Which racist organization registered the World Wide Web domain name www.nigger.com? If you guessed something like the White Aryan Hooligans, you're wrong.

That name, and five colorful variations of it, is owned by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Similarly, don't imagine that some neo-Nazi group registered www.kike.com. That "honor" belongs to the Anti-Defamation League. The theory, apparently, is to prevent so-called "hate" groups from using those names (neither of which is operational). This is a complex and dangerous game, and some background is in order.

Internet domain names, typically Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) in the form of "www.yourname.com," are mnemonics referencing long numeric IP (Internet Protocol) addresses. The system translates those names, routing them to the appropriate Web sites. Domain name registration is a monopoly, granted by the National Science Foundation, of Network Solutions (NSI), a division of Science Applications International, a large defense contractor whose board of directors over the years has included several members of the DoD-CIA-NSA "old boy" network (NNN, June 1 and 8, 1996). While that monopoly is scheduled to end soon, a new system is a subject of controversy between interested parties in the Internet community, the U.S. and other governments, and various advocacy groups.

NSI will register any name other than the seven "bad" words that major tv networks don't permit. NSI's computer supposedly filters out those words, and variations of them, which sometimes leads to unexpected and amusing results. NSI recently rejected a gourmet site name as obscene - "shitakemushrooms.com;" but apparently had no problem with shit.com, which was registered in 1995.

Naturally, once the political-correctness ball gets rolling everyone wants to give it a kick one way or the other. Until now NSI declined to register the racial/religious slurs cited above, but it has been attacked by activists for permitting www.godhatesfags.com.

Jim Salmon, an entrepreneur who spent $40,000 to register some 400 domains based on the names of celebrities to whom he apparently hoped to sell the names at a profit, turned out to be a do-gooder in disguise. Upset that a pornographer owned www.whitehouse.com, Salmon re-directed visitors to his sites (named for baseball players or country singers) to the porno site, thinking to thereby stir a public protest against whitehouse.com. As so often with the schemes of do-gooders, it backfired, resulting in protests against Salmon by visitors and celebrities alike. (The "real" White House address is www.whitehouse.gov.)

The church of Scientology threatened to sue Ray Randolph for using htttp://scientology-kills.net as his URL. While People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) complained when Michael Doughney registered www.peta.org, a site for "People Eating Tasty Animals," they had no compunctions about registering www.ringlingbrothers.com for a site critical of the circus' use of animals. (Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey is suing.)

Tomasz Maliszewski's home page is www.polak.com. Italian civil rights groups are too late to register www.wop.com - it's owned by the World of Pentecost church in Texas. And www.spic.com features a Japanese hair styling product. If you want to protect www.dago.com, Wisma bank, Jakarta, Indonesia, beat you by 11 months.

As of this writing www.crazy.do-gooders.com is still available. Go for it.

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