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This story
was written by Keith Dawson for the Industry Standard's Posts
feature. It is archived here for informational
purposes only because The Standard's site is no more. This
material is Copyright 1999-2001 by Standard Media.
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Exploiting Elian
Within two weeks of Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez's November
1999 rescue at sea, cybersquatters and others began grabbing domain
names to capitalize on the boy's plight. Of the 40 we found that
have been registered since his rescue, one marks a site that
advocates Elian's reunion with his father (freeeliannow.org), one is
a get-paid-to-surf racket (elian-gonzalez.net), and six are clearly
marked for sale. The other 32 names are either parked or empty, and
could be for sale. Ironically, the domains elian.com and elian.net
were registered well before November by a California Web services
company. - Keith Dawson
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