Forum: Author Hangout

One of possible reasons suggested was that the company holding the registrations was taken over by Google and they possibly just let the registration run out.

Well, the registration does not expire until December. But it could be crash, or more than likely just unpaid fees.

But come December, I predict people camping on that address for when it expires to try and grab it up. I just hope it is bought by somebody that wants to put it to use, and not a squatter hoping to sell it for a profit.

Whoever picks it up is bound to do so to make money from it, either by trying to sell the domain name for a lot of money or by turning asstr into a pay site.

Someone else may get control of the address, but that won't give them the data or control of the data. They could create a pay site by the name once they control the address, but they'd have to obtain some data to place on the servers they use for the site.

I never understood how they could do it without any form of income.

For the team that started ASSTR it was an act of love for the stories and for freedom of expression, but most of them have since either passed on or passed out of the ability to be so heavily involved as they used to be.

As to restarting the site as a pay site, the sort of person who'll buy the domain just to make a profit out of it is unlikely to go to the trouble to recreate all of the story data files the site had. While the people who are the type to want to keep the site going are unlikely to try and make much off of the site without getting the approval of the authors first as the original files were provided on a 'free use' policy.

If they are smart they will try to recreate it with as much of the data as possible because that would give them a huge head start. It's very difficult to start off with nothing.

That's only applicable if their aim is to rebuild the site and not just make money on reselling the domain, which is the group my comment you mention was aimed at.

typo edit.

I doubt that just the domain name will bring in any significant money.

Wanna bet?

A 21 year old domain, that gets close to 100k hits per day?

https://websitescoop.com/domain/asstr.org/ih285ff6cc4ad861f

Try over $10 million.

Domain name squatters grab up almost any name they can. I had one about 20 years ago that had maybe 10k hits a week, and it lapsed at one point. Cost to get it back after a squatter jumped on it?

Well, they wanted $10k. Did not get it from me though. I got another one from one of those "We pay the fee and you run our banner" companies, turned out it was the same deal. At the end of a year, they wanted huge bucks to renew it, and they put it for sale as they "owned" it.

Domain names is big business. Just look into the legal battle over nissan.com.

Try over $10 million.

while it didn't run ads, that site you mention says the likely ad revenue it could generate is $66,000 per annum.

I'm not familiar with the agreements asstr had with authors (if any) but I doubt they will complain if that keeps the site going. And the new owner has made no such agreement. If I'm not mistaking asstr got it's content from stories posted to a specific usenet group which were automatically posted on asstr. Authors who don't agree simply don't upload to that group again. For the existing stories I doubt many will complain or even have the ability to complain considering the type of stories.

Many of the authors from the early days are now deceased, so it would be hard to get their approval.

When I first posted to the ASST newsgroup there was a set of rules regularly posted to the group which set out the rules for posting to the site, and one of those rules at that time was 'by posting to the newsgroup you give permission for the story to be archived on the ASSTR website.' It also included information on the site being a free access for people to read the stories on. Also, most of the authors included copyright terms in their stories stating they could be copied, but only if free access is given to them if made public elsewhere.

Someone setting up a new site, even if it used the same name, would be in breaking the copyright laws. Especially so if they set it up as a pay site. They could get away with it being a free site as I doubt anyone would complain.

but in the data traffic and maintenance costs.

and that's what's been killing it for the last decade. That and the dying off of the people dedicated to keep it going.

They could always set it up as a free site and, like SOL, offer premium services for pay. Make the free part cumbersome enough so that it almost requires you to have a payed subscription and you're good to go.

Which once again, violates the intent of the original authors.

And it would be simple to show that by not regaining permission for the new status violated the original intent, therefore eliminating any protection as the new authors are not the original ones, but an entirely new entity.

It is not like buying a domain name transfers all legal rights and ownership of the contents of the old domain. What you are saying is the equivalent of my buying an old Walmart store, then opening it as a Walmart myself that I own, saying that I got to keep the name because I bought the building.

It just does not work that way. If anybody tried that, I would be trying to assemble as many others like me as I could for a huge cease and desist order, takedown order, and anything I could to shut it back down.

Now here on SOL, they do provide access to most of it for free, if limited. And my stories today are almost nothing like what I was writing 20 years ago. In fact, only one of those old ones am I really protective of. But it is one I would fight to protect.

