SUFFOLK, ENGLAND — Although there’s plenty of faking and fakery in porn, nobody likes a fake – but that’s precisely what four years worth of innocent visitors to what they thought would be the Framlingham College website have endured. Instead of finding information about the college’s courses and other offerings, surfers encountered a banner farm heavy with Canadian porn links. But no more.
After a four-year court battle, the Suffolk, England college has finally reclaimed its Framlingham.co.uk URL and can put “Mature Sex” behind it.
In 2005, the college decided to make its presence known online. Alas for its code jockeys, students, instructors and board of directors, the domain was already owned by an entity known as Realm Solutions, Inc. in Canada. Instead of a brochure of the college’s educational services, visitors to the site got an eye full of sex ed.
Alas also for the college’s legal team, Nominet, a firm that begin handling .uk disputes in 1996 determined that Realm Solutions had purchased the domain fair and square in January of 2005. There was nothing to be done except think up a more creative way to drive traffic away from the obvious domain and toward something less intuitive.
Although the majority of complaints to Nominet are resolved promptly in favor of the complaintant, about a third go into mediation and another quarter require an independent judge.
In the case of Framlingham College, the path to success was a long – but ultimately successful one. After a series of appeals, Nominet has determined in the college’s favor and Realm Solutions has handed over the domain name without asking for a farthing.
“In general, if there is a legitimate complaint from a business or individual, we will hand over the domain name,” Realm Solutions representative Rob Montgomery explained to The Daily Telegraph. “Unfortunately, in this case, we dropped the ball and didn’t get back in time to allow that to happen.”
College headmistress Gwen Randall had no kind words for the company that had held her college’s URL captive for so long, calling the behavior “pernicious” and stating that “We’re a Christian school, so to have a site, with our name, linking to porn and smut is horrible.”
