Ken Kifer's site down again?
 

For a couple weeks now I've been checking to see if Ken Kifer's site is back up, but today it hasn't even shown up in the google directory. Does any one have any details, perchance? It'd be a shame to lose such a colossal resource. :(

Ken's site "was" being kept up by a friend Riin Gill. She has her own site to manage also.

This is all I could find about Ken's site so maybe the main site is down or (shudder!) gone.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~riin/ken.htm

I was disappointed to see the wayback machine doesn't have a copy. I wonder how may people did their own personal mirror after Ken was killed?

kenkifer.com now shows some Japanese language domain registration / SEO page. I'm guessing the registration was allowed to lapse and it was grabbed by squatters. I did find a mirror at http://www.phred.org/~alex/kenkifer/

Since the mirror is from April 2003 and Ken died in September 2003, it may be missing some of his final updates and of course is missing updates from Riin about the crash and DUI / manslaughter conviction.

Some of it seems to work okay via the Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/201207170...com/bikepages/

http://web.archive.org/web/201107160....kenkifer.com/

is working here...

Just joined this forum, but I used to kick around in rec.bicycles - a lot! - and communicated with Ken back in the days - shared some of his wander lust and used plenty of his advice. He approved my page (cycletourist.com) for a link on his pages and I linked back. Ken was a cyclist/philosopher I admired.

I was checking my links page today and saw the Japanese page. I was appalled that his domain name had been scavenged by a squatter (Grrrrr!). I hunted around and got here. Then I read Riin's comments, above, stating that Ken's domain name was stolen. According to Riin, Joe Gardner said:

> No, the domain did not expire. It’s paid through the end of 2014.
> No, we did not take the site down.
> Apparently someone in Tokyo hacked into the DNS service and stole the domain.
> Joe and some other IT guys are working on getting it back.

If this is true, it is an outrage. It appears to be an ad for a domain registrar (? - Google translate) If it was stolen then surely there could be a redress through ICANN. I would really like to know if this avenue has been pursued or not. Is Joe Gardner a member here? If I can get enough facts I would be glad to start pursuing this with ICANN myself. And if rescued, I would be glad to host Ken's site and pay $10 a year to keep the domain.

Chuck - cycletourist.com

Joe is not here. He sold BF.

Been thinking about bikepacking. I'd like to keep these kinds of resources as reference. I'm not much in the way of computers, but if you need anything make sure to post here and I'll donate what I can.

Thanks!

Does anyone know how to contact him? (I sent an email to Riin tonight, too). I believe he was the last one who had access to the domain and site - what I call "the keys" to the web site. It would nice to know the facts - like who the domain registrar was before it was Shanghai'd. They should have a record of how the domain was transferred away. The comment Riin passed on about hacking into the DNS does not make sense. DNS only points the domain.name to a server. Someone could log in legitimately and change it back. Unfortunately, a whois lookup shows that Hiroshi Ishiura (Tokyo) is the domain registrant now. Maybe he would be open to reasonable negotiation.

And Bandrada, thank you for the offer. Taking care of the site and domain would be a pittance for me (I pay $10 a year for domains and have a several others of my own) and I will always have way more than enough web space for my own sites, so it would be no cost for me to host it.

Perhaps Hoshiri will make a very reasonable offer and we could buy it back. If that was not something outlandish on his part it would be nice to have contributions. But the last thing I want to do (in principle) is hand this speculator a profit.

I find it hard to believe it was actually stolen, but if what Joe said, "paid up through 2014" is true then something illegal did transpire and ICANN, being an international organization, could help. I wish I knew who the previous registrar was.

The other road to take is to buy .org or .net and put his site up there - then try to find old links and change them to the new site (not easy, or perhaps even possible).

Chuck

Take a look at the fourth post in this thread.

That's the current information. The current registrar is onamae.com - a Japanese registrar. I'd like to start with the previous registrar, the one that it was registered at before it was transferred. I just found an old post in Google groups showing 000dom as the registrar through Nov of 2012. ...... And now I see that 000domains.com is no longer, but also dotster.com says "Dotster.com is proud to be the home of 000Domains customers!" So, I suppose I can start there and see what records, if any, they have.

Awesome work, cycletour.