Lapsed federal government website promoting prostitutes

Letting a website domain name lapse and expire isn't really a big deal — unless you're the federal government.

On Tuesday, David Pugaliese of the Ottawa Citizen reported the Centennial of Flight domain name, formerly owned by Transport Canada, is now under new ownership who are advertising prostitutes in Istanbul, Turkey, and Washington, DC.

To make matters worse, the website, which is still linked to by several federal department websites, was using logos from Centennial of Flight sponsors such as National Defence, Transport Canada and NAV Canada.

Pugaliese says the new owners left a notice on their website to explain why:

"To previous domain owner: We bought this domain after expiration so it's not our fault that you lost it. We put old content for this domain only to avoid losing good quality of it from (Search Engine Optimization) point of view. If it's a problem for you contact us ASAP!"

Chuck Black, editor of Commercial Space, an aviation and space industry website, says the cost of maintaining the domain name is $11.95 a year, something Transport Canada should have done.

"For 12 bucks a year they might as well have kept it," Black told the Ottawa Citizen adding the site was registered to Transport Canada so the department could promote 100 years of the country's aerospace history.

"It (was) a good historical reference. Now it promotes D.C. hookers."

For their part, Transport Canada says it's unclear exactly who held the domain name for the website, but has contacted the new owners to request they remove all Government of Canada identification.

As of Wednesday morning, the website and domain name were no longer accessible.