I'm not a total wizard at reverse lookups and ICANN records, but it appears that the former home of Harry Pellow's HCP Research, once at http://hcpresearch.com/ has been re-registered and parked on or about 15 June of 2009, the very when the previous domain registration expired. Talk on the 356Talk web forum indicated that Harry's heir, Andrew, was alerted to the lapse too late. He found out on the 25th of June. I had raised the issue on 356Talk just two days prior. The site had been sniped by that time already, nothing to be done about it.
What this means for the availability of Harry's Books and Videos remains to be seen, but it likely doesn't bode well. They're listed on Amazon.com, but fulfillment has been spotty and the CD-ROM version...well, I don't get much feedback about it aside from the occasional reference to my Amazon review. But the website is definitely gone, and there's not much hope in reclaiming it for the 356 Faithful.
There are folk who fish for expiring domain registrations. They set up robots and get email notifications when domains expire. Then they re-register and set up some skeleton site that uses some of the terms that the site used to be known for (in search engines, exploting past glories). Sometimes the new owner is hoping to just get ad click throughs, other times to squat and hold the domain hostage until the previous owner realizes the mistake of their procrastination and has to buy it back from the new registrant at above market prices.
There's part of me that's loathe to point out that the website, though parked--and now having nothing to do with HCP Research--is alive. I don't want you to click through there, and I certainly don't want you to click on any links on the page. Because it puts money in the pocket of a cybersquatter and reveals nothing to you that you couldn't have found with a google of your own.
Who Owns HCP Research Now?
There are >6300 other domains registered to this particular server--and the company that owns it has 20,000 (yes, twenty thousand) domains more, indicating that it is indeed in a parking lot.
Below is the registrant info from a "whois" lookup & below that is a decoding for the curious.
- Registrant: privateregistrations.ws
- Private Registrations Aktien Gesellschaft
- CNR of Granby & Sharpe St.
- Suite K2134
- Kingstown kingstown, VC
- Domain Name: HCPRESEARCH.COM
"privateregistrations.ws" = What is ".ws", I hear you ask. Why, ".ws" stands for "Web Site", doesn't it? Suuuure.
You see, .ws is the Internet country code top-level domain for Samoa. It is administered by SamoaNIC, for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Samoa.
The .ws domain is an abbreviation for “Western Samoa”, the nation’s official name when two-letter country codes were standardized in the 1970s. ICANN restricts geographic use of ".org.ws", ".gov.ws", and ".edu.ws", but all other second-level .ws domains can be sold anywhere in the world. If it matters, this particular server is located in Portland, OR. But it doesn't. Matter. Because the web host has nothing to do with the domain registration. Except for an entry in some DNS servers translating the IP number of that humming server in Oregon to "hcpresearch.com" in your web browser."Private Registrations Aktien Gesellschaft" = This is like saying "Incorporated", in German. So this company does Private Registrations. It's the Swiss Bank Account of domain registrations. It has more than 26 thousand, and aside from some google hits on some of the registered porn sites (no big surprise), you're not going to find out a lot about this company.
"CNR of Granby & Sharpe St." = Corner of Granby & Sharpe streets. Yeah, that's supposed to be an address. Okay, so its a small town, and maybe Granby is a small street. Well, not really.
There are major banks on this street, as well as the Finance Ministry and the Telecom Ministry.
And in the same building, at Suite K059 (ground floor, no doubt) a very interesting little company, an Internet Service Provider and the islands' largest cell service provider, named Digicel SVG Limited. But that's just a co-incidence, because this drop-box registry parker doesn't need any kind of infrastructure in St. Vincents, just the right regulatory (i.e., non-taxed) infrastructure.
"Suite K2134" = Umm... That's a lot of numbers. Its a city, but not with 20-story skyscrapers. Okay, maybe a two-story. Which means its probably a mail drop and not an office. With forwarding...or not.
"Kingstown, Kingstown VC" = Kingstown is the largest town on St. Vincent, largest island in the Grenadine islands chain, part of the Carribean Islands being just west of Barbados and north of Grenada.
You know, it is fascinating that Google Maps has no street information for this thriving metropolis. I don't mean that it doesn't have Street View. I mean...no features. But check the satellite view, its a big city, with a doc for the expected cruise ships and everything.
View Larger Map
But you can't look up street addresses in Google Maps for this island. Hmmm.
So, as you would expect with anything Internet-shady, this is pretty well obfuscated, and unless I wanted to do a Neal Stephenson "Hacker Tourist" kind of thing, I don't think I'll ever find the bottom of this rabbit hole.
Gone, but is anything really gone on the internet?
That's not the end of this tale. privateregistrations.ws just has the "now" of HCP Research (and probably the future, too). But it doesn't have the past. That's available from The Internet Archive, which is just really a fantastic and under-rated resource. While google updates its cached web pages often, and now it reflects the "new look " of (nee) HCP Research, the Internet Archive has all the old pages that were developed and published by Harry Pellow.
To be very safe about it, I've snarfed off a copy of his Stories and Quizzes into PDF, which I can't publish here due to copyright, but they may be available in the future on the 356 Registsry website.
Here are the Internet Archive links to the Maestro's Stories from the old HCP Research Website. And the Maestro's Quizzes, too. All copyrighted by Harry Pellow, All Rights Reserved, Aktien Gesellschaft et al., not withstanding.
Long Live HCP Research, indeed.
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