“ We understand an unconnected third party has very recently taken control of the domain name and is using it to display a different website with inappropriate adult content. This website is not associated with Puffin or Andrew Cope. We are asking people not to visit the website and ensure that children do not visit it either.”
The article doesn’t say how the domain was “taken over.” Since they haven’t reverted the website back to its original content, it sounds like either the author or the publisher (whoever owned the domain) did not renew the domain and the domain is showing content from its new owner. Its terrible that a link in a kids book now leads to a porn site, but the lesson is to not let domain registration lapse.
A less insidious version of this happened to me recently when I discovered that a link in my resume that used to go to an article featuring an interview I gave (on a journal website owned by a large and respectable institution, though not on their main domain) now goes to some teenager’s video game diary. Apparently the publication collapsed, the institution gave up the domain, and I was none the wiser. Harmless but embarrassing. I changed all the links in my resume to archive.org links.
The article doesn’t say how the domain was “taken over.” Since they haven’t reverted the website back to its original content, it sounds like either the author or the publisher (whoever owned the domain) did not renew the domain and the domain is showing content from its new owner. Its terrible that a link in a kids book now leads to a porn site, but the lesson is to not let domain registration lapse.
A less insidious version of this happened to me recently when I discovered that a link in my resume that used to go to an article featuring an interview I gave (on a journal website owned by a large and respectable institution, though not on their main domain) now goes to some teenager’s video game diary. Apparently the publication collapsed, the institution gave up the domain, and I was none the wiser. Harmless but embarrassing. I changed all the links in my resume to archive.org links.