As I stated in a previous post, you are right. It's just that some people don't care about your rights and are in countries where they can't be touched.

And who runs ICANN? Who runs the .ORG domains?

Yea, if you are talking about ASSTR.RU, you are right. But ASSTR.ORG is under a US entity, so has to follow US laws. And it would not be hard to prove that and get the site stripped.

ICANN isn't going to do anything even if they wanted to, that is not their task. That's also why I mentioned in a previous post that someone trying to restart asstr might prefer a new domain name, for example .ru or .tk, specifically to avoid possible problems with registrars.

Actually, they do care because a court order for copyright infringement can have a web address delisted in it. Such an order has little to no effect on a site from say Russia, but in the US ICANN would honor it.

Another domain? You can do that right now, nothing will stop you. But that is no longer asstr.org. I could create storiesonline.ru, but that is not this site.

For the existing stories I doubt many will complain or even have the ability to complain considering the type of stories.

Oh, I would complain. And the "type of story" does not matter, copyright is copyright.

And if it was paid only, I can guarantee it will fail. Most of the stories there were pure garbage, I would never pay to use it. And for the last 10 years, it has been even worse. I do not think I have posted anything in there for over 15 years.

While the people who are the type to want to keep the site going are unlikely to try and make much off of the site without getting the approval of the authors first as the original files were provided on a 'free use' policy.

This right here is a huge issue. As my stories always had a disclaimer on them stating that they could be reposted on free sites so long as my disclaimer was included. But posting on paid sites was expressly prohibited.

ASSTR had been sinking for over a decade, and I did some more poking and it seems likely that the bills were not paid. The Google Groups had the first activity since December, all asking what happened. And some have said they have gotten no response from the owners in 2 years.

They might have still been going, if they had done some things as simple as keep it updated and working. But when things like the author FTP failing 2 years ago and never getting fixed, even people like me who had used them for decades just shrugged and moved on.

Could a "New ASSTR" return? Sure, but it would take some commitment in reassembling the lost usenet archive, and then making it a "true modern" site, not just some leftover from over 20 years ago.

Otherwise, it would be like expecting donations for Geocities.

The archive should be retained, as it is an interesting part of Internet history. But the author pages would have to be extensively restructured. For example, they still had sections there dedicated to toddler sex, and sex with girls in grade school.

No, "ASSTR" itself could likely never return, because any possible protection they would have had as a "historical archive" has been lost. The USENET part, yes. But all those Author Pages? Nope, those will have to be rebuilt around current laws.

At least the Kristen Archive has been saved to other places, but even that has been dead for years.

But there is no reason why a new version could not make the bills on a donation basis. But I bet that when the site started to break and the ownership went silent, nobody had any interest in donating anymore. Especially as it looked and acted more and more outdated.

Nope, those will have to be rebuilt around current laws.

Whose laws? Many countries accept that pure text cannot be pornographic.

AJ

Whose laws? Many countries accept that pure text cannot be pornographic.

Dominions Son beat me to it.

Now the ASSTR Archive was actually 2 parts. First was an archive of all activity on a USENET forum. And so long as that original entity was up, it could have been argued that it was valid for historical reasons. And it was, it saved all postings from that and a few other USENET threads.

But the author pages? That is actually where all of the legal issues came from. And the issue here is really quite simple. You make a consensus of what is "legal" in most western English speaking nations (US-UK-Canada-Australia), and follow that. Then put up a disclaimer stating that the site is for readers from those countries, and complies with their current laws at the time.

Yea, then good luck getting a takedown order from say Iran because the girl walking in public does not have a minder and is not wearing a veil.

What countries have banned is the exploitation of children. And the "Virtual Pornographic" is when the depiction (in image or text) is of a "REAL CHILD", and not a "fantasy child".

Want to tell a story about a fictional Mary Turner, who you claim is a next door neighbor and 16, knock your socks off.

But say if Mary Turner REALLY IS your next door neighbor, or you want to right about Silly String, the 15 year old lead singer form the amazing girl pop group "The String Girls", then that is "virtual pornography" because it is intended to represent a real person.

There is a reason why all these books and movies have disclaimers. And most have lawyers go over them to make sure that the "fictitious representation" is far enough from the real entity to be protected.

