Wikia Owned Wikileaks.com Domain; Assange Ignored Attempts To Hand It Over
from the domain-oddities dept
I had seen the BBC article from a week or so ago about Jimmy Wales talking about the complexity of Wikipedia and how it needs to improve, but hadn't read all the way to the end where there was a rather interesting tidbit. Copycense however alerted us to this little bit of trivia at the end about how Wikipedia's sorta sister company Wikia owns some Wikileaks domain names... including Wikileaks.com:Technically, the Wikia company has until this week legally owned domain names including wikileaks.net, wikileaks.com and wikileaks.us.Of course, I just checked the whois on the .com and the .net, and both say they're registered until 2012... so someone renewed the domains, but it's not clear who.
"We transferred the domains to them but they never completed the technical part," said Mr Wales. "All they needed to do was sign in and complete the transfer but they have never done it."
He said the domains had been registered "defensively" when Wikileaks launched in 2006.
"When they first launched they put out a press release that said the 'Wikipedia of secrets', which would have been a trademark violation.
"So someone in the office registered two or three domains."
He said that he regularly tries to prompt Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange to complete the transaction, to no avail.
"I saw someone else say that he's prone to saying 'I'm busy fighting superpowers' and that's exactly what he said to me."
Mr Wales said the domains would expire "this week".
"I'm not renewing them," said Mr Wales.
"We may ping them and say they are loose."
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They don't seem to be very good at the basics.
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Re:
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Send in the clones. It's the best way to hide the truth.
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Clones will come out, sure, but as has been repeated on TD over and over, COPYing doesn't matter, it's the execution. That counts for whistleblowers, too.
Wikileaks actually attempts to do the journalistic thing and verify the leaks before just dumping them out to the world. If their leaks were repeatedly discredited, people would stop listening to them.
Further, a clone only works if people are trusting enough to leak to it. If a few leakers were given up by the site, no one would give them anything new.
So the idea that thousands of clones would just "pop up" is wrong, in my opinion. And when the inevitable few DO appear, I think they'll be verified as trustworthy or not in fairly short order.
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As soon as there are a few and a bunch of traffic, the scammers will be all over it and then that's all.
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Dude, you're not even using logic for this argument...
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Re: Bad at Basics
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busy
Oh yes, I shall have to remember that one for future use...
; P
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Legal maneuver?
Perhaps accepting this offer creates some potential liability, or places them in an unfriendly jurisdiction?
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Re: Legal maneuver?
For a guy who keeps himself in hiding all the time, this is just another small, free way to keep the details unclear.
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...
Domain Name: WIKILEAKS.COM
Created on: 03-Jan-07
Expires on: 03-Jan-11
Last Updated on: 04-Oct-10
Domain Name: WIKILEAKS.NET
Created on: 03-Jan-07
Expires on: 03-Jan-11
Last Updated on: 04-Oct-10
Both are expired Mike. Makes me wonder how you "checked" and if all your "checks" are made that way...
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Re:
Domain Name: WIKILEAKS.COM
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS51.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server: NS52.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 04-jan-2011
Creation Date: 03-jan-2007
Expiration Date: 03-jan-2012
Domain Name: WIKILEAKS.NET
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS51.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Name Server: NS52.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientRenewProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 04-jan-2011
Creation Date: 03-jan-2007
Expiration Date: 03-jan-2012
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whois through ARIN shows the domains as expired.
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I checked whois.net, and it said 2012. I did not know that Arin would report different expiration dates. That's interesting to know, thanks for adding to the conversation (though, not sure why you felt the need to make a snide remark as you did).
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What you said is that you single sourced your contradictory information, and then didn't check it again with another source. Perhaps when looking to contradict someone (especially someone with no reason to lie) you might want to try a second source.
This post makes it clear where you stand on Wikileaks and Julian Assange, apparently they can do no wrong. (so why didn't you run the silly "losing half a million a week" story?)
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"We domainsquatted but Assange is the douche, not us. Amirite?"
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Check and recheck
Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Dates: Created 03-jan-2007 Updated 04-jan-2011 Expires 03-jan-2012
DNS Servers: NS51.DOMAINCONTROL.COM NS52.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
Info for both .net and .com ere the same. However, if you follow the whois information and look it up on GoDaddy, it does show it expired ... until you grab the underlying whois info from them, which shows the 2012 date. So, GoDaddy's data is a mess, but the whois seems consistent from multiple sources.
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Re: Check and recheck
@Anon: hah! fail.
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Re: Re: Check and recheck
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Domain expiration
What the author and some others are looking at is the 'registry' expiration date. When a domain name expires the registry automatically extends it for one year. The registrar then gets a chance to renew it if the customer wants it.
You need to view the registrar's data, not the registry (VeriSign)
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Re: Domain expiration
You need to view the registrar's data, not the registry (VeriSign)
Thanks for explaining that.
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Looking to do something that might help the cause, with these 2 names, but not sure what. (Of course, if the price gets too stupidly high - doubtful - i'll be sorely tempted to 'sell out'"
Ideas?
Wikileaks1776@gmail.com
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wikileaks.US - no renewal
The .US registry doesn't do that autorenew-on-expiration date (though they do auto-renew 45 days later)
Domain Expiration Date: Mon Jan 03 23:59:59 GMT 2011
So Wikia hasn't done a renew.
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Doesn't matter
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