Educational CyberPlayGround ®

Learn how to stop education web site Domains get turned into Porn sites and get through school filters

#domain name theft, #K12 education porn site,
#K12 school filters #cybersquatting #cyber ghosts #link rot

 

Buy Domain Names and
Bury Dead Ed Dots With Dignity.

What is an Education Professional's Responsibility to keep their education and non profit websites - .com,.edu and .org's from being harvested, hijacked then squatted and subsequently used as Porn Sites that ultimately slip through school filters?

2015 A Best Resources for Internet link rot decay
The authors, Jonathan Zittrain, Kendra Albert and Lawrence Lessig, determined that approximately 50% of the URLs in U.S. Supreme Court opinions no longer link to the original information. They also found that in a selection of legal journals published between 1999 and 2011, more than 70% of the links no longer functioned as intended. The scholars write:

[As] websites evolve, not all third parties will have a sufficient interest in preserving the links that provide backwards compatibility to those who relied upon those links. The author of the cited source may decide the argument in the source was mistaken and take it down. The website owner may decide to abandon one mode of organizing material for another. Or the organization providing the source material may change its views and “update” the original source to reflect its evolving views. In each case, the citing paper is vulnerable to footnotes that no longer support its claims. This vulnerability threatens the integrity of the resulting scholarship.

 

2014 What happens to your "digital assests" when you die?

The Uniform Law Commission, whose members are appointed by state governments to help standardize state laws, endorsed a plan that would give loved ones access to - but not control of - the deceased's digital accounts, unless specified otherwise in a will. To become law in a state, the legislation would have to be adopted by the legislature. If it did, a person's online life could become as much a part of estate planning as deciding what to do with physical possessions. If you're famous they can be worth considerable value to an estate. According to the proposal, the personal representative of the deceased, such as the executor of a will, would get access to - but not control of - a person's digital files so long as the deceased didn't prohibit it in the will. The law would trump access rules outlined by a company's terms of service agreement, although the representative would still have to abide by other rules including copyright laws.
Many people assume they can decide what happens by sharing certain passwords with a trusted family member, or even making those passwords part of their will. But in addition to potentially exposing passwords when a will becomes public record, anti-hacking laws and most companies' "terms of service" agreements prohibit anyone from accessing an account that isn't theirs. That means loved ones technically are prohibited from logging onto a dead person's account.

 

The Dead .Edu and Dead .Org Domain EXIT Plan

2007

Once you forget to renew your domain name and find that snaps it up legally through a domain registrar but illegally when it comes to trademark law - you have only 2 choices - pay a lawyer or pay the cybersquatter to get it back. Either way it's going to cost money. So relative to paying a lawyer, paying a squatter is cheaper. And the crime, if there was one, is nebulous. Arguably, all he did was snap up an unregistered domain. The price to defend that trademark is $2-3,000 just to file the claim, but getting a lawyer to do it - that'd be more like $15-$20,000.

Domain Death Should be thought through initically as part of the web development plan. SECURITY

Bruce P. Mehlman <mehlman@ta.doc.gov>
Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy
US Dept of Commerce,
145h and Constitution Ave, NW
Washington, DC
20230

11/12/01

Dear Sir,

My name is Karen Ellis and I am the Founder of the Educational CyberPlayGround
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com

I am an educator and have been on the net since 1991 before there was a www. and started the conversation about dead education website domains becoming porn sites on my mailing list called Diversity University Collaboratory.
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/diversity.html

About me:
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/AboutUs/

I would like to give you a summary below of some of my remarks regarding the topic of the responsibilities of dead education site domain name owners for their dead domains that are bought and used by pornographers.

-- Educators and Education Business Owners who don't realize what is going on need to read a set of standards for them.

-- Education Professionals should be held accountable for providing an Exit Plan for their Dead Dots. "Professionals" have a responsibility, a moral responsibility to the public they serve. They are obliged to protect the citizenry, as well as other standards of conduct. I feel being a Good Netizen is part of an Education "Professional's" responsibility if they own a domain name and website.

