Domain hijacking?

May 26, 2005 12:42 PM

I have a blog at http://depravedlibrarian.blogspot.com (I've also registerd the domain and will eventually put up a forwarding page). I misstyped this in the location bar: http://depravedlibrarian.blogpsot.com and found that registrant for this site and all the other Amazingbiblestudies sites (I checked 3 other Blogger address) is the same registrant. While it's not exactly domain hijacking, what can I, or should I do about this? How else can I get the word out about this? Thanks for your suggestions.
posted by gleenyc to Technology (24 answers total)

Considering that you don't own blogspot.com (the primary domain), there is truly nothing you can do about it. Maybe you could console yourself by reading some posts at MetFilter?
posted by 4easypayments at 12:50 PM on May 26, 2005

You could post your URL to AskMe in an attempt to drive up hits and pagerank. Oh, wait.

You could just deal, because he's not doing anything illegal.
posted by keswick at 12:51 PM on May 26, 2005

To be clear, the person merely owns blogpsot.com and has instructed his server to reveal his page regardless of what's in front of that domain. You can put gobbledegook in front of it and it would work (adskfjaslfjasdflsakdjfldsjflasdf.blogpsot.com, for instance).
posted by dobbs at 12:53 PM on May 26, 2005

Sweet fuck all.

You didn't register depravedlibrarian.blogspot.com, you're just a record in blogspot's domain name server. Blogspot registered blogspot.com.

Blogpsot.com is banking on people mistying blogspot.com and regardless of what gets typed in front of blogpsot.com the same page comes up. You've proven that in at least one case it'll work.

If blogspot wanted to they could try to do something legally with blogpsot.com. They'd fail, but they could try.

If I wanted to I could register meatfilter.com (if it's not registered already) and use it to point to whatever I wanted. Maybe the finest in liberal meats, or meat made from liberals. I dunno.
posted by substrate at 12:55 PM on May 26, 2005

Sweet fuckall, I believe gleenyc means they registered depravedlibrarian.com.
posted by modofo at 12:57 PM on May 26, 2005

Response by poster: I've written Blogger to let them know abou the issue. Perhaps they can do as substrate mentioned and try and do something with blogpsot.com. Thanks for your comments.
posted by gleenyc at 12:57 PM on May 26, 2005

Response by poster: Modofo, they registrered the blogpsot.com. I've verified this for at least 4 blogs on Blogger, not just the one I posted in the inquiry.
posted by gleenyc at 12:59 PM on May 26, 2005

Response by poster: Perhaps the additional question is, has this registrant also registered variant misspellings at the other blog hosting services and put up pages?
posted by gleenyc at 1:00 PM on May 26, 2005

gleenyc, it doesn't matter if they did. There is nothing illegal or imoral about registering domains that have similar spellings to other domains. blogpsot is not a registered trademark of anyone, including blogspot.
posted by dobbs at 1:10 PM on May 26, 2005

Perhaps the additional question is, has this registrant also registered variant misspellings at the other blog hosting services and put up pages?

If they haven't, someone else assuredly has.

Registering typos of domains has a long tradition. Kiddy porn at dinsey.com? There's a good chance of it! Scumbags and assholes toss all sorts of porn banner ads (or other sorts, but porn earns a lot of money) on the pages and watch as the view counts tick in.

There's nothing Google (the owners of blogspot.com) or any other domain registrant can do about it other than spend pointless amounts of money registering as many typos as possible.
posted by cCranium at 1:11 PM on May 26, 2005

gleenyc: You should really take this right to the top. Don't quit fighting, brother. This is nothing short of an outrage.
posted by xmutex at 1:28 PM on May 26, 2005

Someone else registering the typo is annoying, sure, but it's par for the internet course.

I also suspect that you're slightly misunderstanding something. Once you've registered blahblah.com, you don't need to seperately register a.blahblah.com, b.blahblah.com and c.blahblah.com. You've already bought the rights to stick whatever you want in the dots before the blahblah.com. Some domain owners make it so anything before the dot blahblah.com will resolve.

For example, Matt registered the domain metafilter.com. He then set up the subdirectories ask.metafilter.com and metatalk.metafilter.com and he could add how every many he wanted, without having to pay anyone for the priviledge. He has it set up so that anythingbeforethedot.metafilter.com (other than ask or metatalk or a few things Matt is playing with off in the wings) will resolve to the same as www.metafilter.com

So the blogpsot.com people have just registered blogpsot.com and allowed anything typed before the dot to display blogpsot.com.

Try it yourself. Plug in anything before the dot metafilter.com and it will display the main page. barf.metafilter.com camera.metafilter.com youmomisugly.metafilter.com alsdjhfoauwebofbwaeobf.metafilter.com - it all works. It's the same at blogpsot.com. They aren't picking on you in particular, just kind of free-loading off of anyone that mis-types a blogspot.com address.
posted by raedyn at 1:29 PM on May 26, 2005

On a re-read, I see dobbs explained this more succinctly at the top of the thread, but I'm not sure if you heard him or not.
posted by raedyn at 1:32 PM on May 26, 2005

The legality is not completely cut and dried - if they put a blogspot competitor at blogpsot.com they could face a representation issue, particularly if they used a look and feel designed to misrepresent themselves AS blogspot.

