Porn site squats in cancer charity domain

Britain's foremost cancer care charity has been dealt a massive blow because of an administrative cock-up by domain registrars Network Solutions. The Marie Curie charity, which helps thousands of people each year cope with the disease, has lost the domain www.mariecurie.com to the Hardcore Cafe porn site after Network Solutions failed to inform the charity that its renewal was due in February. "We registered mariecurie.com three years ago exactly to stop this kind of thing from happening," said Miguel Fiallo of Marie Curie. "Network Solutions didn't notify us that the renewal was due. The first thing we knew about this was when someone else told us about it." Despite sending four emails, the charity has heard nothing from Network Solutions and is deeply concerned that such a site could damage its reputation especially among people who want to know more about cancer. The plight of Marie Curie echoes a similar case when WebTechs, the first Web-based HTML validation service, found its domain had been sold to a Danish porn site. Network Solutions were contacted to comment on the story but failed to return the call before press time. ®