-- ALL DOMAIN NAME OWNERS ARE IN BUSINESS

-- Educators who are referred to as "PROFESSIONALS' and who have "BOUGHT A DOMAIN NAME" have "GONE INTO BUSINESS".

-- The perception by educators is that if they don't sell anything on their site they are not in the marketplace, and feel they have no responsibility to understand the commercial connections to domain name ownership.

-- "Educators" who own domains and decide to let them die have a responsibility to bury their dead dots with dignity.

-- Educators are considered Professionals and have duty to make sure they do not hurt the public, but protect it.They must not let their domain name land into porn hands where it will be seen in public spaces like the classroom or even the library by a well intentioned learner who gets the unwelcomed surprise, and annoyance. Example <http://www.21ct.org> originally started by McGuffy and a million dollars of funding from the University of Phoenix and smaller contributions from other sources. They are obliged to protect the netizenry from any harm that may come to them as a result of their website.

-- .org .net or.gov are in business, with grant writers, DC connections, Fortune 500 connections, University connections, they are part of the supply chain somehow and they are absolutely trying to make money! Orgs can make more money than any for profit company www.21ct.org had DC connections, a boat load of money, hired a PR firm to brand them, position them, Pr for them, everything a 'BUSINESS' does to make money.

-- The CEO of www.21ct.org McGuffy should be sued for letting the domain name become porn. I think it pure negligence to have let the site get into that position and there was enough funding to own that domain forever. That grant money they got was mine, it was my tax payer money!! They are accountable to the tax payer for their behavior. They were given $1 million and more followed. And their site is now a porn site!! Who were the Education CXO's responsible for his? And who is going to hold them accountable for the tax payer money they were given and squandered? Who owns it now?

The Hostmaster (NETBLK-LANLA-1)
7 Vardanants St., # 32
Yerevan,, 375010
AM

Netname: LANLA-1
Netblock: 66.51.203.0 - 66.51.203.255

Coordinator:
Lazar, Ed (EL334-ARIN) ipadmin@elazy.net
707-266-2039 x4343

High Plains Regional Technology in Education Consortium http://hprtec.org/ became a gambling site. It used to help educators, administrators, and technology coordinators power students' learning with technology. TrackStar lets you enter a collection of URLs, and TrackStar will organize them into an interactive, online presentation, or sort through the many lessons- organized by grade level and subject.

*** The Education Domain Death EXIT Plan
Should be thought about and executed as part of the web development plan when initiated.

1st - Take the pages down and let the 401 error page be there.

2nd - Own your domain for a long time until there was no traffic and becomes a worthless property, then dropping it would probably be ok.

3rd - Offer your site to a education professional for free who'd want to take care of it so that it didn't die and would protect it.

4th - Sell it to someone who wanted it for commercial reasons that signed a contract that said it wouldn't be sold to porn into perpetuity or something.

5th - Simply sending a "that's all folks...." message to mailing lists is not enough.

6th - When domain name owners spend time putting their domains into the search engines they are obligated to spend the same amount of time and more removing their dead domain and clean up the cyber trash they are leaving behind.

Search engines will remove the URL and all the other ones linking to it. If Education Domain name owners put a site up that they want the public to see and use and never put into a search engine they are still morally responsible to remove the URL from search engines, because they did not intend to keep the information on the site protected behind a database from the public. They wanted the public there, they made it for the public.

-- Professional Educators hold students to state standards when delivering curriculum but when educators go on the net they will be held to real world standards.

-- The STANDARD for a PROFESSIONAL in EDUCATION is to do what they need to do to bury the dead dot with dignity. If they had the money to buy the domain, and built a site for the public to have access to USE then they are obliged to clean up their cyber trash left behind if they abandon their domain name and let it die.

