09/25/2021
4 ALL OF U LOVERS OF POETRY & CLEAN HAIRDOS....HERE IS A LONG OVERDUE SHAMPOO WORD OR 2:
hello, SHAMPOO Universe! it’s your long-absent editor. and i’m still here. and while i realize it has been a sh*tty couple of years for our poor planet and for many of us lovely cohabitants of it, i am popping my freshly shampooed head out of my bubble bath today to give you some real SHAMPOO news.
but first, a preface/promise: SHAMPOO is still here & there will be issues to come, each filled with so much more amazing poetry and shampoo-related art and other various additional exciting whatnots that still to come. much. more. and that’s still a promise that comes with an apology that you’ve not gotten much more and sooner.
but if you would like to know why you’ve not gotten more and sooner, please read on.
what’s been going on at SHAMPOO and with its dingbat editor that for the last couple of years have been the primary excuses why you haven’t seen the website blossom with new issues just yet? well, i’m finally here to tell you. and this isn’t exactly going to be brief, but i will do my best to attempt to relay the crux of story while doing so as briefly as possible
for the past couple of years i have been fighting a bit of a battle. and i’m sure that it’s not a completely unfamiliar one to many of you, given that some aspects of this SHAMPOO drama have been spotlit in some ways here and there in publicized stories, both fictional and real. but this was all at first very unfamiliar and ultra-bizarre and in the end absurdly difficult for me, not to mention so embarrassing and problematic that i attempted to take care of it all myself without sharing any of this with you all, and for that, i apologize.
perhaps you might be familiar with the grace & frankie episode where a character played by the late, great ed asner steals the show’s eponymous gals’ company website URL because...he's lonely? well, that sort of happened with SHAMPOO, only unlike frankie, i hadn’t forgotten to renew my URL registration. in the spirit of full disclosure, and so that i may more clearheadedly move forward post haste with the cultivation and growth and new issues of the magazine, here are the facts, followed by some humble requests:
1. i renewed my domain name, which i had had for over 19 years, in december of 2019. the website had already gone what i assumed would be temporarily dark due to my being unable to pay the webhost’s monthly bill of something around $15 on time. the webhost is a separate entity in this case than the domain name registrar, network solutions – and, not to confuse, but each entity now has new names and new ownership. so SHAMPOO’s webhost dating back to its second issue was a mom & pop shop called xo communications that I had used for nearly the entire duration of the website’s existence, but the month I couldn’t pay I was nearly homeless, and the company had just been purchased by the conglomerate that was and is universal / comcast / etc. when i got the money to pay, which was perhaps a month late, i was told the site could not be brought back, that it had been 'blacked out' or erased, which of course did not sound right at all to me, and obviously, as the story will later show, it almost surely had not been.
2. despite the site being down for nearly two years after what happened in #1, and despite, as many of you are aware, i went through a few rather extreme troubles coinciding with those two years, financially and otherwise, i kept the domain name URL in my name, as I had since 2000, and i made sure of it.
3. i last renewed the URL in december of 2019. i had until February of 2020 to renew it. I received a receipt of renewal through february of 2021. I even purchased a web host package from network solutions, the entity from which i had originally purchased the domain name back in 2000, and with which I had always my renewals of the URL current.
4. in january of 2020, i was informed by network solutions, after trying to log into my account and finding things a bit buggy, that there was a problem with my billing, and the domain name or URL was no longer mine, but belonged to someone else.
5. however, there was no billing problem. network solutions had taken the money for the domain name the day I renewed it; and the money for their web hosting services. I have my receipt of payment for the renewal from network solutions, letting me know that my URL was renewed through february of 2021 AND i still also have the proof the money for it was taken by network solutions from my paypal account on the very day i placed the renewal order.
6. despite spending dozens of hours chatting online on their webiste, speaking with them on the phone, being transferred incessantly from department to department, mostly being on hold, speaking with a wide variety of different people at the company, each of whom had a different excuse for why what had happened had happened and several people, during the first month or so of their correspondence with me, promised me my URL back. i never got it back. in the end, i was told definitively that it was out of their hands. i did not even get reimbursed for the money they had taken for the renewal, even though they’d promised to do that, until i called them a couple of times late in the summer, and i finally received a reimbursement in the fall of 2020. again, i had renewed the URL through february of 2021.
