Confessions Of A Cybersquatter

Ramblings

from the it's-a-tough-job dept

An amusing article from Fortune. The writer had written an article a couple of years ago about how almost all domain names that include the name of a celebrity had been bought up by one of two squatting companies that made “fan sites” for those domains. The only name he found that hadn’t been taken was that of Joyce DeWitt, who apparently played Janet on the sitcom Three’s Company. So, for the hell of it, the writer bought the domain for himself. After a year or so he finally put up a silly little site at the domain explaining what happened. He recounts the fan and hate mail he received for putting up the site. Eventually, Joyce DeWitt (or her “people”) decided they wanted the domain themselves, so he handed it over. He says they haven’t updated the site, but when I went there it was down. Perhaps it’s getting bombarded following the Fortune story. Update: Aha. The Joyce DeWitt site is up again.