-- I would recommend the government demand Network Solutions and VeriSign Inc. provide a quarantine bin for dead education domain names at no cost for a period of time to be protected from the purchase of porn sites.


Sincerely,

Karen Ellis
Founder Educational CyberPlayGround
<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>~~~~~<>

REPLY:

Subject: Re: At Issue: Site owners Duty to bury Dead Education Sites with Dignity
To: Administrator
January 17, 2001

From: mehlman at ta.doc.gov
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 16:28:41 -0500

Thanks for your email. I share concerns about the ease with which children can access pornography on the Internet, and appreciate your efforts and recommendations.

Bruce P. Mehlman
Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy U.S. Department of Commerce mehlman at ta.doc.gov

----------------------------------


Baltimore Sun
Md. ballet troupe tangled in Web's stickier strands Abandoned address snapped up for porn http://www.baltimoresun.com/bal-te.md.porn16nov16.story
By Johnathon E. Briggs
Baltimore Sun Staff
Originally published November 16, 2001

[.... JUST CAPITALISM

"It's a dog-eat-dog world on the Internet, just as any business market is," said Karen Ellis, founder of the Educational CyberPlayGround, a Web site designed to teach educators how to use the Internet effectively, and a proponent of better disposal of expired domain names.

"It's not personal, it's not extortion, it's capitalism.
...]

WASHINGTON POST
When Domains Go Unrenewed, the Opportunists Swoop In
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1229-2001Nov22.html
By Dina ElBoghdady
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 22, 2001; Page E05

[... Many registration firms also provide grace periods, usually from 45 to 60 days, in which to renew the contract, said Shonna Keogan, spokeswoman for Register.com, which also registers Web addresses. But none of the registration firms interviewed felt responsible for tracking what becomes of the lapsed names that are legally purchased by other customers.

That responsibility falls squarely on the individuals and companies that bought the domain names in the first place, said Karen Ellis, founder and chief executive of the Educational CyberPlayground, a Web site created to help educators use the Internet.

"They need to have an exit plan when they let go of a name," Ellis said. "They need to be responsible for cleaning up their cyber ghost."...]

Take over of an Ernst and Young education site
Lutheran Women's Missionary League WAS www.ilwml.org but they didn't keep it. They choose not to renew their domain name for $35.00 a year and let it go. They didn't have an exit plan. It has now gone porn. They choose to spend however much money to buy a new domain name http://www.lwml.org. They choose to save the $35.00 a year it costs to keep www.ilwml.org that they should have pointed to the new domain anyway if they knew what they were doing on the net.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Thursday, January 10, 2002
by Joyce Kasman Valenza tech.life@school
From Education Site To Porn Portal
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/living/columnists/joyce_kasman_valenza/2436549.htm
Operators of some locations for children have let domain names lapse. Porn-napping often follows.
Educational sites and sites created by educators are fair game. And, unfortunately, sleazy operators are out there ready to pounce on prime Web real estate. But Ellis said she felt that much of the responsibility rests with the site creators, often teachers.
"I am flabbergasted by naiveté of educators," Ellis said. "The buying of a domain name puts them squarely in the marketplace as a business. Your domain name has monetary value. It's a piece of real estate. You wouldn't let anyone sit on your property and defile it."
Ellis said "educators who own domains and decide to let them die have a responsibility to bury their dead dots with dignity. There should be no whining, no victimization. Educators and nonprofits are obliged to protect the netizenry from any harm that may come to them as a result of their Web site."
Ellis also said everyone who builds a Web site has an obligation to come up with an exit plan early on. If a site is pulled down from a server, it may be necessary to keep the domain name indefinitely or until there is no traffic. She said the small cost was well worth maintaining a good reputation.
"If you move to another site, have the old domain point to the new one. Do whatever you can to get rid of cyber ghosts."
Ellis also recommended letting search engines know when a site comes down. "Spend the same effort you put into submitting the site into getting it out," she said.
Ellis looks at the issue metaphorically: "When you go to the beach, you might only go in up to your ankles. But the shark can eat you simply because you have now made yourself part of the food chain. This is commerce. There is no lifeguard. And if you can't figure it out, you're lunch."

