Patterico.com Is Back!
In a rare victory for the Little Guy against the Big Corporation, it appears that 1&1 has decided to do the right thing and give me back my domain patterico.com.
The whois entry for patterico.com now comes back to 1&1’s private registration address on my behalf. My site admin was able to redirect the IP address yesterday, and a 1&1 representative made the DNS changes. I’m able to reach the site by going to patterico.com (which we’re still temporarily redirecting to patterico.net for technical reasons).
According to the 1&1 representative who called me, he got involved in the process because he had been contacted by the PR agency for 1&1 and Sedo, which had received inquiries and interest from various journalists. Those journalists include journalist and screenwriter Bruce Feirstein, Fox News’s Ken LaCorte and Maxim Lott, and Andrew Breitbart of the Drudge Report. I feel that my domain was saved by the interest these journalists showed in the story, and I am grateful to them for their efforts to investigate a story about a big corporation pushing around the “little guy.”
Also, it was a tremendous boon when Glenn Reynolds linked my cry for help.
I very much appreciate the tremendous help I received from countless people, including the bloggers who linked the story, the people who sent 1&1 angry letters, the lawyers and law students who donated their time to walk me through the legal process, the people who sent donations, and everyone else who lent their moral support and other help and encouragement.
I am still interested in investigating whether this has happened to others in a similar fashion. If you hear of any such stories, please pass them along. Be aware that I am now stuck with 1&1 for 60 days; this is a general ICANN rule and can’t be changed. Once I finally get out of their clutches, I’ll consider what else to do, if anything.
P.S. Until the recent DNS changes fully propagate through the Internet, we’re going to keep up the automatic redirect to patterico.net. Within the next day or two, we’ll change the redirect so that it automatically redirects from patterico.net to patterico.com. You shouldn’t notice any real problems either way, but if you can reach patterico.com now, feel free to use your old bookmarks and links.
Thanks again to everyone who helped out.
This is heartening. Hats off to those professionals who jumped in to help you. And to 1&1 choosing to do the right thing. If only more would.
Dana (658c17) — 10/28/2008 @ 6:37 am‘David beats Goliath’ (with a little help from some friends…)
ManlyDad (75cbfe) — 10/28/2008 @ 6:48 amCongratulations!
Craig Mc (ef1b0c) — 10/28/2008 @ 6:59 amGood news but I wouldn’t trust those people for 10 seconds past the minimum period you are obliged to stay there.
Mike K (2cf494) — 10/28/2008 @ 7:02 amWhen you break the code, let CrazyMeds know. He could use the break.
B (f0131b) — 10/28/2008 @ 7:04 amWas there a motive, maybe a conspiracy at the LA Times?
Alta Bob (408027) — 10/28/2008 @ 7:04 amMike K,
Indeed.
Patterico (cc3b34) — 10/28/2008 @ 7:08 amExcellent news, well done!
CW Desiato (614aa7) — 10/28/2008 @ 7:12 amI trust you’re not going to do business any more with 1&1. They’ve proven they can’t be trusted.
SilentWatcher (78e124) — 10/28/2008 @ 7:15 amCrud. Now I have to update my links again?
Anyway, congratulations on recovering your site.
Pigilito (2bf562) — 10/28/2008 @ 7:16 amThe Army of Davids prevails again…
PatHMV (653160) — 10/28/2008 @ 7:25 amCongrats. You are a bigger man than I. Were I in your shoes, I would do a post every single day for the next 60 days about the twatwaffles that call themselves 1&1.
JD (5b4781) — 10/28/2008 @ 7:27 amOnce again, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
It’s just that sometimes the squeak needs to have a megaphone held up to it, and several bystanders with notepads and publishers need to start asking the guy pulling the cart why he doesn’t make with the frickin’ 10W40 already.
PCachu (e072b7) — 10/28/2008 @ 7:32 amWD40. Yeah, I know. I shouldn’t try to be cute and clever this early.
PCachu (e072b7) — 10/28/2008 @ 7:33 amCongratulations, keep these clowns in the slow cooker. Now let us pray the little free armies of David slay the big money marxist Goliath on election day.
