FTC Seeks to Trap a Mousetrapper

[Keefe]

FTC Seeks to Trap a Mousetrapper
By Ben Polen

2:00 a.m. Oct. 2, 2001 PDT  
WASHINGTON -- Suing John Zuccarini is like riding the neighborhood bicycle: Everybody gets a turn.

He's already been assailed 63 times by everyone from The Wall Street Journal to Disney, Yahoo and Nicole Kidman.

Now the feds, in a lawsuit announced Monday, have become the latest plaintiff to take Zuccarini to court. His alleged offense this time: registering misspellings of popular domain names, then bombarding hapless visitors with a seemingly infinite series of pop-up ads.
 
Last Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission sued Zuccarini in federal court in Pennsylvania, and asked for a temporary injunction against this practice. They're also asking the court to force Zuccarini to return any money he made.

The FTC won its restraining order, but so far government lawyers have been unable to serve the notoriously elusive Zuccarini with it. Zuccarini's mailing address appears to be in Pennsylvania, but his exact whereabouts remain unknown.

Howard Beales, director of the FTC's bureau of consumer protection, stated the obvious at a press conference Monday: "Our understanding is that he can operate the whole scheme off his laptop from anywhere."

To date, the FTC says, Zuccarini has registered more than 5,500 domain names, including 15 variations on cartoonnetwork.com and 41 variations on the name of "Britney Spears." But it's not the possible confusion over trademarks that drew the FTC's ire -- that's still being left to the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Instead, the FTC has charged Zuccarini with engaging in unfair business practices, as well as attempting to defraud consumers. (Under the FTC's charter, it has jurisdiction over unfair and deceptive marketing practices.)

The FTC wants the courts to do something many copyright owners have probably wished for -- shut down Zuccarini's sites permanently.

Here's how his sites work: First, a consumer enters a misspelled address. They're taken to a page that rapidly launches advertising pop-up windows -- and when the "close" or "back" buttons are clicked, new windows open.

The pop-ups are combined with a hidden window (under the task bar) that continues to open new ads. Sometimes, the mistyped sites also open a window with the correct website, while still launching pop-ups.

Because of this combination, the FTC included a charge of attempting to defraud consumers.

Timothy Muris, chairman of the FTC, said this leads to consumers becoming "mousetrapped." Muris read a laundry list of complaints: "This scheme prevents consumers from controlling their Internet browsers, invades their privacy, robs them of their time, exposes kids to ads for pornography and violates trademark rights."

Additionally, Muris and the FTC want to keep encouraging consumers to shop and seek information online. "This scam, and ones like it, undermine consumer confidence in the Internet. That's why the FTC brought this action," he said.

There are ways for people to avoid getting "mousetrapped." You can use search engines to locate websites, as well as saving data and closing other programs in case rebooting becomes necessary. Or you could disable Java and Javascript in your browser's settings, or use a browser like Opera that gives you greater control over your settings.

The FTC estimates that Zuccarini's scheme brought him $800,000 to $1,000,000 in revenue last year selling ads, based on previous court depositions.

With all this talk of Web browsers, it might be reasonable to assume that the FTC had contacted major software manufacturers and asked them for their participation.

But Beales, the FTC official, admitted the agency hadn't: "We have not done that. We're not contacting computer companies."