The type of sites GP is talking about are typically hosted on .edu servers, under faculty webhosting (often featuring a "/~profname/" in the url). That's a non-trivial signal.

~/name at an edu is pretty attainable.

.edu domains can be had for any otherwise eligible "U.S.-based postsecondary institutions" per Educause: <https://net.educause.edu/eligibility.htm>

Pages at extant domains might variously be available to undergraduate or graduate students, faculty, staff, and adjuncts. Those might either directly host emulative material or be convinced or compromised into hosting content.

If there's one thing that the Internet's history to date has proved, its that perverse incentives lead to perverse consequences.

It is not easy for a regular person to obtain access to a .edu webpage.

A "regular person" can:

- Enroll or be hired at an eligible institution. There are literally thousands of these.

- Bribe or compromise someone enrolled or hired at an eligible institution.

- Create a de novo eligible institution. For-profit colleges are not uncommon.

Someone motivated by profit or advantage would likely find virtually any of these options quite straightforward.

I'm ... somewhat pained that this needs to be spelled out.

> Enroll or be hired at an eligible institution. There are literally thousands of these

You don’t generally get the kind of personal website being discussed to my understanding.

> Bribe or compromise someone enrolled or hired at an eligible institution

Finding a professor willing to stake their job and reputation for such a blatantly immoral scam seems hard.

> Create a de novo eligible institution

Is it actually easy for a regular person to create their own college?

I find the snarky finish to your comment obnoxious.

A "regular person" also can:

- start their own country and call it Edunistan

- bribe ICANN to take over the .edu TLD

- open a university in the new country

- spend 15 years earning a PhD at that university

- reserve ~/name and start posting LLM generated content