PA cybersquatting?

Captain Morgan · Mar 8, 2008

Anyone remember HarperPrism? I don't know if HarperCollins shut down that branch or what but... today I went to harperprism.com and it turns out some affiliate junkie took over the sites registration. And surprise.... what did I find?

Need Book Publishing?Avoid stigma of paying a publisher! We want your book, not your money
www.publishamerica.com

Looks like his id tag is:
gclid=CP_D88aO_ZECFSGWGgodBi6T9A

I wonder, considering what poor royalties the authors get, how much do you think this affiliate can possibly get?

Interesting to see that PA prevents page inclusion on Amazon, yet has no problems with piss-poor affiliate junkies.

DaveKuzminski · Mar 8, 2008

If HarperCollins still owns that trademark which I'm willing to bet they do, then PA is in terrible trouble since they or an affiliate are using HarperPrism. Gee, you'd think that Vic would have advised PA not to mess with a company having more lawyers then them.

Captain Morgan, I think HarperCollins needs to be informed where that ad is located.

JulieB · Mar 8, 2008

It appears to be registered to a group that takes expired (and possibly typo) domains and puts up ads. They've had the domain for about three years. Guess Harper isn't too interested, or else they've tried and can't get control.

DaveKuzminski · Mar 8, 2008

Or they don't know about it yet. Either way, they should be notified because using a domain name that contains a trademark could be a violation unless your name is the same. Even then, it could be a problem.

victoriastrauss · Mar 15, 2008

The HarperPrism imprint was discontinued when Harper bought Morrow/Avon in 1999. Its books and some of its staff were folded into Avon's Eos imprint, which is the one that survives today.

I doubt the Harper folks are interested in that domain name, given that the imprint no longer exists.

- Victoria

JulieB · Mar 17, 2008

Stained glass this time for me. Refresh and you'll see a different bunch of ads.

Many of them have a very tenuous connection to Harper or Prism. One just went to Yahoo.com.

It's like going to Google and typing in a very specific request for something that shouldn't be for sale, like a person, and seeing: "Find the best Jane Doe products on the web! Click here!"

Oh I'm seeing treatments for black eye. Some people will do anything for a buck, won't they?

jamiehall · Mar 17, 2008

JulieB said:
It's like going to Google and typing in a very specific request for something that shouldn't be for sale, like a person, and seeing: "Find the best Jane Doe products on the web! Click here!"

Try an ad for becoming a werewolf by going to college. Automatically generated ads can spew out quite a lot of nonsense.

PA cybersquatting?

Captain Morgan

DaveKuzminski

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JulieB

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DaveKuzminski

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victoriastrauss

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JulieB

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jamiehall

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