CYBERSPACE — How long after a mainstream URL becomes available for purchase should an adult web presence wait to make the purchase? That appears to be one of the questions involved in a Utah dispute that centers around the procurement of the Utah Home Education Association’s (UHEA) abandoned URL by an adult webmaster.Where once parents could gain information about home schooling their children, surfers now can learn more about “parental secrets” and “moms on film,” a fact that has some Utah home schoolers enraged, offended, and cutting the new site owners absolutely no slack.
“There are predators out there,” UHEA president Jon Yarrington warns, going on to call the new owners of the discarded URL “sick, putrid people who do this on purpose.”
According to registration records, the current owner of the old domain, which was set aside when UHEA decided to redesign its site and re-launch it under a new name, purchased the URL as early as February 2005. The volunteer group realized that something had happened last all when it was contacted by a former webmaster, an event that repeated itself as parents increasingly went to the expired domain in search of information. This Monday, UHEA’s official complaint about the matter was received by the Utah attorney general’s office.
“When people refuse to be moral and decent and do what society expects them to do, then somebody has to step in and smack them,” Yarrington explains.
Those who might argue that the domain was available for sale without restrictions and that the organization could have saved itself a considerable amount of emotional distress had it either not changed its URL or retained it during the time of transition will not find Yarrington sympathetic to their message. “Freedom is a double-edges sword,” he insists. “It can be used for much good and it can be used for much evil.”
John Delaney, an internet experienced Salt Lake City based attorney believes that Yarrington’s group may have some recourse, including complaining to the domain registry and requesting that the URL be returned to UHEA or asserting that “UHEA” is protected by a common law right to service mark ownership and therefore not available to any other agency or organization for use. If all else fails, he proposes making a federal case of the situation, literally.
While the group makes up its collective mind about what to do next, press accounts indicate that Yarrington is simultaneously spreading the word about the new address and insisting that the old domain has been “pirated.”
Ken Wallentine, chief of investigations for the state’s attorney general’s office isn’t confident that Yarrington has a virtual foot to stand upon. “If (UHEA) let it expire, it’s not a crime,” he concludes. “There’s nothing for us to do.”