7. the old shampoo url is still up and running, however, and has been for at least the duration of the time since i was told there was a problem with billing in early 2020, if not previous to that. plus, while it is not evident upon first glance because of the bastardization of the original formatting, i worked hard on to ensure each accepted poem was showcased as close to how it was on the (most often “virtual”) page as it came to me as was possible, the original SHAMPOO URL, in the current state it is in as of this writing, still has every single poem and all of the original coding that I spent hours most every week inputting since SHAMPOO’s inception in 2000 - until I lost the webhost account sometime in 2017, at least – that is, each and every one of the poems in all of the issues up to when i had renewed the URL, which is 40 complete issues, plius a large portion of the 41st issue – all of the poems and all of our work – it’s all still there on the old URL site. you might have to really dig around to find some of them, but they are all there. worse, the site literally showcases the poems on a rotational basis, all of the around 1,500 poems I accepted to the magazine from over 1,000 of you, over the years. for this, first, let me say that i am very, very sorry to inform you of this, and that this fact has literally been torturing me ever since i became aware that this was the case.
8. so, after many hours of research, and of trying to unravel the mystery of how someone came into possession not only of my old domain name, but also of all that was on it, even though i’d been told the content had been erased at least two years previous to the last time I renewed the URL, i contacted ICANN, the international organization which is supposed to ensure that URLs change hands in a copacetic manner – they accredit companies like network solutions (which, i believe is now called webMD) and can remove the accreditation if they discover any fraudulent activity. i was told by a global ICANN help desk representative in early 2020 to file a particular kind of dispute with ICANNN, and that if I won this dispute i would get my domain name back. and so i filled out the paperwork and dug up the proof they would need and filed that a dispute, along with all of the proof that I have showing that I was clearly wronged. to my horror and shock, i lost that dispute last year, a couple of months after filing it. I filed another dispute, the same kind, giving ICANN even MORE evidence, a few short months ago. i lost that one about a month ago. and there was no explanation whatsoever as to why. i contacted their global help desk, whose folks were the ones who told me to file this particular dispute in the first place, and have still not been given an explanation why i lost the dispute after providing clear evidence that network solutions had sold my URL out from under me when I was the person who was rightfully in possession of same. this does not even take into consideration the fact that my content purportedly was erased a year or two earlier by universal after they purchased my webhosting site.
9. when I called the ICANN international help desk a couple of weeks ago, and this is the same office wherein a representative told me a couple of years ago how to file a dispute to get my domain name back, I was then told that what i actually should have done is file a different kind of dispute with ICANN. and this one costs $1,000 just to file. very convenient, right? these are the people that are supposed to keep these companies from performing fraudulent activity. the type of dispute that i had been told and told again to file when i first spoke with the folks at the ICANN global help desk in early 2000 in order to regain the URL and its content did not cost me a thing – it was a free service.
10. again, the current content on the website not only improperly showcases your poetry and my poetry and all of our work, but it is using this poetry to sell the poetry and services of a person named Danil Rudoy (if anyone knows this person, please pass along that I would very much love to speak with them – I’d like to think they are innocent, however only a couple of months ago I received word that a message from me had been passed along to them and yet the person refused my request to even speak with me, despite my amicable request and explanation that all of our poems and work are still on the site, and I sent along the proof that the URL should still be in my possession. I had relayed that, given all of that proof, and that the work is not theirs in the first place, that it is unethical and I would like it removed, even if I am unable to get my old domain name back – I told them they could keep the site, that that I could live with (except I keep hearing an incessant voice in my head asking “Why should I have to?”). So, this person or persons going by “Danil Rudoy,” a “poet” is continually updating the old SHAMPOO website to improperly – both unethically and in a severely compromised way format-wise (and I can speak volumes on how unsettling these two things are to me; and to what extremes I took to ensure that neither would ever happen at SHAMPOO, with the caveat that when I became destitute, I did ask for help and promised that the magazine would not be going away and would be live again soon, and now it is, thanks to archival from the waybackmachine and me purchasing a new webhost and domain name, shampoo-poetry.com – the original site does not have the dash, fyi). I have never read from either the of the books that “Danil Rudoy is using the content and poems from the old SHAMPOO website to sell, although I have checked their availability and they are readily available per Amazon. I honestly would be a bit afraid to see what might show up on the pages of these books. Given the way “Danil Rudoy” treats the website as a monetary venture for which they are clearly attempting to glean a profit from my nearly two decades of work on the magazine and the poetry of over a thousand of you good people, and without our permission, while knowing full well that the work is not or certainly should not even proprietarily be theirs, might these books include your poems? or mine? [NOTE: the legality of this is where I am most ignorant, and this is why I originally went to the people whose job it is to ensure things like this do not happen and to rectify them with they do. but this ignorance still prevail. it appears that internet copyright laws would have in many cases allowed for the use of residual information left on a URL that switched hands properly, but certainly not, or surely not (?) IF the site had not been literally and fraudulently taken from it rightful possessor in the first place; and I would think this would be the case whomever is at fault in the fraudulent transferal of the URL – so I’m not accusing “Danil Rudoy” but XO Communications or Universal for telling me the site had been erased when it had not (surely this person did not go to the trouble of migrating all of the information from the Internet Archive as I did, and even if that is the case, is this even legal? I do not know), but mostly I blame Network Solutions for allowing anyone else to access the site after taking my money and providing receipt of services for the valid renewal of the site in December of 2019 into 2021; the same way I’d done since I took possession of the URL all the way back in 2000].
