1 Damn, take that link off there. You pull people into a trap to click and then they see what the site has been replaced with. You are evil.

2 need to stick a rel="nofollow" in that link tag

3 Maybe it's just me, but those images are actually a little hot.

4 Geez! And Rusty yelled at me for the Goatse-Jihadi link! Guess TypePad sucks even more than Blogger.

5 "And stop letting use domains they way they do" What?

6 As much as this sucks for Merri, this is the nature of capitalism. Merri made the URL have value, but then relinquished it back to Six Apart. Someone else saw the value of the URL and paid Six Apart for it (as it was now theirs to resell). So S.A. and the new owner are making money in true capitalistic style.

7 No, TypePad made the URL have value. Merri purchased it, and used it properly, and deleted it. TypePad re-sold it to someone who is violating their TOS, and refuses to do anything about it. S.A. and TypeMaxiPad have Terms of Service. They're letting the new owner violate them. Not only that, "Merri Musings" is copyrighted material. G'head, Malcolm Y, try setting up a URL with "Microsoft" in it.

8 1) The 2-word phrase "Merri Musings" is not copyrighted 2) You're confusing trademarks vs. copyrights with "Microsoft" 3) There are plenty of COMPANYX-sucks.com websites out there, where COMPANYX cannot do anything about it.

9 I'm just wondering what possessed Merri to relinquish the URL to begin with. Didn't she realize that she had all these links referring back to the typepad blog? Especially high-visibility ones like the Weblog Awards link. Wouldn't it have been worth it to just pay for another year and set up a static page redirecting people to her new blog?

10 Whoah!

11 Malcom Y, Um, no it wouldn't be worth it for me to pay for TypePad for another year - I blog for fun, and I would prefer my hard-earned income go toward other things. PLUS, based on their TOS, I never expected TypePad to permit (and almost WELCOME) such filth to be housed on their platform, so it never entered my mind that this would have happened when I closed my account. I'm not a fool enough to think they would have kept my URL and not "sold" it for a long time, but I think a company should stand behind the TOS they put out for all of their customers to review and agree to. That makes Six Apart as scummy as the person running that site and in my book, I've made a GREAT decision to dump TypePad. Most people that have that old URL on their site have been very responsive, of course, by changing it to my new URL. Over time, this will be a non-issue anyway as I continue to build traction at the new URL. Andthatisall.

12 Yep that's pretty nasty. I'd be less than thrilled as well.

13 Someone must be listening. They've doubled the number of pictures there in the last 12 hours (more comments too).

14 The domain is not merrimusings.typepad.com but typepad.com. In the Internet domain scheme typepad.com is addressed by registering the domain with an internet authority or an agency so designated (for example I use an outfit called Namesecure to register domains). Then the Internet becomes aware of the domain and knows how to direct traffic destined for the particular domain. However, anything to the left of typepad in the domain typepad.com is under control of typepad.com. In the case we are talking about merrimusings is a subdomain of typepad.com and traffic first goes to typepad.com and then typepad.com directs the traffic to merrimusings. So in this case Merri has to rely on the good graces and TOS of typepad.com.