By Owen Thomas, 12:48 PM on Fri Aug 31 2007, 4,095 views (Edit, to draft, un-top, Slurp)

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News Corp., under CEO Rupert Murdoch, already has developed a reputation for stealing websites, when a Fox television show or advertiser covets a desirable URL on the MySpace social network. But Murdoch's website-snatching ways extend further than that. On Wednesday, News Corp. and NBC Universal announced that their online-video joint venture finally had a name, "Hulu". But before Hulu.com fell into Murdoch's hands, the website featured no videos at all — just innocent pictures of a couple's 7-year-old daughter.

Copies of the Hulu.com website cached by the Internet Archive indicate that Posen and Lucy Hung previously owned the four-letter domain name, rare and valuable because of its brevity. (A person named Posen Hung works for Symbol Technologies in the Bay Area, according to LinkedIn.) One hopes the Hungs were handsomely rewarded for giving up their family photo album. Or was this deal, too, a steal for Murdoch & Co.?