Web surfers looking for Pageant may find porn site

Mike Swanson

Web surfers searching for the latest Festival of Arts and Pageant of

the Masters news online might find a sea of pop-up porn sites and

advertisements instead.

It all depends on the last three letters that visitors type in

after the “dot.” If you select www.foapom.com, then you’ll likely

find everything you need to know about the festival and the pageant,

but if you use “.org,” then prepare for an onslaught of pornographic

images that pop up quicker than one can close them.

“It is unfortunate that our situation is not unique,” said Sharbie

Higuchi, director of marketing for the Festival of Arts and Pageant

of the Masters. “Web addresses are taken by unrelated companies all

the time. We are investigating our legal options.”

Officials with the Festival and Pageant are concerned that the

pornographic Web site exists using their domain name, but they’re

also concerned that too much press will do more good for the porn

site than for them.

If Festival and Pageant officials’ attorney can establish that

FOAPOM is a service mark, then it can sue under a cyber-privacy act.

Levin said he considered the domain name for the Festival and the

Pageant a strong enough trademark to disallow others from infringing

on the Festival and Pageant’s name.

“People do this all the time, but they get stopped all the time,”

intellectual property Atty. Bill Levin said. “There have been cases

in the past where even unnamed parties have lost in court as John

Does. It’s rare, but it happens.”