Two different individuals have registered the .com, .org and .net domains for trenchcoatmafia, both with the stated intent of preventing the names from being used for commercial purposes.
The domains were registered Wednesday, according to registrar Network Solutions Inc. "Trenchcoatmafia.com" was registered by Redhorn Inc. in Hampton, N.H., while the .org and .net versions were registered by Jose Troche, an individual in Norton, Mass.
Redhorn, an Internet service provider, posted a statement on the trenchcoatmafia.com site that began "I registered it to beat anyone who would want to make a profit at it. What happened in Colorado was a very sick and twisted thing and I am very saddened by it." The statement offered to post information on emergency numbers or help lines that would aid people affected by the killings. In a voicemail response to ZDNN's e-mail inquiry, a member of Redhorn's staff said the site was not for commercial purposes and would not host ads, but would potentially offer the ability to chat with volunteers.
Troche said his sentiments were similar. The only reason why he hadn't registered trenchcoat.com as well as .org and .net was that it was already registered, he said.
"My motive behind (registering) it is so some other sick organization doesn't capitalize on it," he told ZDNN. "I have children, too, and I don't want them going on the Internet and finding sick things like Satanism and how to make pipe bombs and 'I hate blacks' and 'I hate Hispanics' and that."
Troche -- who would not give his occupation, but said that what he does for a living does not involve computers -- plans to build a virtual memorial to the victims of the tragedy at Trenchcoatmafia.org and Trenchcoatmafia.net.
Not for sale
Troche's registration form indicates that the domain name is for sale, but he said that was not the case. He explained that the first domain name he registered, troche.com, was for sale, and when he registers new sites, it continues to contain that tagline.
Perhaps because of the tagline, he said he's already received 55 hate mails from Netizens, and two offers to buy the domain names, one for $20,000, by Thursday morning.
"I'm taking time on my day off and e-mailing every one of them, even the hate-mailers, and explaining why I'm doing it. Somebody has to stand up for this," Troche said.
Not all are pure
Some Web users did try to capitalize on the tragedy. For instance, Centraal Corp. said that two individual users on Tuesday night had registered Trench Coat Mafia and Trenchcoatmafia through its Real Names service, which maps strings of natural language to Web pages.
According to Keith Teare, Centraal's president, one of the individuals was a GeoCities user who simply linked to his page, which contained banner ads, in hopes of driving traffic. The other, affiliated to a company called ZipNow, linked to a memorial page dedicated to the tragedy.
Teare said that Real Names conducts an audit process, and both names were disallowed, because the people who registered them were not actually part of the Trench Coat Mafia.
The audit process is not designed to censor, Teare said.
"Were the actual people to come to our service and register Trenchcoat Mafia, if we could ascertain that they were the Trenchcoat Mafia, we would allow them to register the name," he said.
After ZipNow changed the name to reflect that it was a memorial, Real Names approved it.
Innocent victim
Another site claimed to be an innocent victim. Trenchcoat.com, a porn site registered with Internic in October 1996, posted a message on its site saying that it had pulled its normal content, due to the high number of visits from people who weren't looking for its normal content. It disavowed any involvement with the killings in Littleton, Colo.
The site operator, using the handle "Sir Trench," said that he had pulled the content "to prevent kids from accessing my adult site or links to other adult sites." His note also said he'd been offered $10,000 to redirect his traffic to another site, and asked people to stop sending hate mail.
Internic registers the site to a James Miles, who did not return a phone call. James Porter, who runs Aeonflux, the Pinellas Park, Fla., ISP that hosts the site, said that Miles closed all his pages in part because of the huge swell in traffic was threatening to overwhelm its servers.
The head of Aeonflux, James Porter, added that he had been receiving a slew of hate calls over the site, and declined to discuss the matter further.