Union News Sunday Republican
Peter Pan Bus falls victim to cybersquatters
Sunday, December 30, 2001
By PATRICIA NORRIS
http://www.masslive.com/News/unionnews/featuresindex.ssf?/features/pstories/ae1230pe.html

There are no controls to prevent the material from popping up on screens, said Karen Ellis, a Philadelphia educator and founder of CyberPlayground, an Internet education site.
"State laws and federal laws are nowhere near capable of dealing with the Internet at this point," said Ellis. "The legislators don't know or understand who is in charge of the Net to make things happen. It is still the frontier and this is the Wild West."
Ellis believes original owners like Peter Pan should be held responsible for the fate of their old domain names.
"Every good business has an exit plan," she said.
As prevention strategies Ellis suggests companies own their old domain name until traffic slows enough to render the site unprofitable or discourage use by retaining the Web name but taking down the site. To do otherwise, she says, "is pure negligence."

Bury dead education dots with dignity
By Karen Ellis
October 1, 2002
http://www.eschoolnews.com/News/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=4004
Educators have a number of responsibilities in today's world, ranging from providing basic skills for learning, to appreciating an increasingly diverse culture and a more closely connected world, to navigating the complex opportunities for online study. The latter responsibility involves more than teaching students about online tools and exposing them to the vast information resources on the internet. It also involves not exposing students and others to pornographic web sites because of negligence in “decommissioning” sites that end in .edu, .org, or any other domain designation.

FAQ

  • Precedent Setting Prosecution 9/3/03 FIGHTING BACK -
    Under a portion of the federal "Amber Alert" which includes the "Truth in Domain Names" statute that makes it a crime to deceive minors You can now prosecute the owner of misspelled domains, hijacked domains, and Cybersquatters who lure and send children and teens to graphic porn sites.
    " because teenagers and young people tend not to know how to spell."
    http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/crime/nyc-porn0904,0,3615935.story?coll=nyc-topheadlines-left
    (RealVideo)
    http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/crime/nyc-wbarrest0904,0,322054.realvideo?coll=nyc-topheadlines-left

  • Cybersquatting Legislation Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) definition of cybersquatting
    United States Code
    TITLE 15. COMMERCE AND TRADE
    CHAPTER 22—TRADEMARKS
    SUBCHAPTER III--GENERAL PROVISIONS
  • One way to determine a reasonable market value is to get it appraised at a site like http://www.greatdomains.com . However, I must give you a huge caution that what they determine it might sell for is not necessarily anywhere near what the market will support, and certainly doesn't determine that anyone might want it. Appraise Your Domain Name - Names based on four key criteria, or the four C's: Character, Commerce, .Com and Comparables, otherwise known as Comps.
  • What do Parents need to know about protecting children on the Internet?
  • How do you protect and guard your domain name.
  • About Domain Names
  • Get A Free Domain Name
    ZA NiC was created to provide free domain registration under ZA.NET and ZA.ORG to companies, not-for-profit organisations or private users who cannot afford the fees demanded by some domain name registrars or believe that DNS should be a freely available resource, for organisations and individuals.
  • DOMAIN NAME DISPUTES & RESOLUTION PROVIDERS How easily domain names can be stolen and the legal problems of getting your domain back.
  • About ICANN
  • ICANN announces selection for new top level domains why didn't they have one ending in .xxx that would solve the problem?
  • Parked domains mean huge advertising dollars for cybersquatters like Go Daddy and Microsoft. Go Daddy has 4.5 million parked domains. Making domain names artificially scarce.

