Saying he's concerned about what his preschool-age son might think, WhiteHouse.com owner Daniel Parisi says he's getting out of the adult Internet.
"[My son will] be going to kindergarten next year," Parisi told reporters, and he worries the boy might be taunted by classmates who know about the Website and the adult business the family had conducted until now.
There's also the matter of a new federal law prohibiting the use of misleading Web addresses to lure children and other unwilling surfers to adult sites. The site is often confused with the official Website for the White House, but Parisi may be picking a prime time to sell his site and name, since reports indicate a rebound for re-sale of Web addresses, such as the $1.3 million sale of Men.com in December 2003.
Parisi wouldn't say how much he thinks the WhiteHouse.com name might bring, but he has said the site earned over $1 million a year since he started it in 1997.
He might find a former combatant is now an interested buyer: The makers of White House apple sauce and apple juice told reporters they might contact Parisi to talk about a deal, after having fought him in court in a bid to force Parisi to give up the domain name.
WiredSafety leader Parry Aftab said WhiteHouse.com had long enough been "the poster child" for where children could bump into porn by mistake, since a lot of children doing homework online think of dot-com automatically when looking to visit the White House, and not dot-gov, the actual White House domain.
