Celebs mince cybersquatters

Rich French bird + singer wins URLs

By Kieren McCarthy • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 10th October 2000 16:43 GMT

Increase your knowledge of the latest threats to your busines

Just when you thought it was safe to register URLs, along comes WIPO again. Now, French actress Isabelle Adjani and singer Sade have won URLs from those evil cybersquatting scum.

Now, you probably don't know Isabelle Adjani (unless, of course, you're an arty-farty type), but she's been in a load of classic French films. Subway, the modern version of La Reine Margot, Jean-Luc Godard's L'Histoire D'Adele H and a load of other love-triangle kinda stuff. The French love her and she's good-looking gal, there's no doubt about it.

Fortunately, she's also famous enough to be able to take over isabelle-adjani.net without much fuss. This, interestingly, adds hypens and ".net"s to the famous people's portfolio. Why don't we just give them everything with their first names in? I mean, they deserve it don't they?

Singer Sade, real name Helen Folsade Adu, now owns sade.com - taken from Quantum Computer Services. Interesting one this, since Sting was told to bugger off by a judge who pointed out that he was really called Gordon and "sting" was a pretty common word. Mind you, the site is registered under the fake name "The Sade Internet Fan Club" and is just a redirect to an email address site. But why should she have the right to the URL? [Because she's famous, stupid.]

You've got to give it to her though, she's one smooth operator (boom! boom!). We still have our heads in our hands.

Incidentally, the Madonna.com case is still going on. Should be over by the end of the month. ®