Op-ed suggests .pol to avert political cybersquatting. But the devil is in the details.
Matthew Sanderson, a political law attorney at Caplin & Drysdale in Washington, published an op-ed in the Washington Post today suggesting a new .pol domain name. This domain name would be reserved for politicians as a way to avoid “political cybersquatting”, whereby people snap up domain names of politicians to grab internet traffic.
The proposal makes sense on the surface, but I don’t think it will work. There are a few key issues:
1. Even if a politician has a .pol domain name, they’d need the equivalent .com. Web users forget what extension they’re supposed to use. Even vice-presidents forget. So if I had AllemannforGovernor.pol, I’d also need AllemannforGovernor.com to prevent an opponent from capturing my web traffic.
2. Politics is worldwide, not just a United States institution. It would be fairly easy to confirm the political status of people in the U.S., but what about outside? Some person from a third world country could say they’re a politician or represent that politician, but confirming it would be nearly impossible. Further, challengers to dictators would have a hard time getting any sort of confirmation from their country’s government that they are a politician. Sanderson cites .edu, but confirming schools qualify for .edu is rather easy since they have to be accredited by a select list of organizations. .Gov is for U.S. government agencies only, but starting something like that today would be more difficult politically than when .gov was conceived.
3. Free speech. You can own a politician’s domain name and not be considered “cybersquatting” if you are using it in a non-commercial manner, such as criticizing that politician’s views.
Sanderson wrote a longer paper on the topic of .pol that may address some of these issues.
Fortunately for those that agree with Sanderson, they can let the market decide. If someone with about a half million dollars of backing wants to, they can apply to ICANN for a .pol domain name in the upcoming free-for-all top level domain expansion.
Larry Seltzer says
stupid, stupid idea. If it can’t make the .com sites go away it doesn’t solve anything.
Kevin M. says
I saw and read that last night. Another useless cry for more domain extensions! Good grief!
Shaun says
.Pol?
I just threw up in my mouth.
David J Castello says
I see dotPol being huge like dotAero & dotJobs 🙂
Adam says
.polack ?
jp says
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I do think any extension can work. You know, as long as the owner/registry of the extension is willing to put in the time and money neccessary to retrain the public of the world to think of “.pol” instead of “.com” when going to a politicians website. So what is cheaper? To buy the politician’sname.com for a few thousand bucks (or sue for it as the case may be), or to spend the billions, upon billions to re-educate the world to use .pol.
People seem to underestimate the amound of effort that went into making .com the defacto standard. It has been mentioned in nearly every television advertisement that has taken place since the birth of the internet. These TV ads cost alot of $$$$ when you add them up. Futhermore it was easy for .com because it had not much competition at the time. To train the public to use a new extension in a sea of new extensions, now that is going to be a daunting task.
Ramiro Canales says
As an attorney, lobbyist, and domainer, I deal with Texas legislators and members of the congressional delegation on a daily basis. Most have no idea what a domain name is. As a gesture of good will, I have purchased many of their .com names and transferred the names at no cost. I don’t believe that lawmakers will rush to buy the .pol extension.
Claude Gelinas says
Adding a .pol to the list of gTLDs will do nothing to add legitimacy to a web destination.
And furthermore, someone who wants to speaks out against a given politician doesn’t even need to “squat” (which is more like “rent”) a given domain name. That individual can simply launch a Facebook group, or something along that line.
The gTLD fire sale (actual or perceived) has to stop because it’s going nowhere.
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