What's Mine is MINE!

Recently I read a news story about a woman whose domain name is being hijacked.

Some of you may have heard of a book called "Katie.com" about a little girl whose parents parked her in front of a computer instead of spending time with her and teaching her about the real life. She apparently was drawn in by the lies of someone on the Internet (doi), and agreed to meet this person in real life, where she was molested. Gee, how many times does this have to happen before parents realize that its their responsibility to keep track of their kids and not let them go off on their own before they have a brain? By the way, I'm the spitting image of Nicole Kidman, and rich... uh huh.

Penguin books published her story, and since the victim's name is Katie, they called the book Katie.com. They were going to call it "girl.com", but apparently girl.com is a porn site, which defeats the entire message of the book. So, they called it Katie.com... except that Katie.com actually belongs to a person named Katie... not the girl who was abused, but a woman that was given the domain as a gift from her husband in 1996 to share pictures of her family and blog. The abused girl has her own domain called Katiet.com, but apparently that doesn't trip off the tongue and isn't "marketable".

Since the publishing of katie.com, zillions of abused people, sickos, whack jobs, and morons have been posting to katie.com about their stories, asking questions, looking for help, much to the non-amusement of poor Katie... who leads a normal life and just wants to share pictures of her family. She asked Penguin to stop using her domain name, and sanely asked them to rename the book katiet.com so people would be directed to the proper site where they could vent their spleens about their abuse, or post crack pot crap as they wished. Penguin (being a big mondo corporation who claims to be the leading publisher of children's books) sent their lawyers after poor Katie and asked her to donate her domain to them. Um.. what?

Once the initial hoopla over the book ended, the e-mail flood slowed, and Katie thought she could get her Web site back... until Al Roker latched onto the Katie story, now it's begun again.

First of all, why should this woman "donate" her domain to a big named publisher who should have checked to make sure they weren't infringing on her domain in the first place. They checked out girl.com and found it inapropriate, so one has to think that they found katie.com to be easy pickings. Katie isn't a horrible person for not forking over what is rightly hers to the publishers, she's not "anti-child" or "pro child abuse" because she wants to hold onto her domain. It's Penguin's evil plan to get what they want by pressuring an innocent person to hand over something they want.

The abused Katie claims that it was all Penguin's doing and she had no choice in the matter. To her I have to say "didn't you learn your lesson the first time you were manipulated and used?" I certainly don't think you are qualified to write a book telling kids how to keep from being manipulated and used when you continue to be so yourself. Whether its a child molestor, or a big company, you are a pawn and haven't learned your lesson apparently.

To Penguin, I have to say: you really suck! You publish children's books, so what are you teaching children by what you are doing? Hey, if you want something, harrass and steal it!

To Katie, the real owner of katie.com I say: keep up the good fight and don't let go! I tried to think of some way for her to get back. Publish porn on it... funny, but nah. Perhaps throw "Hamster dance" on there to annoy everyone? Stick a HUGE link on there to the real katiet.com site and tell people to harrass her instead?

Inevitably, Katie should be able to do anything she wants to her website, and she shouldn't have to fear opening her e-mail every day because some sicko, whacko, or just plain idiot can't see that this isn't the site of katiet and her tale of woe.

Leave Katie.com alone! Spread the word of this to your friends and tell Penguin books to shove it and rename the stupid book. Tell Katiet to grow some nads and stop getting used and manipulated, and support katie who is just an average person like you and I, and some day we may be dealing with the same crap if we let Penguin win.