The Sad Death of craigmurray.co.uk 18


craigmurray.co.uk is no more. When Alisher Usmanov set Schillings on to me for daring to publish the truth about his past as a convicted racketeer and blackmailer, he caused my webhosts to pull the plug. Happily, after a very few days the blog returned hosted outside the UK, with a new domain name – craigmurray.org.uk instead of the craigmurray.co.uk used the previous three years.

Richard, Wibbler, Tim, Jeroen and Andrew between them did something brilliant so all the previous co.uk entres were copied to org.uk, and if you entered an old craigmurray.co.uk url, you got instantly redirected.

But sadly this no longer works. craigmurray.co.uk has now disappeared completely. It was hosted by Lycos, which went out of business, and we could not rescue it because nobody remembered any of the usernames, passwords or credit card details used when it was set up five years ago for the Blackburn election.

The content still exists safely on org.uk, but literally thousands of links around the net to craigmurray.co.uk addresses no longer work. This includes those to the Murder in Samarkand leaked FCO documents, and the urls printed in the books. The loss of many thousand old links has also of course led to a slump in various rankings on the blog – including a spectacular fall on Wikio which actually measures craigmurray.co.uk and not craigmurray.org.uk.

Anyone who has a site with a search and replace facility, if you could replace craigmurray.co.uk with craigmurray.org.uk that would be very helpful (if you have the ability to do it when it forms a part of an url).

Anyway, that’s the boring housekeeping announcement. My internet connection went down in Accra before I left, so some postings promised earlier were delayed but I hope to do them later today.

On arrival back in London I found that I had no court papers delivered from the Qulliam Foundation. So they join pathetic worms Jack Straw, Tim Spicer and Alisher Usmanov in the list of those who set lawyers on me to try to bully away the truth, but lacked the guts to go to court (though of course Usmanov has no lack of gut).


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18 thoughts on “The Sad Death of craigmurray.co.uk

  • tony_opmoc

    Craig,

    craigmurray.co.uk belongs to you. It is your property, and you should definitely be able to get it back. It expires on 19-Feb-2011. It shouldn’t matter that you cannot remember the details of usernames, passwords or credit card. In fact such information is irrelevant as your service provider went out of business. You should contact Nominet and explain the circumstances before it expires. Once it has expired someone else in theory could grab it.

    My son should have a better idea about this but he is asleep.

    Nice photo. You look 10 years younger. I didn’t realise you had known her that long!!!

    Tony

    “Nominet dispute resolution procedure

    Nominet will order the transfer of .uk domain names provided you can show that you have a right (whether or not registered trade mark rights) in the name which is identical or similar to the domain name and that the registrant’s registration is an ‘abusive registration’.”

    who is info

    Registrant:

    craig murray

    Registrant type:

    UK Individual

    Registrant’s address:

    The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their

    address omitted from the WHOIS service.

    Registrar:

    No registrar listed.

    Relevant dates:

    Registered on: 19-Feb-2005

    Renewal date: 19-Feb-2011

    Last updated: 09-Oct-2009

    Registration status:

    Registered until renewal date.

    Name servers:

    No name servers listed.

    WHOIS lookup made at 12:44:39 11-Dec-2009

  • Stephen

    The domain is registered in your name, Craig. Though the address is withheld from the WHOIS service, if you have given them your real address then the domain is yours, by right, password or no password. I can’t believe there is no way for you to resolve this with the registrar somehow. Maybe ask them to send out new login details by snail mail to your registered address? The domain is legally yours until 19-Feb-2011, at which point you could always buy it anew anyway.

    The weird thing is there is no registrar listed in the WHOIS listing. I’m not sure why that is?

    The registrar and the host are not necessarily the same. Did you register it with Lycos? If so there should be a higher registering authority you can now go to.

    Once you regain control over the domain you can redirect requests any way you please by configuring the server on your new host.

    I remain unconvinced that you can’t take back control of the domain, unless maybe it is registered to a made up address. That would be a bit of an oopsie!

  • Simon

    Craig,

    The craigmurray.co.uk domain is still registered to you. I suggest you go through the re-establish identity process provided by Nominet to get a new username / password: https://secure.nominet.org.uk/flows/reestablish-identity.html Nominet maintain the domain name registry for the .uk space.

