[Ben is a student at Harvard who testified as an expert witness in the CIPA
library filtering trial. See: http://www.politechbot.com/p-02737.html --Declan]
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From: "Ben Edelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: 4525 different domains that lead to a single porn site
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2002 00:55:33 -0400
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Declan,
In casual web surfing, many Internet users have stumbled into a
seemingly-innocuous domain name that oddly presented a screen full of
sexually-explicit images. Usually, this causes a momentary puzzle that's
forgotten in an instant, but when it happened to me at bicyclebills.com
(warning: sexually-explicit images), I decided to investigate the Tina's
Free Live Webcam operation to which bicyclebills.com had redirected me.
My research -- thanks to some searching by various automated systems I
developed for the purpose -- yielded a list of 4525 distinct domains that
each lead to the Tina's Webcam site. Reviewing Yahoo, Google, and
archive.org reflects that many (if not most or all) of these domains were
previously registered by others -- who ultimately by and large seem to have
let the domains expire, whether through forgetfulness, confusion, or lack of
interest.
The inference of reregistration is imperfect and in some cases uncertain, so
I want to encourage readers to take a look through the list on their own.
To that end, I have posted the entire listing of specific domains that point
to Tina's Webcam as well as extensive information about each -- prior page
titles from archive.org, current Yahoo category listings, referencing pages
as reported in Google, etc. This turns out to be quite an entertaining
read -- for Tina has come to hold domains previously used not just by a
bicycle store but also by a BBB, a French school, several bands, many
personal home pages, and all manner of software companies, ISPs, retailers,
and other commercial interests.
My complete listing & analysis are available at:
<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/renewals>
The underlying policy questions here are, it seems to me, serious and as yet
unresolved. Consider: If a Massachusetts homeowner fails to pay a water
bill, her water won't get turned off for some months. (Years?) But if she
fail to renew her domain name, a porn site might grab it within as little as
a couple weeks. Worse yet, dozens of registrars and others mine or buy
registrant contact info from the WHOIS database and use this info to send
solicitations that look much like official and important renewal notices
from a registrant's actual registrar -- making it hard to know which bill to
pay and which to throw out. That's not to excuse content providers who
can't keep their domains paid up, but this process is far harder than it
needs to be. ICANN and the registrars have their work cut out for them in
straightening this out.
(<http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-04apr02.htm> reflects that
they have at least formed a committee that's slated to work on it.)
Ben Edelman
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard Law School
<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/edelman>
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