> eBay's Hate Sale
> by Ed Cohn
> 2.07.00
> The American Prospect http://www.prospect.org/
>
> Web-savvy readers know that one can buy almost anything
> on the web these days, but one recent auction on the Internet
> site eBay marked a new low. The item in question was a
> set of "controversial" domain names, most of them related
> to the Ku Klux Klan. For a minimum bid of $500,000,
> would-be buyers could purchase a package of 104
> names, ranging from longlivethekkk.com and
> GrandWizardkkk.org to trykukluxklan.net. The auction
> description even had separate appeals to "hate supporting"
> and "peace supporting individuals"; buyers could purchase
> the sites either to air their own opinions or to keep them
> out of the hands of hate groups.
>
> The owner, Roschell Stoner of Spring, Texas, denied that
> there was anything unseemly about the sale. "We do not
> support hate groups, or any others," she said. "We invested
> in this, just like any other investment... We just found that
> this was one more area where there was a profit to be
> made." Stoner said she and her husband buy and sell
> domain names in pharmaceuticals, banking, and insurance.
>
> No one was willing to bid for the entire 104-name set, but
> one person did offer $8,000 for one domain name related
> to the Klan. Stoner turned the bidder down, demanding at
> least $10,000 for the site. Apparently, getting an
> 11,329-percent return on what was probably a
> $70 investment wasn't enough.
>
> Meanwhile, state legislators in Missouri have also been
> grappling with both the value of a name and the influence
> of the Klan. The KKK may not be coughing up half-a-million
> to expand its web presence, but in November, it won the
> right to join Missouri's "Adopt a Highway" cleanup program.
> This despite charges that the highway's adoption was a
> publicity stunt and that the Klan had no plans to do the
> required cleanup work. The result? The state erected
> signs along a stretch of Interstate 55 near St. Louis,
> informing passers-by that "Next mile adopted by Knights
> of the Ku Klux Klan, Realm of Missouri."
>
> But one enterprising "peace supporting individual," state
> Senator Bill Clay, Jr., recently proposed legislation that
> would name that stretch of highway after civil rights leader
> Rosa Parks. "To have the Klan clean up a section of highway
> named to honor the woman who started the modern civil
> rights movement -- I love it," Clay told the Associated Press.
>
> Maybe Clay should get the legislature to appropriate money
> to buy Stoner's web sites and dedicate them to Rosa Parks
> too. As her ad so movingly argues, "If you let 'someone' else
> buy these domains, then 'they' may use these domains to
> spread hate speech or 'worse' on the Internet." Therefore,
> she admonishes, "Do your duty as an American citizen and
> place your bid to keep these domains from that 'someone' or
> 'some group!'" Just cross your fingers that "someone" doesn't
> come up with a higher bid.
>
>
> Copyright =A9 2000 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Ed
> Cohn, "eBay's Hate Sale,"
> The American Prospect Online, February 7, 2000.