So yes, "pure text" can be pornographic, depending on if it is told as a fantasy, or revolving around a real individual. Violate those, it loses all protections.

What countries have banned is the exploitation of children. And the "Virtual Pornographic" is when the depiction (in image or text) is of a "REAL CHILD", and not a "fantasy child".

Wrong, the Australian laws now cover images and text of anyone under 16 y/o NSW and 18 y/o federal law that is under that age or looks like they're under that age or implied to be under that age. One convicted case included a group of cartoon images of the girl from the Simpsons (never watched it so I can't remember her name) - clearly not even looking like a real person, but was declared as being 'implied to be ...'

Doesn't Australian Law also forbid bestiality stories?

AJ

Doesn't Australian Law also forbid bestiality stories?

I haven't looked at that as part of the issue I had, what i did look at was the laws on Child Abuse:

as of June 2010 it read:

child pornography means material that depicts or describes, in a manner that would in all the circumstances cause offence to reasonable persons, a person under (or apparently under) the age of 16 years:

(a) engaged in sexual activity, or

(b) in a sexual context, or

(c) as the victim of torture, cruelty or physical abuse (whether or not in a sexual context).

as of September 2010 it read:

child abuse material means material that depicts or describes, in a way that reasonable persons would regard as being, in all the circumstances, offensive:

(a) a person who is, appears to be or is implied to be, a child as a victim of torture, cruelty or physical abuse, or

(b) a person who is, appears to be or is implied to be, a child engaged in or apparently engaged in a sexual pose or sexual activity (whether or not in the presence of other persons), or

(c) a person who is, appears to be or is implied to be, a child in the presence of another person who is engaged or apparently engaged in a sexual pose or sexual activity, or

(d) the private parts of a person who is, appears to be or is implied to be, a child.

(2) The matters to be taken into account in deciding whether reasonable persons would regard particular material as being, in all the circumstances, offensive, include:

(a) the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults, and

(b) the literary, artistic or educational merit (if any) of the material, and

(c) the journalistic merit (if any) of the material, being the merit of the material as a record or report of a matter of public interest, and

(d) the general character of the material (including whether it is of a medical, legal or scientific character).

(3) Material that depicts a person or the private parts of a person includes material that depicts a representation of a person or the private parts of a person (including material that has been altered or manipulated to make a person appear to be a child or to otherwise create a depiction referred to in subsection (1)).

(4) The private parts of a person are:

(a) a person's genital area or anal area, or

(b) the breasts of a female person.

Note in the original it had to be an actual person who was under age, while the amended law doesn't require the person to be under age or real. Also note the way section 4 reads, as one case I've heard about the court declared an image of an effeminate looking 8 y/o boy without a t-shirt on as being Child Abuse Material as it looked like a young girl. No reality check allowed there.

The federal law is the same wording with only 2 changed, the age is 18 y/o instead of 16 y/o, and where the NSW law has it in a section to do with Offences against the Person (like assault and rape etc), the federal law has it in offences against the communications infrastructure along with the crimes of blowing up bridges and telephone exchanges as well as illegal phone taps etc. It seems the feds see the electronic signals of child abuse materials damages the communications cables or whatever. Personally, I think they were trying to hide it where no one would see it as they never made a public announcement about the change in the law.

(b) the literary, artistic or educational merit (if any) of the material, and

And this is not a minor thing either. This can be the largest difference in fact. For example, a higher percentage of stories in here would like pass that test than say ASSTR. It also would allow for works like Lolita, Romeo & Juliet, and Belinda.

And this is not a minor thing either.

True, but here the decision is a subjective one by the magistrate or the judge who is hearing the case. So you can't say what will or won't be called artistic or or literary merit.

True, but here the decision is a subjective one by the magistrate or the judge who is hearing the case. So you can't say what will or won't be called artistic or or literary merit.

But it is also not an outright banning either. And it becomes a lot easier to defend if such a clause is in place. Especially with how appeals work.

But it is impossible to say what is and is not artistic. Robin Williams explained the silliness of that concept decades ago in "The Dead Poet Society".

Excrement. That's what I think of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard. We're not laying pipe. We're talking about poetry. How can you describe poetry like American Bandstand? "Oh, I like Byron. I give him a 42, but I can't dance to it." Now, I want you to rip out that page. Go on. Rip out the entire page. You heard me. Rip it out. Rip it out! Go on. Rip it out!

