Protecting icons

Good Samaritan registers URLs in attempt to foil exploitation of cultural icons. The Kansas man is a kind of Internet Good Samaritan, spending his own time and cash to register famous names online, and then handing them over to the celebrity, free of charge. "DO UNTO OTHERS what you would like to have done unto you," says the 47-year-old Moritz, a former youth minister who travels abroad to speak to religious groups. Moritz began buying up the names after he first logged onto the Internet several years ago. Much of what Moritz saw was the misuse of celebrity names - and much of that was pornographic. "Anywhere in the world, someone could type in demimoore.com and you_d come upon a site that had links to several things, one of them hardcore pornography," he said. Moritz decided to take the information highway_s high road by giving away stars_ names. His mission: protect cultural icons from Web exploitation, which he says makes the Web safer for everyone.