In the old pay-per-impression days, John Zuccarini reportedly made $1 million a year registering typo-sites such as bobthebiulder.com and teltubbies.com. I brought a UDRP against him, maybe you did too. It is thought that the Truth in Domains Act was targeted at Zuccarini, who was the first person ever arrested under it, and was imprisoned for 14 months. I can’t find any report that anyone else was ever arrested under the Act. Which may speak well of its deterrent effect.
However a prison sentence may not have deterred Zuccarini. According to this article, the FTC alleges that he is still engaging in a ‘domain name registration scam’ utilizing ‘affiliate marketing programs.’ No specific names or sites are cited.
I am asked: what is pay-per-impression. This refers to one of the earlier, failed, models of internet advertising, where the website owner was paid for the number of times that its site was viewed. Because the site hosting the ad was paid regardless of whether the person viewing the ad had any interest in the ad or not, the model encouraged misdirected traffic.