Ray (8cfb7a) — 10/28/2008 @ 7:48 amGet used to it! This is just the opening salvo against an internet that the left presumes to dominate. Consider the ramifications of a Fairness Doctrine that applies to us as interpreted by Moveon types and Dailykaus.
Wait until the trolls start giving us the “Joe the plumber treatment” everytime one of us sticks our head out of the foxhole. By the way, we need to start addressing the recent phenomenon of the left running background checks on political infidels, apostates, and non-believers. How do they square this with their opposition to the Patriot Act because of fear that it will allow government agencies to do exactly what they are doing to people who don’t drink their kool-aid?
I personally believe they could care less about the conflict. They may be rabid and foolish but they are not stupid. Know your enemy…
vet66 (1e01a3) — 10/28/2008 @ 8:10 amFYI
If I try to go to patterico.com instead of patterico.net, I get an authentication dialog with a username and password prompt. If I cancel, it repeats the prompt, with the additional message “A username and password are being requested by https://patterico.com.”
If I cancel again, I then get thrown into http://www.patterico.com/localstart.asp and the messages:
“You are not authorized to view this page
Dave (037445) — 10/28/2008 @ 8:18 amYou do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials you supplied.”
What happened to ACE – did he get 1&1’d as well?
Typical Whte Person (cc6436) — 10/28/2008 @ 8:22 amWell, shoot me in the foot for suggesting 1&1 the other day. I guess I’ve never tried to move my domain and don’t keep a blog there, so I haven’t run into the trouble you’ve had. Great to hear it’s fixed!
Jay (776bdb) — 10/28/2008 @ 8:30 amConrats Pat. Glad to hear it.
Amazing what can be done when people work together.
Peter (e70d1c) — 10/28/2008 @ 8:48 amTwo words: Network Solutions.
Kevin (0b2493) — 10/28/2008 @ 8:49 amGreat news, Patterico.
But give yourself some credit, too. I have seen your persistence over almost four years. These guys were not going to have it easy with you.
nk (5dcbab) — 10/28/2008 @ 8:57 amRe-register at once.
Would you tolerate a business partner that stole from the company?
TakeFive (7c6fd5) — 10/28/2008 @ 9:19 amFind out for sure when the sixty days are up. They might be counting from the day that you made the payment (even if that’s not the proper way to do the counting.) I’ve got neither faith nor trust in this group, I think this is a trap.
htom (412a17) — 10/28/2008 @ 9:33 amNice work, Mr. Frey! The disinfecting sunlight worked just like Justice Brandeis said it would
timb (a83d56) — 10/28/2008 @ 9:43 amGood news. And evidence that “the borg” was lying from the start.
cboldt (3d73dd) — 10/28/2008 @ 10:00 amGood for you, Patterico. Glad to hear it.
Paul (8cbb16) — 10/28/2008 @ 10:07 amYou might consider registering “Patterico” as a trademark; this might lower the value to anyone else unless you’re willing to transfer the trademark. I’ve heard of others having such problems, but don’t recall the particulars.
Ahh. David Airey. Blog post about theft and consequences. I’m sure there have been others, too. I suspect that the prices requested for the returns are carefully set to avoid criminal theft or extortion charges; would those limits apply to each theft, or to the total collected (or attempted to collect?)
htom (412a17) — 10/28/2008 @ 10:59 amGood for you, Patterico! That was ridiculous, but I’m glad your site is back and up through this important time.
Stu (1f4971) — 10/28/2008 @ 12:27 pmPat,
Yay for you. And all who helped. Hope you have no trouble with transferring the domain registration to another company.
Alan Kellogg (e4d258) — 10/28/2008 @ 12:43 pmGood news, Patrick.
Tim McGarry (9fe080) — 10/28/2008 @ 1:10 pmGlad to hear it, Patterico. Congrats.
Peace,
Tom (df9907) — 10/28/2008 @ 1:35 pmTom
Are you sure 1&1 has been at fault in the problems with your domain? I had a domain once that was hacked into and taken over. One day the site was in English, the next Russian. It took a while to reclaim it and I had to upload the entire thing all over again–thankfully I had a full copy on my local, but what a pain. I’m glad 1&1 did the right thing by you. I’ve been using their services and have had no problems, so don’t bash them unless they have done something wrong.
kw (36dd4a) — 10/28/2008 @ 3:29 pmThat’s great news, but I have wondered: Any chance that you would have prevailed without all the sturm & drang from the journos and other friends? Sometimes stuff like this happens and it just takes a few days for someone at a place like !&! to deal with it. Is it possible you would have gotten the site “back” without having done anything more than send an email and waiting a few days?
