Children's Author's Website Leads to Pornographic Site

This is one of those nightmare stories brought to us courtesy of the internet. Technology is wonderful, but...

Andrew Cope is a highly respected British children's book author. His most popular books are the Spy Dog series. They are targeted primarily to 7-12 year-olds. There are also the Spy Pups and Spy Cat books. There were 12 Spy Dog books, published from 2005-2016. They are published by Puffin Books. Puffin Books is a British children's book imprint of Random House Penguin books. Not surprisingly, Cope's books are best known in his home country of England. Many schools include them in their libraries. However, Puffin sells its books throughout the English-speaking world.

The books contained a link to Andrew Cope's website. It said readers could find out more about the characters in the books by visiting the site. For example, one said “Discover even more about Lara, Spud, and Star. Meet them at their OFFICIAL WEBSITE,” followed by a link. That is where the problem arose. Cope no longer controlled the website. It was taken over by a party that was forwarding visitors to a pornographic website.

When Puffin became aware of the problem, they immediately began contacting schools, telling them to remove the books from their shelves. Puffin and Cope issued a statement, explaining, “We understand an unconnected third party has very recently taken control of the domain name and is using it to display a different website with inappropriate adult content. This website is not associated with Puffin or Andrew Cope. We are asking people not to visit the website and ensure that children do not visit it either.

“We are taking this extremely seriously and are acting on this issue as a matter of urgency through the appropriate channels to get this website removed. This is an in-depth and complex legal process and will take time. We have immediately paused the sale and distribution of the books whilst we deal with this matter.”

How did this happen? While some stories spoke of the site being “hijacked,” what happened is it was taken over legally, though its use was then totally inappropriate and apparently intentionally so. If the site were simply “hijacked,” the owner would be able to remove the offending message, replace it with the correct one, and use software designed to protect against illegal access. What happened is that years after the publishing of the last book, Cope abandoned the site. After a certain period of non renewal and nonpayment, a site's URL (link identification) goes up for sale again. Anyone can purchase the right to use that site and use it as they please. That would be legal and make it complicated to shut it down.

However, the site is not working now, at least temporarily. UK registry service Nominet says it has suspended the service for breaching the Online Safety Act. It did not demand age verification as required by the act.