Porn-Napping: The Story Goes On

In the October Chat Room column ("When Good Web Sites Go Bad "), we discussed the plague of "porn-napping," in which various Web "entrepreneurs" snatch up lapsed Web domain addresses of cultural and educational sites, and set up new sites filled with pornographic Web links. Sites that have been porn-napped include sites for the 21st Century Teacher Network, Hanukkah.com, Kidslearn2read.com, and the Nebraska Department of Education. The recent disappearance of several of these sites from the Net is an encouraging sign, but others remain. Check the Online Internet Institute's (OII) page at www.oii.org/html/porn-napping.shtml to keep track of the controversy. Art Wolinsky of the OII is pleased by recent events, but he says, "...it remains to be seen whether it will do anything to eliminate the apparently poor decision making that may have allowed the situation to exist in the first place." SLJ recommends that you check the links on your library's site frequently—and manually.