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katie.com hijacking

Unsurprisingly, the book received massive press attention in the States when it was launched in April 2000. It has since been through several reprints, been printed across the world, and Katie has managed to make a career out of retelling her tale. Most recently an entire TV show called ‘Katie.com’ aired in the US. She now plans to launch a school curriculum to teach kids about online safety, called, inevitably, Katie.com.

There is only one snag however – the actual Internet domain ‘Katie.com’ is owned by a completely different Katie – Katie Jones, and she lives in the UK. Katie is furious over what she sees as the hijacking of her domain name – bought for her in 1996 by her husband. Ever since the book was published – four years after she had first been bought it – Katie Jones has received masses of email and heavy traffic to her site but wants none of it. She has had to pull her own content off visible pages on the site, and has posted instead a protest blog about how the book’s publishers – Penguin – have effectively made it impossible for her to use her own property.

The most interesting thing in this situation seems to be the lawyers argument that they’ve invested resources and money into building a brand around the name, so the original owner cannot resell the name to make a profit. It seems to me more a case of squatting than anything else. If you build a house on somebody else’s land, do you really have a recourse if they sell the land to someone else?
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