Whitehouse.com
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Type of site
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Parked Previously: Adult/Porn |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Dan Parisi |
| Website | www |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Launched | May 21, 1997 |
| Current status | Closed |
whitehouse.com was an adult and political entertainment website that first came online in May 1997. According to a statement on the web, it was originally created by Ransom Scott as a place where uncensored discussion of government policies could occur before adult content was added to make it more profitable. More recently, the adult content has been removed.
Part of the controversy about whitehouse.com was that users (especially minors in most cases) wishing to visit the website of the White House (www.whitehouse.gov) could easily go to the adult website instead. Although .gov, a top-level domain (TLD), is available only to official government sites in the United States, .com is a much more common TLD and is frequently entered by mistake. In addition, many web browsers add '.com' to the end of an address if no suffix is entered, so simply typing 'whitehouse' into the address bar would lead one to whitehouse.com. Because of the explicit and commercial content of the site, it was frequently cited as one of the most egregious examples of domain name misuse, up until the domain was sold.
Many school children in the late 1990s inadvertently saw adult content via the website.
The website whitehouse.org, a humor site that formerly satirized the former U.S. president George W. Bush, remains controversial for similar reasons, although less so because its content is usually much less explicit.
In 2006, PC World ranked Whitehouse.com #13 on its list "The 25 Worst Web Sites".
In December 1997, the Clinton administration sent Dan Parisi a cease and desist letter stating, "... we do not challenge your right to pursue it or to exercise your First Amendment rights, but we do challenge your right to use the White House, the President, and the First Lady as a marketing device. For adult internet users, that device is, at the least, part of a deceptive scheme. For younger Internet users, it has more disturbing consequences." The letter had no effect and the site stayed up.
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