July 8, 1997

Bill-is-Lord.com

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Domain names on the Internet are like brands: Companies reserve site names for products long before those products hit the shelves. But on the Internet there’s a catch: Network Solutions Inc. of Herndon, Va., is the only company in the United States authorized to hand out non-governmental domains. This virtual monopoly power recently prompted the Department of Justice to launch an antitrust investigation. It also means that W ebheads who want a peek into the future can scan the firm’s InterNIC database to see what their favorite companies might be up to.

The InterNIC listing for Microsoft, for example, reveals three downright sinister domain names, registered just two weeks ago, that suggest the gang in Redmond know exactly where they want to go today, tomorrow, and forever:

BILL-IS-LORD.COM
RESISTANCE-IS-FUTILE.COM
WESHALLPREVAIL.COM

These domains are all registered to Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Washington, but there is no content on them quite yet. And according to Microsoft, there never will be.

Microsoft spokesman Mark Murray was happy to explain the corporate stance on domain names: “We aquire and register domains that we intend to use and to communicate with customers.” When the MoJo Wire informed him that his company was listed as the owner o f the three foreboding domains in question, he claimed that an impostor had registered them, and that Microsoft would have them removed immediately. “What we’re seeing here is the Internet equivalent of throwing tomatoes at someone’s house.”

This isn’t the first time Microsoft has suffered the indignities of counterfeit domain names. In April, a Web entrepreneur named Danny Khoshnood threw a whole bushel of tomatoes at the Microsoft Network when he registered a slew of domains including “micr osoftnetwork.com.” Microsoft’s lawyers felt he was treading on copyright laws, and put an end to the misrepresentation with a firm request to knock it off or else. However, the lawyers didn’t say anything about relinquishing any of the domains, and Khoshn ood still holds about forty, attributed to an ownership entity called “Microsoft Network.com,” including:

FREEHOOKER.COM
KRISTYSTEEN.COM
FLIGHTSTIMULATOR.COM
DALLASCHEERLEADERS.COM
SEINFIELD.COM
KRISTYSTEEN.COM
PORNFORPORN.COM
CLICKTROPIXXX.COM
DIRTYBIRDS.COM
GEOCITYS.COM
MICHEALJACKSON.COM

Domain names like these — and the identities of their owners — can be viewed by anyone with the wits to do a whois search. To find out who owns a domain name, simply type it in. To find out what domai n names a company owns, just type in the company name — without a .com. The results are often illuminating, and occasionally just plain hilar ious.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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