    This may involve a paying an administrative fee (11.50) Once you have done this you can transfer it to another hosting company, for example S2CONSULTING who currently manage the registration of craigmurray.org.uk

    I’m happy to help you will this – just drop me an email, or get your technical guy to drop me an email.

  • sam

    I know very little about webhosting and such, although have had my minor issues with a web jockey who tried to scam me.

    Meanwhile, ‘Bullying away the truth’ is the epigram par excellence for New Labour isn’t it?

  • Merlin

    Just to back what others have said, as the domain still belongs to you it should be possible to re-host it in such a way that all the old links redirect to the new site.

  • opit

    I know what losing traction is like. I lost a WordPress blog ranked 207 on Technorati 2 years ago. If it hadn’t been for online contacts blogrolling me I likely would have functionally vanished. Yet this past summer I did on their rankings after a transition that blew my rank of 26…down to 1.

    Keep writing. Those who know your name can always find you.

  • Ed Davies

    craigmurray.org.uk is, I notice, registered to “Craif Murray”. Might was well get that fixed to reduce hassles if you ever have similar problems with that domain.

  • John D. Monkey

    BTW, Craig, I see your friend Mr Usmanov has increased his stake in Arsenal to 26%. The BBC estimate this as being worth close on £130m.

    Glad I’m not a Gooner…

  • tony_opmoc

    The thing is

    If Channel 4 had done it – they would have used a Real Pub…

    She was of course dazzled by the experience…

    But it is only a crap TV show, not Coronation Street Where Everyone Knows The Rovers Return is Right Outside Granada Studios…

    I think she is looking for an invite to Channel4 now

    Its amazing what you can achieve when you are 18 years old

    She has so much courage – but she comes with a really special innocence too

    She is not an actress

    What you see is what you get

    She has no reason to act another part

    Our Daughter Katy is Confident in Being The Person She is

    She has inherited her Warmth with People From Her Mum

    She comes over really shy in an an extremely lovely shy confident extrovert way which is exceedingly hard to explain

    She is Lovely

    Tony

  • Paul Jakma

    Craig,

    Please take up the offers of help to regain control of craigmurray.co.uk. As pointed out, the domain is registered to you and it should be quite possible to have it pointed to a new DNS provider, with some paperwork via nominet.

    If you need technical help with DNS please let me know.

    –paulj

  • tony_opmoc

    Craig,

    That is a Fantastic Photo of You and Nadira.

    Is Your Photographer Really Called Lynn Hilton?

    If so I would like her to take a photograph of my Wife and I ( I think she may be related to her )

    We were both completely elated to be asked…

    We thought why is he asking us?

    He is top of his class in Physics and Maths – and is trying to decide between Oxford and Cambridge

    I know he fancies our daughter like crazy – but she is a few months older and already at University – and he wouldn’t dare ask her for the risk that she would say no..He hasn’t got close enough yet to ask her…

    And so he asked my Wife and I to go to his 18th Birthday Party…

    Do you realise how good that makes us feel????

    Sure we will get away with it

    I can look anything from 30 to 80

    My wife can look anything from 15 to 40

    We are of course both considerably older than you.

    Tony

  • Arsalan goldberg

    I am actually coniderably older than me and look somewhere inbetween 2 and 92 and a half.

  • Arsalan goldberg

    I am actually considerably older than me and look somewhere inbetween 2 and 92 and a half.

  • writerman

    Craig,

    You mentioned a few days ago that you were trained historian. I was wondering what your reaction was to Obama defining the revolt in the American colonies, which led to the formation of the United States, as; a union formed as a reaction to oppression. I was waiting for an outcry from British historians pointing out that this “cartoon” version of the background to the revolt, is highly tendentious, but, what do we get – silence, why is that?

    I mean British people aren’t usually so passive when foreigners make comments about British history, yet we’ve somehow come to almost accept the American, partisan, perspective, as the “true” version of why the colonies, or elements within colonial society, rose up against the crown. Isn’t this odd?

  • Frazer

    An Auld Worms Song..

    Nobody Loves Me Everybody Hates Me So I Think I’m Going To Eat Worms.

    Long Brown Juicy Ones See How They Wriggle And They Squirm.

    First You Bite Off The Head And Suck Out The Juice And Throw The Skins Away.

    Nobody Knows How I Survive On Woooooorms Three Times A Day !

    Any substitute for the word Worms…Lawyers perchance ??

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