Unpublished writer decided to cybersquat on a famous authors website, and it backfired

An enterprising cybersquatter who is not Patrick deWitt has commandeered patrickdewitt.net in an attempt to attract attention for their own novel (via Willamette Week). And while the squatter has backed off some of his more audacious demands by scrubbing them from the website, screenshots and archived versions of the site still exist because this is the internet and that’s how things work around here.

It’s slightly different than what most people think of as cybersquatting, since the person currently in control of patrickdewitt.net doesn’t appear to be asking for payment to return control of the site. The person actually seems disappointed that so far, deWitt hasn’t even acknowledged the situation. They just really, really want deWitt...

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