2011-01-16 Murder incitement domain names becoming a fad

Setting up death threats against Julian Assange in the form of a domain name is the new fad.  Just don't try setting up "killobama.org" or "murderthepresident.com".  The site http://vivantleakers.org/ is devoted to tracking these explicit threat domain names. At the moment it lists 6 domains of the "kill Assange" variety.

Here's a summary of coverage:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/14/death-threat-domain-names_n_809174.html

From the above HuffPo item:

Go Daddy, the site which registered both killjulianassange.com and julianassangemustdie.com said there is nothing that can be done about either site while they are contentless. Go Daddy registers a domain name every .8 seconds -- any domain name can be registered and there is no human intervention.

More...

"Unless and until there is content associated with killjulianassange.com there is no way for us to know what that means," said Christine Jones, Go Daddy's General Counsel. "There's no way to judge whether there's going to be something done with that domain name or if it is going to be violating any rule."

In the past week, Go Daddy has received numerous calls regarding the death threat domain names, but the company has no intention of taking action at this time. The one exception to this, Jones said, would be a domain name death threat for the President, "if the secret service contacted us, we would almost certainly take action on those domain names."

Other links on the topic:

 (cited in HuffPo piece)
http://vivantleakers.org/

  Note: @exiledsurfer did the logo for above link - HuffPo links to his announcement here: http://www.artificialeyes.tv/node/852

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/14/death-threat-domain.html

  (cited in BoingBoing piece)

http://vivantleakers.org/  (direct link)

Laura L. Russwurm's blog has an item "GoDaddy is OK with killjulianassange.com"

  Laura wrote to GoDaddy to get the scoop - see her Post for the full response. In part GoDaddy said,

As your complaint addresses the issue of wording of the domain name itself, we are unable to take action at this time. The complaint either needs to be taken up with the domain name owner directly, or should be filed in a UDRP or court proceeding...

From Reuters "Wikileaks founder says  guards against death threats (Dec.4 2010)

(Reuters) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Friday he and colleagues were taking steps to protect themselves after death threats following the publication of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables on their website... the 39-year-old Australian said anyone making threats against his life should be charged with incitement to murder..."The threats against our lives are a matter of public record, however, we are taking the appropriate precautions to the degree that we are able when dealing with a superpower," Assange was quoted as saying on the Guardian website.

Icerocket Search "wikileaks domain death threat":

• News - 2 results
• Web - 393,000 results
• Blogs - 70 recent posts
• Twitter - 2.4 posts/day (as of 1053hrs EST 011610

UPDATE:

Here's Jan Wildeboer's take on it.  This was also reported by wikinews030.

-DaveM (@dredeyedick)