Political domain challenges on the uptick
Thursday, September 14th, 2006
With elections in the US quickly approaching, candidates are finding their domain names are already registered.
Politicians aren’t always the most web-savvy individuals. (Just ask Alaska’s Ted Stevens how the internet operates.) As the next set of elections quickly approaching, many people running for office are finding their domains are taken by their opponents or squatters.
Here’s another example from a small town race in Texas. The brother-in-law of a county judge candidate snapped up the names of the opponent. Generally speaking, it’s within free speech rights to register the domain of a candidate. But this assumes your purpose for registering the domain is to talk about the opponent, not to profit. In the referenced case, the registrant offered to sell the domains to the candidate for $500 each.
A case earlier this year gave me a chuckle. (See Politicians and domain names – dumb and dumber) Candidate Frank Perman registered his domain name using a hyphen, Perman-Now.com. When he later went to the web address PermanNow.com without the hyphen, he thought his web site had been hacked. Do you want someone like this representing you?
Further Reading:
