The brazen theft of Perl.com shows just how far operatives in countries with lax IP laws can go.
Luckily, the domain name Perl.com was returned to its rightful owner, programmer Tom Christiansen.
At the time that the incident was made public, the domain Perl.com had been transferred to Chinese domain registrar BizCN. The registrar’s erratic WHOIS tool showed that the thief was located in Shanxi, China as early as in September 2020.
By the time Perl.com was deemed hijacked, the domain had moved to KeySystems with the registrant’s locale in Moldova. Network Solutions reversed the transfer eventually and that was a good ending for the Perl.com web site and its operators.
Brian D. Foy, editor for Perl.com, documented the event in a lengthy post that praises the use of sharing information to keep the details organized among several authorized people via the use of Google docs. At the same time, many resourceful individuals were mobilized; in the words of Foy:
“The trick here is to not do work that someone else can do for you (and often better than you can). Likewise, if someone is already doing something, you’re wasting your time (and others’ time) by redoing or reinventing it.”
Read the full article titled “The Hijacking of Perl.com.”
