Eric,
Yes, there might be consequences, if I do go ahead and establish a website
using her name; something I have not yet decided to do. And though you are
implying negative consequences, I can see that there may well be positive,
beneficial consequences, which is my intent. And as Tom pointed out
(something I had no idea about before his post) there also could be negative
consequences - even worse consequences, the way I see it - if I DIDN'T
register her name, such as someone else taking her name only to financially
exploit it in some way. And in this matter, having never heard of this, it
seems reasonable to defer to someone like Tom's assessment and prediction of
this likelihood, since surely he is far more knowledgeable in these matters
than I am!
So to take seriously and answer your question, in the end I registered this
person's name because of what Tom said about the likelihood of someone doing
this in response to my checking her name out. I figured that, if nothing
else, if I could prevent that from happening it would be a good outcome.
I discovered her name wasn't taken in the first place because I was curious
if she, in fact, had a website, so while looking up names for myself, for my
own site (having nothing to do with her) I decided to see if her name had
been registered on GoDaddy. The reason I was curious about the website is
that I was trying to find out if this person (along with one or two others
in her field) would be able to do a psychological evaluation or consultation
for someone I am quite close to. In trying to find out what the
possibilities for this might be I tried to find contact or other information
on the website of the hospital where these people work. After spending
considerable time tooling around the website without much luck I decided to
make some calls to the hospital. When someone returned my call who works
with this person we ended up talking about the website, how she has been
inundated with calls since the person was on Oprah, now twice in about a
week and related matters. In the course of this discussion, she opined that
she doubted this person had her own website in response to my comment that I
would search to see if she did to find out about her speaking schedule, etc.
(she fairly frequently speaks in the D.C. area). I responded by saying that
it would be a valuable thing for someone in this position to have a website,
for a variety of good reasons, so that's what led me to be curious to see
if, in fact, she did, and if so, to find out her speaking schedule, etc.
While I'm guessing that most people with her level of celebrity probably do
have sites, people in her profession and the helping professions generally
(and maybe academia) often seem to be living as if its maybe the 70's or
80's when it comes to things like websites, the internet, etc. So in that
sense it wasn't really surprising to see that she doesn't have a site or
blog that I know of.
This is a longwinded background statement to support this point: Since I
was seeking out a meeting and help from this person who is considered one of
the leading experts in the country if not the world on the mental health
matters of concern in this situation, it would hardly be in my interest to
upset or antagonize this woman, let alone take advantage of her for
commercial gain or otherwise. The help I seek from this person is not
financial; it is her expertise and her inspiration. And as an advocate in
this area, if I can think of ways that might help her help others, then that
is what such advocacy is really all about, isn't it?
So you can be sure that if I do something that this woman disagrees with or
finds upsetting or troubling in some way, it will not be because this was my
intent, but rather because I accidentally or inadvertently make a mistake or
more than one. To try to prevent this from happening, this is precisely why
I posed those questions here, to get feedback or input about how this might
effect her. So thanks for the feedback, as I am also interested in critical
feedback, which might help me avoid any such mistakes. And feel free to
question my judgment on any of this, but I would suggest that not knowing me
beyond reading a few posts on a listserve (most having to do with asking
questions about computers and related matters), you are hardly in a position
to divine my motives and intentions via the internet.
Randall
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric S. Sande" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <COMPUTERGUYS-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2007 1:23 AM
Subject: Re: [CGUYS] Grabbing domain names of well-known persons?
>Well, ended up buying the .com domain for this person's name.
Why would you do that? People have a right to their own
identity. If you're fucking with people, especially famous people,
you have to accept that there are likely to be consequences.
I didn't like the smell of you from the start, Randy, and now
my bullshit detectors are off the scale.
I apologise to the members of compuperguys-l for the profanity.
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