SubscribeI don't know how I feel about the gov't getting involved- seems a bit like the sledgehammer-instead-of-the-flyswatter approach (and that bit about dragging in the "we're doing it to protect the children" gambit always gives me the willies). Pagejacking is fraud and theft of copyrighted material- since they're often stealing the full HTML of the page itself- and that might be actionable to an extent. Stealing a site layout and look is less clearcut, with millions upon millions of sites and pages out there- it's almost not worth pursuing excepting when someone is trying to fool users into thinking they're at a different site when they're not (Such as, say, setting up "yaho.com" to look exactly like yahoo.com, right down to the copyright footer at the bottom, for example), or stealing actual content. The one-off address thing is otherwise mostly harmless, both as satire and just innocuous coincidence: meatfilter isn't just some pop-up spawning hell, it's a legitimate (enough) site, as is ABCMews.com.
Mousetrapping is disgusting- and stupid, since it doesn't actually do anything except piss off the user- but beatable by the user and the technology without government intervention; however that one I can see a case made for- it would be akin to turning on a TV to PBS and having the PBS folk suddenly switch to a rebroadcast of Spice without warning. If you choose to go to a site- even through a mispelling- that's your responsibility, but if that site then forces you to go to sites you don't choose in any way, and without allowing you the option to opt-out short of killing off the whole browser process... well, I'm not sure what legal standing there would be to "go after" that, but it more than any other websurfer dirty trick is one I wouldn't be sad to see go- but not necessarily at the expense of inviting the government in and starting a horrible precedent.
posted by hincandenza at 12:44 PM on October 1, 2001
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Granted none of us wants to be redirected to a porn site when we are trying to get to metafilter, but on the other hand I have to give credit to someone smart enough to take advantage of common typos. The article does make reference to the fact that Home Depot, Amtrak and Coca Cola have been guilty of this practice in the past. Is the FTC going to target everyone that does this? Or simply the ones that have websites we don't want to see?
Just my two cents anyway.
posted by monique at 11:42 AM on October 1, 2001