Ku Klux Klan Web Site Appears Under Newspaper Domain Names.

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Oct. 9--Web surfers hunting this week for online versions of The Inquirer and at least nine other newspapers have risked landing, instead, on the Web site of an ex-Ku Klux Kan leader promoting white separatism.

Unknown to the papers, someone in recent days registered Internet addresses that included part or all of the newspapers' names, then linked those addresses to the racist site.

Anyone who typed one of the addresses -- called domain names -- into their Web browser in hopes of finding a news site saw gothic letters across the screen, and a black-and-white cross circled with the words "White Pride World Wide."

"Everybody is taking steps to stop this right away," Fred Mann, general manager of Philadelphia Online, the Web site of The Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, said yesterday. He said an upset reader alerted Philadelphia Online to the problem Wednesday.

The Inquirer yesterday fired off a cease-and-desist letter to the registered owner of the address in question -- philadelphiainquirer.com -- but Mann promised additional legal action if that didn't work, "because this is our trademark name."

Companies typically register multiple versions of their names as Web addresses, and The Inquirer is no exception. But somehow this one address was not registered by the newspaper company, Mann said.

The new domain names were registered between Sunday and Monday to a post office box number in Suisun City, Calif., according to records at Network Solutions Inc., the Herndon, Va., company that oversees allocations of Internet addresses.

Messages left yesterday at the phone number listed in the records were not returned.

The owner of Stormfront, the white-separatist site, yesterday denied involvement in the incidents. "It's kind of bizarre," said Don Black, 45, of West Palm Beach, Fla.

"I don't have anything to do with the domain names that have been registered," he said. He said he knew the California man who had done it but denied knowing about the scheme in advance.

Other affected newspapers were the Chicago Sun-Times, San Jose Mercury News, Atlanta Constitution, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Albuquerque Tribune, San Francisco Examiner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the London Telegraph.

"We got notice from some of our readers who were appalled," said Mark Kipnis, general counsel to the Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times went to federal court yesterday and obtained a temporary restraining order against use of the domain name chicagosuntimes.com

"I've requested it be stopped," Black said of the scheme. "There's obviously a trademark issue involved, and I'm sure these newspapers are going to be getting involved in legal action."

Visit Philadelphia Online, the World Wide Web site of The Philadelphia Inquirer, at http://www.phillynews.com