Netscape has been pushing their new browser "Communicator 4.5" for months. Communicator 4.5 has a new "Smart Browsing" feature that takes users to the Website that it assumes you want. When you type "whitehouse" into the browser address bar, Communicator 4.5 will direct you to Whitehouse.gov instead of WhiteHouse.com, a smartly named adult site that has long been capitalizing on misdirected traffic. "Smart Browsing" bases it's navigation on keywords instead of the actual domain address. \n WhiteHouse.com received a letter from the U.S. Government in February '98 stating the government may take action against WhiteHouse.com over trademark infringement. To date, WhiteHouse.com remains live at the same URL on the Web, it even includes political spoofs and links to the Starr report. Parisi now owns one non-U.S. trademark to the name and is seeking a U.S. trademark for the name WhiteHouse. \n Nov 3, lawyers representing the owner of New Jersey based www.WhiteHouse.com, Dan Parisi, sent a letter to Netscape attorneys charging the "Smart Browsing" feature on Communicator 4.5 constitutes a possible violation of the porn site's legal rights. "The problem with keywords," said Parisi, "is that they avoid some domains without letting the user know. But that's exactly what Netscape wants." The company has said Whitehouse.com is the type of site its browser avoids, sending users who type "whitehouse" in the address box to Whitehouse.gov, President Clinton's official site. \n Parisi posted the letter that his' lawyers sent Netscape on the website www.NetscapeSucks.com, which he owns. Parisi invites other domain name holders to join him in a possible lawsuit against Netscape of Mountain View, CA. In a statement emailed to AVNonline, Parisi wrote,
"A lot of the Adult industry's big players own a lot of generic names such as sex.com and pussy.com where the keyword minus the .com is now going to Netscape Netcenter and Netscape is selling ads on those keywords after years of people going to those sites directly. The adult Industry better be involved since if Netscape prevails they will be the biggest pornographic player and will be able to dictate who survives in the Adult Industry as well as most online industries if this continues. Also most of the big adult players have names such as playboy, hustler and penthouse which are certainly not unique and are words out of the dictionary so in the future Netscape could hypothetically sell them to the highest bidder in a couple of years, once the system has taken hold and where they had not been challenged by the online community. Take a look at our revised Netscapesucks.com page for more info and links."
At press time, Netscape had not released an official response to the letter sent by Parisi's lawyers. When contacted, Netscape officials would not make comment on this subject. However, they have previously stated that anyone who fills out the complete URL such as http://www.whitehouse.com will go directly to the site, therefore the browser still functions with the current domain name system. Also, Netscape claims that the "Smart Browsing" keyword system recognizes domain names that are registered trademarks. \n We are not sure why it took WhiteHouse.com so long to get on the browser bashing bandwagon. When we did research, we found that when we type "whitehouse" into the address bar of our Netscape 4.06 browsers, it takes us straight to www.whitehouse.gov. Yet type the same "whitehouse" in the address bar of Netscape 4.05 or earlier versions and you will be taken to www.WhiteHouse.com. We also tried typing "whitehouse" into our MSIE 4.72 browsers and found ourselves at www.WhiteHouse.com. \n Suffice to say, suffixes matter. If you are trying to register an Internet domain name, you go to www.internic.net to do so. If you mistakenly type www.internic.com, you will be taken to a place that looks very similar, and can register a domain name, for about twice the normal $70.00 fee that InterNIC charges for domain name registration. Surfers beware, correct spelling and suffixes of domains are very important. Learn them, know them, use them.