But it is also not an outright banning either. And it becomes a lot easier to defend if such a clause is in place. Especially with how appeals work.

Good in theory, but the practical aspect comes down to the subjective opinion of the person on the bench. In recent years we've seen cases where that opinion has ruled an image of a shirtless pre-teen boy as child abuse material as they said it looked like a topless pre-teen girl, and a case where an image of a well developed 23 y/o in a see through top ruled as child abuse material because the magistrate said she looked to be under age to him. The woman's real age was irrelevant as it was based on his opinion, and the gender of the first case was irrelevant as it was his opinion. The same rules will apply to the literary or artistic merit.

yes, literary or artistic merit would be easier to argue before the full bench of the higher courts, but it'd cost about a hundred thousand dollars before you got to put your case. Thus it's a very slippery slope situation right now.

Good in theory, but the practical aspect comes down to the subjective opinion of the person on the bench.

It's absolutely absurd that ignorance of the law is not a valid excuse, but the actual 'law' can be at the subjective whim of a senile has-been wearing fancy dress.

AJ

In the US, ignorance of the law is a perfectly valid excuse...provided you are a law enforcement officer.

or a member of Congress

Until they forget which laws they forgot to exempt themselves from.

Or simply ignore them, like they're doing now regarding the Insider Trading law.

It's absolutely absurd that ignorance of the law is not a valid excuse, but the actual 'law' can be at the subjective whim of a senile has-been wearing fancy dress.

true, and it's worse when the government can change the law and not tell anyone that the law has been changed. Thus those who bothered to look up the law in the past are suddenly ignorant of it as they don't know to check it.

Doesn't Australian Law also forbid bestiality stories?

Just checked the Crimes Act, section 79 - the actual act is a crime - performed or attempted, but there is no mention of any stories covering it.

Interesting court case on the subject

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=891c5aa2-b8c0-4d8e-865d-e2a99b2ea352

Wrong, the Australian laws now cover images and text of anyone under 16 y/o NSW and 18 y/o federal law that is under that age or looks like they're under that age or implied to be under that age. One convicted case included a group of cartoon images of the girl from the Simpsons (never watched it so I can't remember her name) - clearly not even looking like a real person, but was declared as being 'implied to be ...'

Lisa Simpson, and according to the show she is 8 years old.

Therefore, no protection. Even a story in here if somebody tried to post it of somebody boning Lisa Simpson as she is in the show is not allowed.

But I question that interpretation, as have they struck Romeo and Juliet? She is only 13 after all. And nobody questions that in Act 3 Scene 5 that Romeo had boned Juliet (rushing out of her bedroom after spending the night with her or her family would kill him). And many interpretations of their secret wedding is because she was pregnant.

The litmus test just like actual pornography tends to lie on if the intent of the work is base, or artistic. After all, does Australia still sell the Anne Rice book "Belinda"? The title character in that book has explicit sex in the book at 15.

as have they struck Romeo and Juliet?

No, it has a Commonwealth Censor qualification so it's allowed, the same with the Holy Bible and the Qu'ran, both of which have under age person getting married and having sex in them.

both of which have under age person getting married and having sex in them.

Heck, Lot is seduced while drunk by his two teen daughters and impregnates them.

Given that the show's been on for about thirty years, she'd have to be thirty at least...

it's the bit about 'implied to be ..' that got them.

At least the Kristen Archive has been saved to other places

Well hello. Any pointers available as to where? A quick google only turns up the ASSTR hosted version.

Google sometimes is my lazy bookmark. And was for that site.

I was going to reply with an address, but realised just in time that it probably breaks forum rules, so, PM'ed you it instead.

I have another one, or it might be the same. It is scattered here and there, there was a bunch of mirrors in the old page and forum.

The publisher of the MrDouble child abuse story site was convicted in Federal Court in late January on obscenity charges. The site was taken down in 2019 by the FBI.

There was a woman convicted on obscenity at that time for the same reason and her site was taken down. I can't remember the name.

I'm wondering if warrants to seize servers were issued based on the MrDouble conviction.

