Celebs looking for URLs

B-Town celebs must look for alternative domain addresses as URLs in their own names have already been registered by fans. Neha Sharma tells more.

Bollywood stars Priyanka Chopra and Katrina Kaif are both going to launch their websites.

But Kat may face the same problem that Piggy Chops did while finalising a URL for her site — both priyankachopra.in and priyankachopra.org were already taken, and the actress had to settle for iampriyankachopra.com.

A source closely involved with the sites says, "These URLs were taken so we couldn't go for them. And then we thought that iampriyankachopra.com sounds classy."

While Priyanka found a way out, it is increasingly becoming a problem for stars to start sites with a URL of their choice, since they are already taken by fans. Some do this with the intent of demanding money from celebs when they are asked for ownership of the URL.

Not so fan-tastic
Kareenakapoor.com, amritarao.com, ranimukherjee.com or aishwaryarai.com are examples of sites not owned by the stars whose names they carry.

Actress Amrita Rao calls this a case of "misrepresentation" and says she will have to create a site "with the URL amritarao17." Like Priyanka, Kangana Ranaut too had a hard time when she decided to launch her website. The address, kanganaranaut.com was taken by a fan and she had to go for realkanganaranaut.com.

Her publicist says, "There were plenty of sites online that were using Kangana Ranaut's name. We understand that there are provisions within the law for a celebrity to get back ownership of such a URL, but since it's a time-consuming process, we chose this URL instead."

Actor Sonu Sood found another way out of the problem. "The URL sonusood.com was taken. Therefore, I chose the .in domain name. I didn't want to waste time negotiating with the owner of the URL," he says.

Actor Adhyayan Suman also took the same decision. The actor says, "A guy bought the URL adhayayansuman.com in New Zealand, after I did Haal-E-Dil, hoping to make money after I got established. He asked my publicist for $ 4,000 to sell the URL."