A recent Sun Microsystems television commercial inadvertently advertises for a major Adult Internet site. AVNonline made Sun Microsystems aware of the blunder Monday, November 30th 1998, asking Sun to reedit or remove the commercial from television. \n The Sun commercial starts out with a plain white background and ".com" depicted on the right hand side of the TV screen in black text, vertically centered. Voice over then states "We are the dot, in .com". Random images begin to flash to the left of the ".com" text, which remains illustrated on the screen for the duration of the commercial. These images are depicting URL's from the Web as the commercial's audio message begins explaining how Sun Microsystems is making networking easier. The flashing images freeze frame every few seconds with a short audio elaboration for each. The third image that is depicted is an image of The Capitol building in Washington D.C. which is followed by the ".com" text. Audio for this image states that you can find information about The President and U.S. Government here, inferring whitehouse.com. \n You may be thinking, "what is wrong with that? 'WhiteHouse.com' is the Government's website".
!! WRONG !!
All U.S. Federal and State Government Web sites end in the suffix ".gov". The official website for the U.S. President is www.whitehouse.gov. Most U.S. commercial Web sites have the suffix ".com", unless they own their own server and opt for using the".net" suffix that is reserved for Internet Service Providers. The commercial website at www.whitehouse.com is an Adult Oriented Website called The WhiteHouse, owned by Dennis Parisi. Parisi owns an offshore copyright for the name WhiteHouse. He has been named in a suit filed by the U.S. Government over the use of the name WhiteHouse for his sex site, but the court case is still pending and Parisi continues to use the WhiteHouse name. \n The Capitol building in Washington D.C. is often mistaken for the White House building. Both buildings are often identified as the White House by Americans. \n WhiteHouse.com contains Adult and XXX content including photos, streaming video, live sex feeds, live sex chat, erotic text & audio stories, adult cartoons, and even the Starr Report. It is a pretty safe bet that Sun Microsystems does not desire to advertise or promote the sex site, "WhiteHouse.com". \n "The commercial in question is promoting our network products and services," said Margaret Cuevas of Sun Microsystems. "The image shown on the commercial is not the White House, it is the Capitol building in Washington. We really don't have anything more to say on the subject." \n When asked what Web site or URL Sun was trying to depict by showing the Capitol Building followed by ".com", and referring to the U.S. Government in audio, Cuevas stated, "No comment". Celerity Solutions of Irvine, CA. (NASDAQ:CLTY), an inventory/supply-chain software development company is what you will find on the Net at www.capitol.com. It is again a safe bet that Sun Microsystems does not wish to advertise for Celerity Solutions, a major supply-chain competitor to Sun. \n It is clear that Sun is referring to our U.S. Government's website in the commercial, especially if you listen to the audio portion of the commercial. It is equally clear that someone made a huge error while producing the commercial, by not realizing the ".gov" suffix is needed to access the Web site of the U.S. White House in Washington. Yet, when made aware of the dilemma, Sun would not admit that their commercial was misleading and could result in sending unknowing viewers to the "www.whitehouse.com" sex site. Maybe they will sing a different tune after hundreds of complaints are registered?
