat offenders. You do something once, you are likely to get a sentence quite a bit under the maximum. However if you are back in court for the third time on the same offence, they can hit you with a harder sentence.
Instead of "Dorm sex party" his website will have to say "Cell Block assrape festival." He's going to be passed around like a joint and won't be able to sit down for a week before they're done with him.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
What about taking pictures of children naked? Especially if you do it surrepticiously. You're not touching them... you're not giving or showing them anything! Gee that shouldn't be illegal at all!
Kiss a tit, it's an X. Hack it off with a sword, PG-13 --Jack Nicholson
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....!!!
-- b
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!
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.
I guess I can't support America's paranoia about its own sexuality.
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.
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.
It's not a felony to register domain names, it's a felony to use those domain names to mislead people into looking at porn.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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.
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.
Law is a complex issue and many decisions on the constitutionality of an issue will be based upon a collection of arguments, from previous decisions to simple matters of practicality to specifics defined by the constitution itself. Arguing that the constitution says nothing about a woman's right to an abortion directly and therefore that a woman doesn't have a right to an abortion is a little like arguing that the proof of Fermat's Last Theorum is mathematically invalid because you can't get to it with a one line proof involving addition and subtraction.
Constitutional scholars tend, when being critical about the Roe vs Wade ruling, to be concerned about a small part of it, namely the issues over whether abortion can be banned in the various trimesters of pregnancy. The rest of the ruling is usually considered watertight by all but the most ideological.
Probably none, because I see little will in Congress and the Senate for defiling the constitution with an amendment that takes rights away, so it'll never get as far as being passed and ratified.You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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?
The the greatest genius of the framers of the Constitution is that they founded our country upon powerful general principles of freedom and equality. In many cases they themselves were not ready to face the full implications of those principles, yet in a truly subversive act, they gave those principles the ultimate power of law.
Thomas Jefferson, for example, although clearly recognizing the evil of slavery, was unable to give up his own slaves. Yet he helped to found our country general principles that would ultimately make slavery untenable.
These powerful principles were like time bombs in our Constitution, and it was left to the logicians of our society--the judges--to work out the full implications of those principles. It has taken over two hundred years to do so, and we are not done yet.
There is a danger that we will turn away from those deep principles. There have been attempts in the past, such as the effort to amend the Constitution to make burning the flag an exception to the protection of free speech. We are seeing this again, with the effort to amend the Constitution to prohibit states from allowing gay marriage.
If we ever do start to amend the Constitution so as to limit people's rights instead of expanding them, I believe that our nation will have turned a corner from which there is no returning, and will have begun a repudiation of those principles of freedom and equality which our founders fought so hard to establish.
But we've approached that brink and turned back before. I can only hope that we will continue to do so.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.