Yes, there is a nigger.com. No, the domain is not owned by the Ku Klux Klan, or Aryan Nations, or any other hate group, for that matter.

Nigger.com is property of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In fact, the NAACP says it owns every domain with variations of that word, including hyphenated versions.

"We wanted to make sure these domain names would not be used for derogatory purposes," NAACP director of communications John White said. "We are the oldest civil rights organization and it is within our charter to reduce hate in whatever way we can."

Like the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League has also bought up "hate" domain names to keep them out of the hands of hate groups.

But both civil rights groups admit that buying a few domain names is unlikely to have a significant impact on hate speech, especially on the Internet.

"It is a symbolic gesture," admitted ADL spokeswoman Elizabeth Coleman, whose organization owns, among other domains, kike.com, .net, and .org. "It symbolizes the effort to monitor and counter hate speech.

"It's not going to stop hate speech," she added. "There's always going to be hate speech on the Internet. It's a fact of society with free speech."

But, said the NAACP's White, "every little bit helps."

Unlike the ADL and NAACP, other anti-hate groups like the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation have chosen not to adopt this strategy.

"One of the problems with this [strategy] is that you end up purchasing hundreds of names and end up spending a fortune," said Will Doherty, GLAAD's director of online community development. "We'd rather focus on spending our limited funds on responding to defamation."

"Our approach is not so much to prevent the expression of hatred but to respond to it."

Some private individuals have taken a more proactive approach to "hate" domain names. Web sites like faggot.org and dyke.com offer anti-hate material instead.

Faggot.org, a site still under construction, aims to be "a 'safe place on the Web' for those of us who have been called "faggot" at some time or another," wrote domain-owner Jack Lakey in an email to Wired News.

"I had a couple of reasons for buying this, first as a resource, secondly to keep it out of the hands of those people that are buying up such names to sell porn, and thirdly to keep some bigot from buying the site."

Many of the "hate" domain names alluding to homosexuality often redirect the user to hardcore porn. Type in faggot.com and you will end up at – surprisingly – a pornographic site for heterosexuals. Homo.com leads to Rawmen, "the world's first gay mega-site."

Dyke.com is under construction as a feminist/lesbian resource that nevertheless offers a link to a porn site because, according to text on the site, "thousands of boys each week are coming here looking for lesbian sex."

Rather than "use lesbian money to pay for the bandwidth created by thousands of boys seeking stuff that's not here," the site offers the link to "divert" the men and make them go away.

Lakey's site more closely mirrors GLAAD's attitude toward online hate speech. "Our philosophy is to provide a response rather than to censor," said Doherty.

While neither ADL or the NAACP plan to use their domain names, neither group thinks it's unfair to deny others the opportunity to own these domains.

"We don't think it's censorship," said NAACP's White.

A bastion of free speech, the American Civil Liberties Union, agrees.

Cybersquatting, it seems, is okay as long as it doesn't involve trademark issues. The Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (S1255),passed by the Senatelast month, only deals with those trying to make a profit by reserving domain names of companies or people. Hate words apparently don't fall under the same category.

"For political speech, it has to be on a first come, first served basis. These groups have equal entitlement to the domains as anyone else," said Associate Director Barry Steinhardt.

Large corporations engage in similar tactics, Network Solutions spokeswoman Cheryl Regan said.

Chase Manhattan Bank, for example, owns the .com domains Ihatechase, Chasestinks, and Chasesucks. Charles Schwab & Co. owns, among other domains, screwschwab.com and schwabsucks.com.

"Some companies are just going ahead and protecting themselves in advance. And these groups are just doing the same," said Regan.

While Network Solutions refuses to sell domains with certain dirty words, called the Network Seven, the company stopped screening for hate words last year.

"In 1997 we had a different screening process and did deactivate nigger.com. Since that time we revised our process allowing the name to be registered, and the NAACP took the opportunity to register the name," said Regan

Screening for hate names is particularly difficult, she said. "After all, who is to say what a hate name is?"

For example, the word "paki" is considered a racial slur against South Asians in Britain, and yet paki.com is a portal site owned by a Pakistani based in Karachi.

"Yes, I know it's a biased name, but local people in Pakistan do not know that. Instead they use it as a short term for Pakistani," wrote Rehan Allahwala in an email to Wired.

"I don't consider it to be a racist name," he said.

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