555-type thing for internet

Factual Questions
1

I know that in movies and TV shows they use phone #'s starting with 555 which can’t exist. (Really! I tried it once :D) What if you want to use a website address (URL, for you extra computer literate ones) in a movie. Is there something that is similar to 555-#‘s?
In the movie You’ve Got Mail, they used NY152 and Shopgirl for the main characters’ screen names, which are quite OK on AOL.(right length, etc.) I had them on my buddy list for a few days…

“640K ought to be enough for anybody” - Bill Gates

2

Its going to be real fun reading posts with narrow margins now.

The facts, although interesting, are irrelevent.

3

Actually I think there are some 555 numbers. I don’t know if they totally dropped it, but 555-1212 is information.

4

The way I understood it was that 555 numbers are reserved by the telephone company, which is why nobody can get one and why directors use them in movies.

I don’t think that the same standard can be applied to WWW addresses. For a movie, I think they just make up a name for one.

-Dragwyr
“If God had meant for man to eat waffles,
he would have given him lips like snowshoes”
-Rev. Billy C. Wirtz

5

Interesting question. There are probably three ways they can go about this:

  1. Do a lookup on the name they choose and see if it’s being used. Of course, it could be created after the movie begins shooting, which could cause problems.

  2. Create an account name that’s bogus. (Didn’t MISSION IMPOSSIBLE have an e-mail address with a colon in it?) This will annoy the techies, but will prevent problems.

  3. Best solution: set up a url/e-mail account to match the one you plan to use on screen. This would be a ridiculously low percentage of the movie budget. You could probably even get a free e-mail account in exchange for making sure everyone seeing the movie notices the address ends with “@aol.com”.

“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.

www.sff.net/people/rothman

6

I think the reason that movies use 555 is so no one will make crank calls to those numbers, and they (the moviemakers) won’t be liable for it. If a website turns out to have the same address as one in a movie, and people use it, that just means free publicity and more hits, and what’s wrong with that?

7

When I give a false address to anything that requests an address, I give “@loopback.edu”.

But, that’s just me.

8

Back during Carter’s presidency, he had a 900 number set up so people could call and talk to him one night. The number was (900)243-####.

My hometown had three exchanges: 242, 243, and 245. And since this 900-number thing was new, many people in town just called the 243-#### number.

There was an article in the paper the next day about the poor people that had that number.

What would Brian Boitano do / If he was here right now /
He’d make a plan and he’d follow through / That’s what Brian Boitano would do.

9

In “The Last Action Hero”, Danny tries to convince Jack that his world is fictional by asking a girl’s phone number. It’s a 555 number, so he feels justified because only 10000 phone numbers are possible. Jack counters that that is what area codes are for. :slight_smile:

10

555 numbers are always busy. Except the info ones.

For a URL try www.alansmithee.com