Dr. Greg Gibbons makes a living helping people, but now he is the one needing help with a Web site that bears the name of his family practice.
"I thought, 'this isn't my Web site.' It's my information, but this isn't what my brother and I worked on together. This is just wrong," he said.
Gibbons said he thought the subscription to his domain name renewed automatically, but he found that his subscription had lapsed. A London-based company purchased Gibbons' domain name and attached a link to a pornographic Web site and one selling women's lingerie.
"I said what the heck is going on here," Gibbons said. "It boggles the mind what they can put there."
P.J. Weatherhead works for BTI International, a leading company in Internet services. He said businesses should protect their domain name by going for a long-term plan.
"You can actually register for eight years if you can afford to do the eight years," Weatherhead said. "That way, you don't have to keep thinking about renewal. It's over, it's done and it's simple again."
Gibbons is now looking at his options, which include buying his homepage back. He is also checking out possible legal action and thinking about launching a new Web site under a different name.
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