Pats_Back (7605c7) — 10/28/2008 @ 4:15 pmWelcome back! You’re a national treasure.
BBB
bbbeard (e0c009) — 10/28/2008 @ 4:27 pmkw,
1&1 did plenty wrong and I have no compunction whatsoever about bashing them.
They didn’t do the right thing until forced to by the threat of bad publicity. You should learn more about my situation and then opine.
Patterico (0b772a) — 10/28/2008 @ 4:51 pmCongratulations. Sometimes the good guys do win!
Patricia (ee5c9d) — 10/28/2008 @ 5:00 pmkw does not understand the difference between website hacking and domain hijacking.
SPQR (26be8b) — 10/28/2008 @ 5:10 pmCongratulations, Patterico. As I said: when good guys win, it’s inexpressibly gratifying.
Let’s see, I guessed on Saturday it would be 24-48 hours before you got your domain back… and it turned out to be 96. Looks like I have a great future ahead of me in presidential polling. 🙂
qdpsteve (5b7e74) — 10/28/2008 @ 6:48 pmI’m sure you know this but I’m equally sure that 99% of your readers don’t, so just for the record Maxim Lott is the “Ma” of “Mary Rosh” (consisting of MAxim, RYan, ROger and SHerwin Lott). Almost makes you wonder if Dim Lambert had something to do with the scam all along?
Xrlq (62cad4) — 10/28/2008 @ 6:59 pmThat’s great news, but I have wondered: Any chance that you would have prevailed without all the sturm & drang from the journos and other friends? Sometimes stuff like this happens and it just takes a few days for someone at a place like !&! to deal with it. Is it possible you would have gotten the site “back” without having done anything more than send an email and waiting a few days?
It’s almost impossible to imagine.
The person who took care of things, as I said, was alerted by PR people. Before he got involved, I was getting e-mails telling me that I needed to get the previous owner’s approval for the transfer. Apparently, by this they meant that I needed to go back into my old account and approve the transfer — something that the company had made impossible by closing that account and disabling access to it.
When I tried to explain this to them, they responded by saying that I needed to get the previous owner’s approval for the transfer.
Get it? Absolutely faceless, absolutely unresponsive, and absolutely infuriating.
Look: Bruce Feirstein made a call at around 10:30 or 10:45 a.m. Friday morning, while Sedo.com was auctioning off the domain. Within an hour after his call, the auction had been shut down.
You’re suggesting everything would have been hunky-dory without the spotlight of publicity? I say: not a chance in hell.
Patterico (cc3b34) — 10/28/2008 @ 8:48 pm#34 – I suppose that is possible. It is also possible that the members of the MSM will go out and vote for John McCain in percetages in excess of 80%. It is possible that the media will allow there to be reasons other than racism to vote against Baracky. It is possible that 1&1 was simply brain-poundingly incompetent. But, from what we have been told, and I trust Patterico implicitly when it comes to matters of integrity, there is nothing to suggest that any of the bad actors would have ever done the right thing absent threat of exposure, and public pressure.
JD (5b4781) — 10/28/2008 @ 8:58 pmHuzzah! I’m glad you got your domain back. Good to hear it, and I’m not surprised the cockroaches scuttled away once the light was shone on them.
Does their restoring your domain destroy the foundation of a suit for fraud, or would you still have grounds to sue? I’d like to know that someone sued these people and caused them to suffer some kind of consequences, so they can’t continue to do this to dozens (hundreds?) of future customers…
Robin Munn (1b8c2a) — 10/29/2008 @ 6:00 amWelcome home.
Dennis (377e54) — 10/29/2008 @ 11:32 amAndrew Breitbart of the Drudge Report
Breitbart doesn’t work for Drudge anymore, per Andrew’s recent statement on RED EYE.
ykw (5e3aa6) — 10/30/2008 @ 1:15 pmWe had to get you back, there was a hole in the internet.
Gary Ogletree (a6e02a) — 10/30/2008 @ 1:59 pm