They have been part of a great many court cases over the years. Most of them related to adults arrested for attempting sex with minors.

https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201714387.pdf

And not just in the US.

https://www.theregister.com/2008/10/06/obscene_publication_girls_aloud/

Now any "return" will actually take some work. Because any possible protections it might have had as being "grandfathered" and an "archive" would now be lost. So all of the stories would have to be vetted and any that do not follow the current general law of 14 be stripped away.

If I had to guess, when the 2019 takedown order happened, the last owner(s) simply shut that part down with a chainsaw, and pretty much walked away from it.

If they had been smart, at that point they should have started looking for somebody to sell it to. They probably would not have had much problem at that time in finding somebody to hand it over to. In fact, the actual archive itself was never the issue legally, it was the author pages. But because the archive aspect has now been lost, I am not sure how legal it would be to restore the archive under another entity.

And not just in the US.

https://www.theregister.com/2008/10/06/obscene_publication_girls_aloud/

IIRC the prosecution failed.

AJ

Seems like author links like ~kristen work, but plain .net takes you back to non working .org site once going past enter page.

The author sign-in page doesn't work as the link to the verification database isn't valid any more. Thus, while people can look at the stories by replacing .org with .net on each page, the more involved pages are dead.

https://www.asstr.net/~Kristen/
This works, from the US.

My internet protection software said NO!

Visiting an untrustworthy website has been prevented
One or more of this website's certificates are invalid, so we can't guarantee its authenticity. This happens when the website's owner hasn't updated the certificate in time, or if it's a fake site created by scammers.

Very well aged last post to me after getting the messages above was:

Read my recent blog entry to find out how to access it.

3/20/2021
For those of you using Windows, you need to edit your 'hosts' file in c:WindowsSystem32driversetc. Open the file with notepad as an administrator!

For those of you using a flavor of Linux, your 'hosts' files is in /etc and made sure you open your text editor with sudo.

Add these lines:

64.71.155.222 www.asstr.org

64.71.155.222 ftp.asstr.org

Reboot and enjoy for now!

Then the blog entry for 3/20/2021 was continued later saying:

To see how to get on ASSTR, read my previous blog post.

The domain name was 'updated' by someone five days ago.

I have no idea if this is a hack or someone with rights to the record is trying to make the live site 'disappear' from the net based on a bad registry listing.

Here's the the record of that I pulled from Internic.net

Registry Expiration: 2021-12-09 05:00:00 UTC
Updated: 2021-03-16 17:17:12 UTC
Created: 1998-12-10 05:00:00 UTC

Has anyone tried this?

It's currently a political spoof, though it hasn't been updated since Biden took over.

That's because Biden IS a political spoof. :)

Prime Minister Ted Heath was accused of murdering 18 kids, long after his death the police admitted there was enough evidence to indict him on multiple cases of child abuse.

Actually, very much the opposite. They only said they had enough evidence to question him, not arrest him or indict him.

He was never connected to any homicides, and later it was admitted by almost everybody that it was entirely fabricated by Carl Beech. From 2014-2015 he had named over 40 prominent politicians, military officers, and civil servants and claimed there was an extensive ring that involved abuse, slavery, and murder.

But by 2015, even the cops were questioning this as their own investigation into the claims was quickly turning up nothing. All who ere accused denied it, and the other "victims" he claimed mostly never existed, and the few found denied all of the allegations. Some were not even in the country at the time Beech claimed they were being molested in huge orgies.

And it did not help that one of the other people who's claims started the investigation and was also turning up nothing finally admitted me had made all of it up.

After over 14 months of investigation, the police found nothing to confirm any of the claims. And by that time however they had during their investigations amassed a large dossier on Mr. Beech himself.

During the investigation he had received over £22,000 in "victim restitution", and then discovered medical records about his admitting to his shrink he was a child molester himself, and had written fantasies that almost matched the information he had reported to the cops in the first place.

And when his apartment was searched, among the evidence collected was hundreds of photos he himself took of nude boys, and even molesting boys.

That is why the investigation ended, and he is now serving 18 years in prison. For the very thing he accused others of doing.

And an indictment would have been rather hard, since Edward Heath had already been dead for 10 years by that time.

In the end, it was not unlike the McMartin Preschool trial of the 1980's. Over seven years of court cases and investigations, $15 million spent, 7 people charged with 115 counts of child and sex abuse.

