January 06, 2000 07:17pm
Teen mag seeks to oust porn cybersquatters
Source: Reuters
(LOS ANGELES, CA) - A magazine for teenage girls on Thursday sued the operators of a pornographic Web site, accusing them of deliberate cybersquatting on an Internet address aimed at teens.
Unsuspecting teenage girls surfing the Internet for the Teen Magazine Web site are being confronted with bare breasts and erotica rather than the tips on makeup and pop stars they might expect by logging on to teenmagazine.com.
``We were so horrified and upset when we discovered this about two weeks ago,'' said Lynn Lehmkuhl of publishers Emap Petersen youth division. The magazine's editorial headquarters are in Los Angeles but the suit was filed in Federal Court in Camden, N.J., where the magazine is published.
Teen Magazine, with a monthly circulation of more than two million, has its own Web site Teenmag.com. It filed a lawsuit under new U.S. anti-cybersquatting legislation as a means of protecting both its readers and its reputation.
"This is just unconscionable. It would be irresponsible of us not to pursue this matter in every possible way," said Lehmkuhl.
She said the magazine was sure the pornographic Web address was deliberately using the name of the magazine. All the more distressing was the fact that attempts to exit the site take users deeper into hard core porn territory.
``It has been pretty well documented that people who seek out pornographic sites on the Internet use 'teen' as a search word,'' she said.
The magazine, aimed at 12- to 17-year-olds, and has already received a number of complaints from readers who have stumbled on the adult site.
The operators of the pornographic site could not immediately be reached for comment.
The anti-cybersquatting legislation was signed into law in November in a bid to curb the unauthorized use of brand names and trade marks in Web site addresses.
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