Stop Sylvia Browne Stopped

The Stop Sylvia Browne website appears to have been taken over by someone selling psychic services. For now, no one is sure exactly how this happened, except that it is possible the domain registration expired (expiry date was August 21), and so the registrar (Go Daddy) put the domain up for auction. For example, see the stopsylviabrowne.com auction page, and Go Daddy’s policy for handling domains that are not renewed:

On the 25th day following your domain registration's expiration date, we place your domain for auction on the Domain Name Aftermarket (TDNAM).

That would make the auction start date September 15^th. The close date would therefore appear to be ten days later.  Admittedly though, things are a little unclear. Anyway, it seems likely someone took advantage of Rob Lancaster’s current serious illness to take over his site. 

This is a great shame. Some skeptics are working with Go Daddy to try to get the domain back (read the discussion over on JREF), but it doesn’t look good. Clearly, Robert would be able to restart the site with another domain name, when he gets well (the website data will not have been lost). But until then I’m removing the link to the site. More importantly, I think we all would wish Robert a speedy recovery from his illness.

November 1, 2008 - Edited to add:

The real Stop Sylvia site has been reborn at a new location - click Sylvia Browne to see the new site with all the old good stuff.  All skeptical bloggers and owners of skeptical websites are being asked to change their links to the new url. If you're not familiar with search engine optimization, please read Tim's post, Skeptics! Load your google bombs!.  Short version - link the new url to the words "Sylvia Browne" and not "Stop Sylvia Browne".  For example:

Preferred: Sylvia Browne

OK, but not as good: Stop Sylvia Browne

Comments

[Big Al]

I think for all the good he's doing, JREF should fund a domain name in perpertuity - say, sylviabrownconwoman.com!

I'm really sorry to hear Rob has been ill. O thought his site articles and JREF posts had been getting a little thin on the ground of late, and.

Get well soon, Rob! Love the site.

[Big Al]

... and I wondered if someone was somehow gagging him with legal threats.

[AndyD]

Robert's wife has announced that the new address will be: http://www.stopsylviabrowne.net/ once they manage to get it all working again.

[Bourgeois_Rage]

That's too bad, Robert really was running a class site. Obviously his health comes first, but SSB was a great resource and I hope it gets back up soon.

[AndyD]

NOTE: The address I supplied above is apparently incorrect. The correct address does not have the final "e" on "browne". Go to:

http://stopsylviabrown.net

The site appears to be up and running.

Skeptico, please delete the incorrect one if you can. Thanks.

[The Perky Skeptic]

Wow. It is so terrible that he has to deal with this on top of his health problems! I will link to stopsylviabrown.net.

[Tim Farley]

Wait a second everyone! There has been some confusion in the JREF threads on this and we need to slow down a sec.

When the original domain was lost, several new domains were registered to compensate, by various people (.net and .us, notably). There were also some existing alias domains that Robert already owned that are still in his control (stopsylvia.com). In all the discussion about what to proceed, its not entirely clear which domain is going to be considered the "main" one for the site.

It is vitally important that we clarify this confusion BEFORE we all start changing our links. The reason is we need to maximize the effect in Google of us linking to the new site.

Some of us have been in touch with Susan (Robert's wife) about this, and we are waiting for her final decision on this.

If I hear from her, I will come back here and post to this thread. I will also post something on skeptools.com as soon as I know.

[David Harmon]

You know, I've heard an awful lot of hard-luck stories involving GoDaddy in the past year or so. I *used* to think they were a decent registrar....

[Tim Farley]

Update!

The word is in from Robert Lancaster, via his wife. He wants us all to use StopSylvia.com as the domain name from now on. (See her forum post here: http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=4168697&postcount=55).

I wrote a blog post on the exact gory details of how you do an effective google bomb, with specific details of what everyone needs to do, here:

http://skeptools.wordpress.com/2008/11/01/skeptics-load-your-google-bombs/

So get to work, skeptic webmasters and bloggers!

[AndyD]

Thanks Skeptico (and Tim). I've covered the saga a little at my update.

The good news is the old site has already dropped to the second page of Google results for "sylvia browne" so we just need to get the new page ranked higher. Links, links, links.

Can anyone get the link pharyngulated? :)

[AndyD]

The link has now been pharyngulated and more.

[ozemc]

I received the following e-mail when I complained:

(From Admin [stopsylviabrowne@gmail.com])

Hi, I offered to sell this site for the price the company bought it for. My company buys these sites not me personally and not me. I was sorry he felt bad and offered to sell the site for the price I bought it. Then I got barrage of insults and being asked to sell domain for 10 dollar my company bought for 400. There are people who lied it was hacked, stolen etc. The domain was bought with no knowledge guy was ill. Anyway my company and marketing people deal with it. I will take legal actions on all personal attacks

[HCN]

ozemc quoted "I was sorry he felt bad and offered to sell the site for the price I bought it."

Which begs the question, why did he buy the other website names that were under discussion on the JREF forum?

[Susan Lancaster]

Thank you for posting this information and for the comments.
For the record, we never heard an offer to sell the domain name for $400. We got an offer of $20,000. That says more than any insult he had to endure.
StopSylvia.com is up and running and gaining momentum and Google ranking as we speak. This is all thanks to skeptics across the globe, and particularly to those in the JREF Forums. Thank you all!
Love, Susan Lancaster