FTC vs. First Amendment

David Honig honig at sprynet.com
Tue Oct 2 08:29:31 PDT 2001


So if someone goes to your site, the FTC can tell you how to 
communicate?  Or only if your site's DNS entry is hamming-close
to another?  Or only if you're communicating unPC (e.g., erotica)
content?

And how does "bombarding them with ads" differ from spam, which
has been 1st-amend. protected so far?

If you run with javascript enabled, you deserve what you get.
Keep your laws off my HTML.

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-7371736.html?tag=mn_hd


FTC shutters thousands of Web sites 
     By Reuters 
     October 1, 2001, 11:40 a.m. PT 

     WASHINGTON--A U.S. court shut down thousands of Web sites after it
     determined that they diverted Web surfers and held them captive while
     bombarding them with ads for pornography and gambling, the U.S.
government
     said on Monday. 

     According to the Federal Trade Commission, John Zuccarini, of
Andalusia, Pa., outside
     Philadelphia, operated more than 5,500 Web sites that diverted Web
surfers from their
     intended destinations and exposed them to pop-up ads. 

     Zuccarini did not immediately respond to calls for comment. 

     Zuccarini registered many
     misspellings of popular sites, such
     as Cartoonnetwork.com, the
     FTC said, in a bid to draw traffic
     from sloppy typists. Visitors to
     his sites often could not leave, as
     the "back" button on their Web
     browsers would be rigged to
     trigger more pop-up ads. 

     "After one FTC staff member
     closed out of 32 separate
     windows, leaving just two
     windows on the task bar, he
     selected the 'back' button, only to
     watch as the same seven windows that initiated the blitz erupted on
his screen, and the
     cybertrap began anew," the FTC said in its complaint, filed in the
U.S. District Court for
     the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. 

     The scheme is especially harmful to children or employees who may put
their jobs at risk
     when they inadvertently call up pornographic or gambling-related
material, the FTC said. 

     The district court has ordered Zuccarini to take his sites offline,
the FTC said, while the
     case continues. But as of early Monday afternoon, at least one site
registered to Zuccarini,
     Annakurnikova.com, was still functional. 

     Zuccarini had registered 41 variations on the name of pop star Britney
Spears, the FTC
     said. 

     In its court action, the FTC is seeking to get Zuccarini to return the
estimated $800,000 to
     $1 million he earns in advertising revenues. 

     According to the FTC, Zuccarini has been sued at least 63 times in the
last two years by
     trademark owners, celebrities or others seeking to recover variants of
their Internet domain
     names. He has lost 53 of those suits and been forced to return nearly
200 domain names,
     the FTC said. 





More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list