Perhaps the most accidentally visited
porn site in the history of the
world wide web. Whitehouse.com was founded in
1997 during the
dot com boom and today claims that it has been viewed by 85 million people since its inception. It pulls in more than $1 million each year in revenues and site creator
Daniel Parisi has invested more than $7 million in the site throughout its existence.
It's also the website that resulted in one of the reoccurring elementary school pranks. A rather naive kid might ask another kid "Hey, how can I find out when James K. Polk was president?" The other kid would reply, "Oh simple, just go to whitehouse.com."
Yet some people didn't find this prank so funny. As in 2003, Parry Aftab, who runs the WiredSafety organization made the claim in an interview that "It's always been the poster child for where kids can get into trouble with porn by accident."
Not to mention that the Child Online Protection Act might actually make the site illegal itself. That law bans the use of misleading Web addresses to lure children to view material harmful to minors.
Regardless of any of the criticism, both legal and not, on February 11, 2004, Parisi, who is now married and raising a child, decided to put the URL up for sale and cited his child, soon to enter kindergarten, as the main reason.
The site is expected to be bought out by the National Fruit Product Company, who makes apple sauce and apple juice under the name White House.
And for the record, the site of The White House is www.whitehouse.gov.