And in the end, all charges were thrown out after two different trials. And when many of the charges were looked at, they were outrageous. Claims of Satanic murders and bodies buried in the basement. Even though the school had a slab cement floor. It was destroyed during the investigation, and the slab torn up and dug down 15 feet. No basement, no bodies, no evidence that anything ever existed.

One of the children in a photo lineup insisted that Chuck Norris was one of his teachers, and had abused him. That there were tunnels under the school that went for several blocks in each direction. That access to the secret basement was by being flushed down the toilet, and orgies in car washes. And of course all of the kids accused of being sacrificed either never existed (some were actually the names of characters from movies and TV shows), or were still alive and well and simply no longer attended the school.

This was really the same thing. A lot of time and money wasted, and absolutely nothing ever came of any of it.

And that was not even the only case like that in the US in the 1980's and 1990's. There were dozens. Including another famous one in San Diego, where a man was brought to trial on 35 counts of Satanic abuse and molestation. And like McMartin, some of his accusers said he had killed other children in front of them, and he had also sacrificed an elephant and giraffe in the classroom.

In that one, after a 9 month trial which also included testimony that he frequently drove the kids off-site to abuse them ( he was mentally and physically handicapped and could not drive), he was found not guilty of all charges. And when a Grand Jury was convened to see if they should try to charge him under "new evidence", they outright dismissed all of the charges and it died.

Moral panics are not needed, if they are fictitious and cause hysteria that does not exist, and accuse innocent people. The Childcare Scare of the 1980's and 1990's proves this. Dozens of people falsely accused, many losing everything and all of them ultimately being cleared of all charges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R21tWs-qCw

I'll see if I can find the source of my claim. I'm damned sure it was a UK newspaper site. If not I'll eat crow.

Like maybe Exaro?

An "investigative" news website shut down 5 years ago after a slew of false reports and sensationalizing questionable stories to attract more readers?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/21/westminster-child-abuse-inquiry-police-split-credibility-witness

https://barristerblogger.com/2014/12/03/exaro-spare-us-sanctimony-spare-us-bullying-try-bit-transparent/

It's almost certain there was a Westminster paedophile ring, and the police were deflected from investigating it at the time because some of the perps (eg Cyril Smith) received national security updates and it would have been a major embarrassment and potentially a security risk if they'd been prosecuted.

I guess we'll never know for certain about Ted Heath unless the security services publish their files, and that will happen when hell freezes over. There was always a lot of covert innuendo about him, just as there was about Jimmy Savile.

Carl Beech, the principal informant, was clearly abused as a child (hence his continuation of the abuse cycle). Some of his specific accusations were disproven but who, abused as a young child, can accurately remember names, dates and faces from decades ago?

The establishment likes to claim that Heath etc have been 'proven innocent', but in the UK that term is misleading, meaning not proven guilty.

AJ

Carl Beech, the principal informant, was clearly abused as a child (hence his continuation of the abuse cycle). Some of his specific accusations were disproven but who, abused as a young child, can accurately remember names, dates and faces from decades ago?

How about all of them. No evidence at all was ever found to corroborate his story. And not all abusers were themselves abused.

And ultimately, it does not matter because even if he was abused, it was not who0 he claimed it was.

But go ahead Alex Jones, believe what you want.

Alex Jones

What has she got to do with it?

AJ

Actually, the main reason we use DNS is it's generally easier to remember a name than a sequence of numbers. And because on occasion, IPs are assigned dynamically rather than statically.

Actually, the vast majority use dynamic IP addresses. And then there are various ways to spoof or redirect them. Such as, changing the HOST file.

But once again, that is security. IP addresses can change fairly often, and are even bought and sold. So by using an address to access a system you yourself do not control or trust the owner, you are leaving yourself vulnerable to whoever owns it, or may own it next.

What is the address for XYZ.COM today may be assigned to a hacker group in India tomorrow that uses it to push our their scam lockout trojans. Meanwhile, behind the scenes the server farm and owner moved the system you actually want to a different rack and location, and released that address where it was picked up by another.

Which is a plain laziness and incompetence. You can get free certificates from LetsEncrypt with clear and simple instructions how to use them. Nowadays it's the number 1 requirement for every website.

And, it's trivial to automate certificate replacement every three months. I've done that for all my domains. Literally fire and forget once you get the first cert.