How to Remove a Site from Search Engines

A Standard for Robot Exclusion
*Added 11/13/01 (partial list of spiders)
This example indicates that no robots should visit this site further, it will refuse all robots:
# go away
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Help to make your Robots Txt File

Check the Robots txt file to see if you did it correctly.


YAHOO Please use our online change form. Indicate in the message field that you would like your listing deleted. For security purposes, we will need the original email address used to submit the site.

GOOGLE - Google, Inc.
2400 Bayshore Parkway
Mountain View CA 94043
phone: (650) 330-0100
fax: (650) 618-1499

Google search result that you suspect is spam, we ask that you submit a report at: http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Find out who links to you link:url.com shows you all the pages that point to that URL
click on http://www.google.com and type in link:the_name_of_your_own_domain

The word "site" followed by a colon enables you to restrict your search to a specific site use site:sampledomain.com

Why isn't Googlebot obeying my robots.txt file?

Remove your URL or your Google Groups Post Immediately http://www.google.com/remove.html

ISSUES

Trapped in the Web Without an Exit Can't Go Back? Can't Find Home? How Webmasters Use Dirty Tricks to Ensnarl Surfers

Net Censorship Attempt

Supreme Court asked to rule on online porn law
By Patti Waldmeir in Washington
Published: November 28 2001 19:00 | Last Updated: November 28 2001 19:09
The US Supreme Court hears arguments in a test case for free speech online and the federal law aimed at shielding children from online pornography. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which, along with website operators, brought the suit, claims the law unconstitutionally restrains free speech because it also prevents adults from seeing pornography that they have a legal right to access.

The Child Online Protection Act
,
passed in 1998, would make it a crime for online commercial operations knowingly to place objectionable material within the unrestricted reach of children. Posting material deemed "harmful to minors" could mean fines and six months in jail.

Details
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31561-2001Nov28.html
The Supreme Court this week heard arguments in the Ashcroft vs. ACLU case that seeks to strike down the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) signed by President Clinton in 1998. Although lower courts have sided with the ACLU and prevented the federal government from enforcing the law, several justices were uneasy about eliminating COPA because it was the second such bill from Congress, after the Supreme Court struck down a similar 1996 law, the Communications Decency Act. The Supreme Court has admitted the government does have a role in regulating Internet decency standards, though defining those standards has proven difficult. If the government is successful in upholding COPA, commercial Web sites would be required to keep inappropriate content away from children. (Washington Post, 29 November 2001)

National Academy of Sciences online porn hearing 12/13/00 in DC
Tools and Strategies for Protecting Kids from Pornography and Their Applicability to Other Inappropriate Internet Content
Contact Herb Lin Study Director of this project 202-334-3191 hlin@nas.edu
He extends an open invitation to provide information and materials that will better inform the committee. Anyone who feels that the committee has received "bad" information, or not received more useful and relevant and "good" information, is invited to contact me with his or her views. I will pass your views onto the committee, and schedule permitting, I will arrange for a direct interaction with you and the committee (or parts thereof). The making of specific recommendations about what approaches are better or worse is out of bounds for the committee. Our job is to articulate pros and cons of different approaches in a fair-minded way.

The Media Coalition put together a brief showing that effects research is ideologically driven and seriously flawed.

The Dangers of Pornography? A Review of the Effects Literature

Sites That Are Now Porn Collection
by Art Wolinsky
-- warning example this http://www.wenpa.org/ is now a sex site
8/6/02 The web site prosforhire.com, which had an education section, now redirects visitors to a porno site.

Euro Teen Sluts take on Ernst & Young
By Tim Richardson
Posted: 25/10/2001 at 09:43 GMT
An educational Web site run by Ernst & Young has been replaced by a XXX porn site featuring "165,000 Barely Legal Teen Movies", the global professional services company admitted yesterday.

REPORT INTERNET FRAUD

2014 BOOKMARKS DEAD OR ALIVE
Notes on Bookmarks from 1997