Geez! That really IS a shock!

Roger, thanks for forwarding this information. It's much appreciated.

Cheerwell, Maryann

--- Roger Collett <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Howard" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 6:49 PM
> Subject: Poetry Society Website Shock
>
>
> > The following is from Christina Patterson of the (UK) Poetry
> Society...
> >
> >
> > WEBSITE SHOCK AT THE POETRY SOCIETY 20/3/02
> >
> > Dear All,
> >
> > On Thursday we logged on to our computers and discovered that our
> > website had disappeared. Where before there were hundreds of pages of
> > information about what's happening in contemporary poetry and about
> the
> > Poetry Society's publications, projects, events and work with schools,
> > we found instead a whole new world of online gambling, products for
> poor
> > skin and hair loss, "amazing financial services" and corporate gifts.
> >
> > Further searches revealed that this extraordinary website is one which
> > is known for "spamming", i.e. the generation of junk emails such as
> > those offering 500% extra income or miraculous recovery of your youth,
> > looks or sexual performance. Their "keywords" content listed on the
> site
> > includes "debt consolidation", "internet casinos", "home equity loans"
> > and "LCD projector merchant accounts".
> >
> >
> > There seems to have been a problem with the renewal of our domain name
> > registration. A company called, amongst other names, Ultimate Search,
> > based in Hong Kong, bought it up and added it to their large and
> > eclectic portfolio. They have not replied to our emails or answered
> our
> > phone-calls. All our emails are now going to Hong Kong. They are not
> > being replied to or returned to us.
> >
> > We've spent five years building up our award-winning website, which
> was
> > getting about 300,000 hits a month. It can now be found at:
> >
> > www.poetrysociety.org.uk . Please update all your links and bookmarks.
> > Our general email is [log in to unmask] and all Poetry Society
> > email addresses now have this suffix. If you have sent any of us an
> > email since Wednesday 13 March, please send it again to the new email
> > address ([log in to unmask],
> [log in to unmask]
> > etc).
> >
> > I would be very grateful if you could forward this email to anyone you
> > know who is interested in poetry and might be a regular user of our
> > website. Clearly, there is no way of redirecting people from our
> > original website and we have a gargantuan (and extremely expensive)
> task
> > ahead. We are extremely grateful to charity lawyers Bates, Wells &
> > Braithwaite, who have been advising and helping us on a pro bono
> basis.
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > Christina Patterson
> > Director
> > 020 7420 9891
> > [log in to unmask]
> > www.poetrysociety.org.uk
> >
> >


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