Mainstream Media (media group)

The group's Afghanistan news website attracted hundreds of thousands of unique visitors in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, largely because of the understanding Osama bin Laden had launched the attacks from his base in Afghanistan. Afghanistan News.Net received thousands of angry and abusive emails and posts on its chat board, while hackers eventually took the site down, which resulted in the entire Mainstream Media network going down.[7] The United States Library of Congress included Afghanistan News.Net in its 11 September Web Archive of sites portraying expressions of individuals, groups, media and institutions in the wake of the 11 September attacks.[8]

Afghanistan News.Net is also a selected Internet resource on Afghanistan for Berkeley Library.[9]

In August 2006 Mainstream Media's two hundred news portals went offline for several days when the domain name on which its Toronto-based servers were hosted was stolen and sold on eBay for $20,000. Mainstream sued several parties in California where the domain, www.fm.net, was registered. Shortly before the case was concluded the 'buyer' transferred the domain name to Afriregister S.A., a little-known domain name registry in Burundi, in Africa, which took the case out of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California jurisdiction.[10]

New South Wales, Australia Police investigated the theft of the domain name and arrested a former Mainstream employee working in the company's Sydney office who had hacked into Mainstream's computer system and transferred the domain to a fictitious person in July 2006. A month later the man sold the domain on eBay for $20,000. He was convicted and sentenced to community service and ordered to pay restitution of $25,800. The money was never paid.[11] Today Mainstream uses its corporate site to host its servers.[12]