8 May, 2001—In a special press conference today, it was revealed that NameZero.com officially suck.

Matt Powell: Not happy.

The company, which previously hosted amateur domains at no cost, has suddenly decided to start charging fees after a year of free service.

The decision has shocked a small but fanatical group of former NameZero proponents, including impoverished student Matt Powell, whose site at matt-powell.com will reach the one-year cut-off date on May 14th.

“Well, they've been sending me these e-mails about special deal this, and upgrade that, for ages,” said Powell, “but I never suspected they were going to cut it off if I didn't start giving them money.”

NameZero.com insist that, at $US29.95 a year, their NameZero Plus™ service is still affordable, but for Powell, the price is more than he can bear.

“This site is just a hobby. I can't afford eighty [New Zealand] bucks a year to keep it going,” reflected Powell, whose only income is from a part-time tutoring job which he fits in between being insanely busy. “If I'm going to have to pay for a domain, I'll probably have to turn to a life of crime to support myself. Hell, nobody wants to pay me for my cartoons.”

Powell isn't the only one affected by NameZero.com's mean-spirited backstabbing. Fellow student Andrew Kepple's popular site, toomuchsparetime.com, will also be deleted if Kepple fails to pay the ransom.

As well as their web sites at www.matt-powell.com and www.toomuchsparetime.com, the pair will lose their e-mail addresses, possibly resulting in loss of income, paralysis, and even death as their millions of devoted fans are unable to contact them through normal channels.

Currently, NameZero.com offers free domain forwarding on a case-by-case basis in the United States only, which theoretically means they could just reject every application and still be legitimately ‘offering’ free web hosting, thus justifying the arguably misleading ‘Zero’.

“At the end of they day, you've just got to face up to the fact that there's no such thing as a free lunch, especially as far as those blood-sucking Shylocks at NameZero are concerned,” said Powell bitterly, before bursting into tears.