Whitehouse.com
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- The correct title of this article is whitehouse.com. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
whitehouse.com was an adult and political entertainment website that first came online in 1997. According to a statement on the web, it was originally created by Dan Parisi as a place where uncensored discussion of government policies could occur before adult content was added to make it more profitable[citation needed].
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[edit] Controversy
Part of the controversy about whitehouse.com was that users wishing to visit the website of the White House (www.whitehouse.gov) could easily go to the adult website instead. Although .gov as a top-level domain is available only to official government sites in the United States, .com is a much more common ending on the web, and is frequently entered by mistake. In addition, many web browsers add ".com" to the end of an address if no suffix is entered, so simply typing "whitehouse" into the address bar would lead one to whitehouse.com. Because of the explicit and commercial content of the site, it was frequently cited as one of the most egregious examples of domain name misuse, up until the domain was sold.
The website whitehouse.org, a humor site that satirizes the U.S. president, remains controversial for similar reasons, although less so because its content is usually within the bounds of the PG-13 rating.
[edit] Opposition
In 1997, the Clinton administration sent Dan Parisi a cease and desist letter stating, "... we do not challenge your right to pursue it or to exercise your First Amendment rights, but we do challenge your right to use the White House, the President, and the First Lady as a marketing device. For adult internet users, that device is, at the least, part of a deceptive scheme. For younger Internet users, it has more disturbing consequences." The letter had no effect and the site stayed up.
In 1998 Jim Salmon was so appalled by the idea of how many kids get tricked into going to this site that he personally pointed all of his domains to that site, hoping to generate enough controversy to get people to shut the site down. He owned 60 domain names, many of which were domains for popular country music artists such as leannrimes.com and shaniatwain.org. His plan backfired, and instead he started to get heat from country singers who were angry at what he had done. Dan Parisi put a disclaimer at the top of his site denying any responsibility for all the celebrity domains being pointed at his site. Eventually Salmon conceded and pointed all of his domains back to where they used to be.
[edit] Current status
In 2004 Parisi decided to sell the domain, mainly because of his son who would be in kindergarten the next year. At this point he was making US$1 million annually from the site alone. Parisi had said he did not want to sell the domain name to anyone in the adult entertainment industry, and even claimed to have turned down what was essentially a blank check from a buyer hiding his identity behind his broker.
In November 2005, the domain appeared to be used for a real estate site. In December 2005 it contained only Google ads, with a notice that a site for investigating people by checking their public records would be coming.
In March 2006, whitehouse.com called itself "America's Free Speech Forum". It advertised a cartoon contest and presented links to Associated Press political news stories.
In July 2006, the site was a real estate site again, and forwarded to www.house.com.
As of November 2006, it is a search engine for people, which searches over 90 million White Pages listings and 14 million Yellow Pages listings.
[edit] See also
This type of behavior with trademarks led the United States government to the passage of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. The ACPA, however, only protects the registration of trademarks as domain names and would not help the U.S. government with the registration of the names of its offices or agencies.
