This is a "too much time on the hands" investigation. No puns necessary.

Whilst reading an article about a current lawsuit against once domain monopoly VeriSign, Inc. (d/b/a Network Solutions) by the original registrant of the domain name sex.com. In the suit, which has risen past the Ninth United States Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to the California State Supreme Court, alleges that VeriSign violated its own policy regarding registrations and registrants when it transferred the "owner" of the sex.com domain to another party based on some forged documents. VeriSign's obtuse defence is based upon the idea that "domain names are not property and [VeriSign] cannot be held responsible for giving its customers' registered names away."

So far, this appears to be a seemingly valid case against a company notorious for screwing their customers. Never was I happier than the day I moved my final domain name away from them. However, I digress. My valid curiosity brought me to the sex.com website wherein upon I was told I could not continue without enabling cookies. No thanks, I am not that curious (especially since I bet my first born it is a straight porn site). Nevertheless, there was a link titled "2257 Compliance" that caught my attention.

This page contains the names and addresses of the record custodians in charge of proving the persons depicted in the sexual material were in fact over 18 "at the time of the creation of such depictions." I briefly scroll down the list and find this:

Blane R. Richard III
Custodian of Records
1066 Timberline Rd.
Apopka, FL 32703

"Wow," I think, "that must be right around here." So, with the aid of mapping software and the country property appraisal site, I locate this property. That address does not really exist, because that street is located in a warehouse area. A company from Denver, Colorado owns the entire parcel noted to have two structures for commercial and/or warehouse use, a pool, several shed-like buildings and many concrete slabs. So what of Blane Richard, I wonder.

A quick search shows that our friend Mr. Richard has been a busy fellow being the custodian for such sites as "extremefootjobs," "stmmultimedia," "allxamateur," "rubber-doll," "fantasytoonz," "ebonyxxxfantasy," "69webmasters" and my favourite, "bigboobpornstars," among others and operates under the corporate identity "Graphical Images of Florida, Inc."

While that company (with other addresses in nearby Altamonte Springs and Maitland) went into business in 1993, they failed to file their annual report to the State and were administratively dissolved as a corporation in 1997, according to State records.

So where does that leave me, the uber-curious one? Now that the corporation responsible for the records is defunct, if I needed to look-up the information, where would I go? Is one responsible forever for these records? Reading the laws did not help much, but then again this concerns me little.

The moral of the story: hyperlinks and online databases are wonderful things, even for useless and unnecessary research.