11. One final caveat that makes this all the more heinous. The site is also listed by “Danil Rudoy” as for sale for something in the neighborhood of $5,000 – it is being advertised as a poetry magazine with years of solid and reputable coding and familiar, easy to remember domain name – at a place online called Flippa (think flipping websites rather than physical property; same gimmick).
THAT BRINGS ME UP TO TODAY AND HOPEFULLY EXPLAINS WHY YOU’VE SEEN SO LITTLE NEW WORK GOING UP ON THE NEW SHAMPOO WEBSITE. BUT REST ASSURED, THAT WILL CHANGE. I WILL SOON HAVE A JOB AND I’M SWITCHING PRIORITIES BY GOING PUBLIC WITH THIS INFORMATION AND I WILL BEGIN WORKING MORE DILIGENTLY ON NEW ISSUES OF THE MAGAZINE at its new URL location, while continuing to fight to have the content of the old site removed and/or the URL simply returned back to me, as it should be.
as you might imagine, given the lengths I have gone to under the most financially strenuous and stressful circumstances, this has left me feeling pretty upset. but my determination to correct things, to ensure the old site’s content is removed irrevocably, if not (and this remains the goal) to just get my URL back because it should have never been transferred to anyone else, and most importantly to continue to improve and produce more fantastic issues of the magazine – that resolve is now stronger than ever.
SO, WITH MY MOST SINCERE APOLOGIES FOR LETTING YOU DOWN, EVEN IF I HAD NO WAY TO KNOW THIS WOULD HAPPEN, AND THROUGH NO APPARENT FAULT OF MY OWN, I HUMBLY ASK THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE WILLING TO:
a. send poems for publication in upcoming issues. you can do that by sending them, most helpfully as an attached word document, if possible, to my attention at [email protected]
b. if any of you are familiar with copyright law, particularly as it applies to websites, and would like to speak with me, offer any advice, anything, please contact me at [email protected]
c. if you publish poems using the name “Danil Rudoy,” and are in possession of the old SHAMPOO poetry URL, please contact me at [email protected]
d. if you happen know a poet who goes by the name “Danil Rudoy,” please kindly give them the message that I would like to speak with them, offering my email address. or let me know how best to get in touch with this person. let them know i harbor no ill, and that they can keep the domain name if they insist, so long as they remove all of my content, including the coding, and every trace of it, and mostly so long as they remove every single poem from the 41 issues and over 1,000 amazing poets whose work SHAMPOO has showcased over the years.
e. and finally, that you spread the word of this message if you feel so compelled, as it would be so appreciated.
that is plenty to say. and now i really must get back to the task at hand, which is my job search. after being laid off due to covid-19 in march of 2020, contracting covid earlier this year, for the past couple of months i have finally been looking for a new job abnd am now at a point where I’m getting great interviews, many of them. just no offer yet. the odds have continued to be stacked against me thanks to many things, most of which I feel were not my doing, and some of that has been a significant factor in why i had all of this craziness happen to SHAMPOO, truth be told, and for better or worse.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING THIS. it is a huge relief to have it finally relayed in this public manner. i hope most of this makes at least some logical sense, can be read and sort of understood. many apologies if that is not the case and for any typos and grammatical errors.
may Love and Peace and Bubbly Poems be yours in as much quantity and duration as your gorgeous hearts desire. and please do send me poems and/or shampoo-related art for future issues of SHAMPOO. and please, please, do stay tuned.
in utmost humility,
del ray cross, founder and editor
SHAMPOO (www.shampoo-poetry.com)
clean hair / good poetry
