Righthaven Gets Punked By Invalid Whois
Thursday, April 21st, 2011
“Copyright Troll” domain name suspended due to invalid whois information.
Copyright enforcer Righthaven LLC has been punked thanks to allegedly invalid whois information.
The company’s web site Righthaven.com currently shows an invalid whois notice from Go Daddy.
Anyone can make a complaint about invalid whois information. In Go Daddy’s case, the company sends a notice to the customer and gives them time to respond (assuming the email doesn’t bounce right away). If the domain owner doesn’t respond then the domain gets suspended and the customer is charged $10.
That’s what happened in this case.
I just got off the phone with Righthaven founder Steven Gibson. I explained what is going on (he wasn’t aware yet), and discovered that the email address on the whois was invalid.
Righthaven has been lambasted for its aggressive lawsuits, including its request that sites with copyright-infringing material hand over their domain names. So it’s a bit ironic.
It’s probably no big loss for Righthaven, though. A recent cache of its web site doesn’t show any content. But it’s possible the company uses it for email.
(via @rhvictims and DNN)
And you called him why?
tisk tisk tisk
@ Josh – to find out what part of the whois was wrong.
They use one big jpeg image as their website. by far the worst on the Internet.
Andrew, stick your hand out, here comes the ruler. lol
You should have called and said the whois was fine instead lol
@ kbingh – I guess it’s harder to scrape
It was me who reported invalid email on the record. Glad that Mr. Gibson swallowed his own medicine prescribed by dr. Karma.
And yes, they use righthaven.com for emails.
By the way, did Mr. Gibson explain WHY the e-mail on the record happened to be invalid? It’s a (slightly) amusing story. I know this story because I have written it.
@Anonon – sounds like someone hacked into it?
Well, I’m not proud of myself for doing that, but it was “beyond my control” (saying with John Malkovich’s intonations in “Dangerous Liaisons” movie).
Please remove my 2 last messages (and this one) – I don’t want to drag you into a potential trouble.
Drag him or yourself lol