Katie has owned the domain katie.com since 1996. Penguin Putnam recently released a book about girls who get into trouble with the interweb and called it Katie.com. Now, the clueless dorks at Penguin have decided that they need to strongarm Katie out of her domain so they can do tie-ins with their book (ironically, they scrapped girl.com, the original title, 'cause that's a porn-site, but they figured that a web-developer's site is fair game).
Today I also had a very unpleasant phone call from a lawyer working with Katie Tarbox, the author of the book. She tried to convince me that I should donate the domain name to them. Somehow this would resolve my problem. OK so not only do I get walked all over, my life invaded by this book, treated badly by the publisher/author who refuse to acknowledge that they've done the wrong thing, but then I get to hand it over to them on a silver plate and I not only have suffered all this aggravation but ultimately have lost the thing that I care about. Exactly HOW does this resolve anything other than give them the thing they want which they have done everything to hijack without any care and consideration for what is right and just?
Secondly, she tells me that they're planning on launching some school curriculum thing to teach kids about online safety – and they're calling it Katie.com. Are they insane? No wonder they want me to hand it over.
