Katie vs Katie

Sometimes the wrong thing comes out of good intentions. Seems there was this girl, Katherine “Katie” Tarbox. In the words of the bio from her best selling book - "When she was only thirteen, Ms. Tarbox was a victim of Internet predator and consequently became involved in a landmark Federal case. Her case was one of the first to be tried under the 1996 Communications Decency Act and is still referenced by many legal cases today."

The book she wrote is titled "Katie.com" and was published in 2001. The title has a nice ring to it so the publishers, Penguin Putnam Inc, had the great idea of making the title of her book a domain where they would put up all the online gunk that all publishers of books do these days. There was only one problem. The domain was registered in 1996 by another Katie, Katie Jones.

Now there are some of us who remember the rule that if you buy a domain name in good faith, i.e. don't try and register something like WallMart.com, then you owned the domain. But now the rules have changed. Big Business with rooms full of lawyers are attacking the little guy (or, in this case, girl) and are trying to force her to give up her domain. Now, it wasn't like this book was written and published before she registered the domain. This domain belongs to Katie Jones. Period.

I realize that this blog doesn't get much traffic but for the three or four that might see it I would ask you to contact Katie Jones and show her your support. There is no rightful or honest reason for her to give up what she's owned for 8 years just to help make some publishing company richer.

There are a lot of things that go on here in the virtual world that aren't nice and pretty. They need to be dealt with accordingly. Katherine Tarbox survived one of these incidents. But to then take that and turn it into some kind of sham, use it as leverage to force someone out of what is legally there's. That's coercion. And isn't that illegal?