This is an old game. When my father was involved with IT at Ryder Truck Rental in the 80s they had a situation where some sleazeball got themselves the phone number 1-800-407-9337 (right around when they opened the phone number space to allow X0X-XXXX and X1X-XXXX which had previously been reserved, IIRC) and put a phone sex line on it.

This was an issue since that number is what you get if you dial 1-800-G0-RYDER when you really wanted 1-800-GO-RYDER.

Ryder would get a dozen or so angry phone calls every month from people who'd misdialed, a situation the owner offered to assist them in dealing with by selling them 1-800-407-9337 for some nutzo price. Ryder told him to get stuffed but I am sure this wasn't a one-time operation. These misspelled domains are just a slightly more modern version of the same crap.
posted by phearlez at 1:36 PM on May 26, 2005

if they put a blogspot competitor at blogpsot.com they could face a representation issue, particularly if they used a look and feel designed to misrepresent themselves AS blogspot.

Even so, that would be for Google (owners of blogspot) to consider. There is little gleenyc can do in the matter.
posted by madman at 1:50 PM on May 26, 2005

blogpsot is not a registered trademark of anyone, including blogspot.

The legal issue on a trademark is not whether the mark is identical, but rather whether consumers/customers could be confused.

Trademark protection has gotten extremely weird in the era of the URL and confusion is getting defined larger and larger (thus World Wrestling Federation becoming WWE to avoid the World Wildlife Federation confusion).

Of course, as everyone's said, you have no legal rights to a blogspot URL. Not only would blogspot have to pursue it, you'd be extremely hard pressed to prove that you hold any brand equity in the URL and it's being tarnished.
posted by Gucky at 2:03 PM on May 26, 2005

Even so, that would be for Google (owners of blogspot) to consider. There is little gleenyc can do in the matter.

Madman, correct, I was directing that at these statements:

If blogspot wanted to they could try to do something legally with blogpsot.com. They'd fail, but they could try.
-and-
There is nothing illegal or imoral about registering domains that have similar spellings to other domains.
posted by phearlez at 2:16 PM on May 26, 2005

I worked in the corporate office of a major grocery chain for a while, and the chain sent out a mailer to a bunch (I mean a BUNCH) of churches and religious groups advertising a loyalty program. The loyalty program had a toll-free telephone number starting with 877. At the time 877 was fairly new, and the ad group mistakenly included the number with "800" in place of 877. The resulting number, identical but for two digits, dialled a phone sex line that started out with a woman in the middle of a screaming orgasm with the sound of two bodies slapping together.

Oh how I laughed.

On topic, this is a problem as old as the Internet (well, the commercialization of it, at least), see Yahhoo, whitehouse.com, etc. (the sites at those deliberately non-linked websites may very well be NSFW if you go looking for them). Until someone goes after them with "confusing similarity" lawsuits or such, they won't go away any time soon.
posted by socratic at 3:06 PM on May 26, 2005

gleenyc, you seem to be under the impression that the folks at blogpsot.com have created a specific depravedlibrarian subdomain. They haven't. Anything at all to the left of ".blogpsot.com" will resolve to their site, just like http://depravedlibrarian.metafilter.com/ resolves to metafilter.
posted by timeistight at 3:30 PM on May 26, 2005

...which is what dobbs and raedyn said. I guess I should try reading the thread before I comment.
posted by timeistight at 3:41 PM on May 26, 2005

Oh noes! Youse mean that http://fixedgearcycling.blogspot.com/ could be hijacked by those cruel bastards at http://fixedgearcycling.blogpsot.com/?
posted by fixedgear at 4:54 PM on May 26, 2005

As an aside: don't count too much on the redirect page idea working. I went from no_self_link.blogspot.com to no_self_link.net and as soon as I changed my blogger settings to publish to the new server, the page on blogspot (one final entry about the move) was gone, and the blogspot subdomain assigned to another user. Anyone visiting the address less frequently than every few days would have been forced to conclude that my brain had fallen out, as there was no sign my blog was ever there, and what *was* there, was moronic. Just thought I'd warn you. Mention the move early and often on the blogspot page.
posted by Gamecat at 6:35 PM on May 26, 2005

Another good example of this kind of thing from the days when the telephone was king: AT&T had 1-800-OPERATOR for their low-cost collect calling service. MCI, betting on illiteracy (which is never a bad bet), grabbed 1-800-OPERATER.
posted by kindall at 9:37 PM on May 26, 2005

meatfilter.com does indeed exist, and has for years. Only now, it redirects to meatfilter.blogspot.com! So you see, the circle is now complete.
posted by jjg at 4:54 AM on May 27, 2005