Commission staff is often asked to provide opinions on the application of FTC law to discrete situations. Such opinions are not binding on the Commission, but provide guidance to businesses, particularly new enterprises seeking to conform their practices to comply with FTC statutes, precedents and decisions. During 1997, two staff advisory letters dealt with fraudulent and deceptive practices on the Internet. The letters were both sent to Network Solutions, the company responsible for issuing the universal resource locators (URLs--names that identify Internet sites). The letters addressed two instances of deceptive URLs:

• During the July 4th weekend, more than 2.6 million Internet users, many of them children, visited NASA's Internet site at www.nasa.gov to view pictures sent from Mars. Unfortunately, a commercial pornography site registered the URL www.nasa.com. When Internet users looking for pictures from Mars entered the word "NASA" in their search engine, they were as likely to land on the porn site as the genuine NASA site. Both NASA and the FTC received complaints from parents whose children were deceived. FTC staff provided an advisory opinion to Network Solutions stating that the site might be deceptive. Network Solutions subsequently withdrew the www.nasa.com URL.
• The URL for Network Solutions is www.internic.org. An Australian company, Internic Software, Inc. obtained the URL www.internic.com, and used the site to pose as Network Solutions. Visitors to the copycat web site could apply online for a URL, and were required to make an electronic credit card payment of $250 as their URL license fee. Network Solutions also offers online registration and collects payment online, but it charges a $100 license fee. Although the Australian site operator submitted the applications it received to Network Solutions with the $100 licensing fee, the would-be site operators who got URLs from the look-alike site paid an additional $150. Commission staff issued an advisory letter to Network Solutions warning that the copycat web site might mislead consumers and subsequently referred the matter to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which is now investigating the practices of Internic Software, Inc.