Court Shuts Down Some Web Sites

A U.S. court shut down thousands of Web sites after it determined they diverted Web surfers and held them captive while bombarding them with ads for pornography and gambling, the U.S. government said Monday.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, John Zuccarini of Andalusia, Penn., operated more than 5,500 Web sites that diverted Web surfers from their intended destinations and exposed them to pop-up ads.

Zuccarini did not respond to calls for comment.

Zuccarini registered many misspellings of popular sites, such as www.cartoonnetwork.com, the FTC said, in a bid to draw traffic from sloppy typists. Zuccarini had registered 41 variations on the name of pop star Britney Spears, the FTC said.

Visitors to his sites often could not leave, because the “back” button on their Web browsers were rigged to trigger more pop-up ads.