If you were to visit singer Madonna‘s official website, you’re likely to instinctively enter madonna.com into your browser’s address bar (or google it).
And you’d be quite correct.
However, until a few years ago that wasn’t the case.
A cybersquatter named Dan Parisi had claimed the madonna.com domain name for his own fiendish purposes during the dot.com bubble days. Meanwhile, fans and followers of the real Ms. Ciccone had to be content with the less attractive madonnaweb.com address, and this is what the main image on the index page looked like on the 5th of August 1999:
When the music industry caught on that this Internet thing wasn’t just some passing fad, Madonna’s legal machinery sprung into action and wrestled back the far more valuable madonna.com domain in a landmark intellectual property rights case in October 2000.
Why am I mentioning this?
No reason. I just re-discovered this old image in my archive and felt like sharing it.
Screenshot from the hmvh DOT net archives
