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Political Cybersquatting Or Free Speech?
Although plenty of people have purchased politically linked domain names as a form of protest in the past, now they're being used as part of organized campaigns. In Maryland's 8th district Congressional race, Republican candidate Charles R. Floyd purchased three domain names (VanHollen2004.com/net/org) that one might think would represent Democrat incumbent Rep. Chris Van Hollen. Instead, these sites carry criticism and a bit of mockery. Floyd says Van Hollen should've registered these domain names himself, and previously used the same tactic in the primary. Is this cybersquatting, or is it a fair expression of political speech?
Only the person with the most money will be able to hold the domain in any legal kerfuffle. Look at what happened to etoys.com.
This is just wrong. But I can't really think of a fair way of going about fixing the problem. Do you force people to give up their domain names because they are misleading? Tough to say.
It's clearly cybersquatting, but the real question is whether cybersquatting can/should be protected as freedom of speech.
Why not? Companies do this to each other at any chance they get. People make money by registering domain names and selling them at inflated prices to companies you'd expect to own them. Still when I go to a site that's not what I'm expecting e.g. looing for a proxy server it bugs me. So it's probably turning voters against him.
I'm not in the US, so maybe this is fine there, but to me this sounds very much like libel (at least what I understand libel to mean :)).
:)
If it was simply the case that the Republican registered the sites, on which disparaging comments are made about a political opponent that would just be the sleazy but unfortunately acceptable face of politics. But since he registered domains which might reasonably (by my definition of reasonable anyhow) be taken to be connected with the Democrat and such disparaging statements are then made it sounds like a case could be made for unfairness, and whatever law that then entails.
Is this any different to registering www.microsoft.com (for example) and then writing Bill Gates hate-speech all over it?
Please note that I have no political stance to take on the issue of US politics, so please don't interpret anything I have said as a political attack on either candidate
Daar is nie 'n lepel nie
This particular case is definately squatting but it raises the question "Can you buy domain names and use them for purposes other than what the domain name may lead most people to believe the content is?". I have several domain names that I have purchased for one reason or another and ended up using them for subjects that have nothing to do with the domain name. Is the only way to solve this issue through a judge? Do we let them determine intent? I personally don't like that idea.
Why did this jerk (and so many others) pull this crap? All it does is hurt the rest of us.
Personally, I think the cybersquatting shows a lack of class. I voted against Van Hollen in the last election, but I don't condone what his opponent is doing for one reason, in that you shouldn't work to silence your opponent in a political election in a republic.
Floyd is wrong on this one, big time. By attempting to suppress Van Hollen's website and ideas, he's tarnishing his own reputation.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
So long as the holder of the domain makes it clear he is not affiliated with the compaign that the URL would imply, I don't see a problem with it. Looking over this site, I think it's sufficiently clear that it's not actually being run by the candidate being mocked.
On the other hand, looking over this site and seeing how it's done make me dislike Floyd more than Van Hollen. But I'm not in that district, so...
I don't see how this is significantly different than www.gwbush.com (currently defunct), although gwbush.com was a bit cleverer.
They already have. Compare www.georgewbush.org and www.georgewbush.com You probably won't notice something is wrong until you go to the .org store.
This site has a lot of vague accusations without real facts and/or background to back them up. I'm not saying any of the content on this site is correct or incorrect, but you'd have to be pretty gullible to believe any of it presented as it is.
Just by scanning it quickly I suspect some of it may be misleading. For example, saying he is anti-business could mean he has voted in favour of some environmental control (which by the standard of many is 'anti-business'). Also, the section listing items he has voted for doesn't mention that these vague, nasty sounding votes could have been for bigger, worthy bills with silly amendments buried in them, as happens all the time.
The content of this site reminds me that in modern US politics candidates for office can say just about anything they want about an opponent and the onus of clarification or disproving any misleading or false accusations is on the accused.
I can't say whether or not the practice of using the URL is valid or not, but I would consider the content of the site to be piss-poor at best, misleading at worst. Actually, the worst would be bald-faced lies, but I'm not going to start checking facts. Regardless, there is no shame in US politics today.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
I just took a look at the site, completely expecting to see mudslinging on the same level as a television commercial, but was pleasantly surprised.
While I doubt how much of the information is truthful, the page does inform you several times that it's not Van Hollen's official site and in fact they even link to his official site in the navigation menu.
View it while you can, though, because as candidates start taking the Internet seriously as a campaign medium, you won't see to many "civil" sites like these left.
How exactly is this a despicable act? All he is doing is informing the voters of his opponents voting record. Or are you impling that politicians should be able to hide from thier records?
The worst part of being athiest.... You don't have anyone to talk to during orgasm!
Its one thing to register the domain names in question. Its another thing to actually have traffic to those domain names. In this case hes had an abundance of free publicity and the search engines/slashdot affect would do the site a world of good. Generally this wouldnt have been the case with out the large press/publicity/scam campaign that is currently occuring.
maybe I should register a few thousand political domain names.. then link them all to eachother.. create a post on slashdot mentioning it.. then change the content on the pages to something thats worth while.. then the search engines will redirect viagra requests.. oops i mean legit traffic to my site.
Any politician who claims that his opponent "votes for terrorists" instantly loses any credibility with me.
Too bad they usually win anyway. This is where I start to get disillusioned with American politics -- not when third parties are excluded from the debates. But when idiots like Karl Rove can run an advertisement accusing somebody like John McCain (five + years in the Hanoi Hilton) or Max Cleland (lost three limbs in Vietnam) of being unpatriotic... and it fucking works!
Bah! It's sickening.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
First, he shouldn't have .com or .net, since he isn't a commercial entity or network provider....
Second, having said that, the right to have a domain name isn't the same thing as the right to deceive people. Sure, he has the right to the domain name, assuming that he registered it and didn't register something that was trademarked. Even so, he does _not_ have the right to use that domain (or any domain) to try to decieve people into believing that the material represents someone else. I haven't looked at the web site in question, but I get the impression that it is not deceptive. Thus, no problem.
Here in Montgomery County, Maryland, where Van Hollen is the incumbent Representative, I read a month back in a local newspaper (Gaithersburg Gazette, I think) of a complaint that someone had changed signs that were placed along the road to direct persons to a Van Hollen town meeting, leading them away from the meeting. Also someone called the place where the meeting was to take place and tried to convince the owner that he had double booked the room. People attending the meeting returned to their cars to find Van Hollen bumper stickers covered with Floyd bumper stickers.
Perhaps Floyd himself wasn't involved with this. But if he were, his opinion on cybersquatting is not worth a cent.
I really believe the next generation of search engines/browsers will make remembering URLs unnecessary, fixing the current problems with cybersquatting.
As an analogy, when I was growing up, I could remember four or five dozen phone numbers of friends/family/whatnot. Now, I could list about three. I would speculate that my great-grandmother could do the same with mailing addresses, yet now my mom would be lost without using mail merge for her Christmas cards.
I, personally, don't know exactly how we are going to jump past bookmarks and Google, but I have no doubt some creative UI engineer with figure it out, since the same problem has been solved before.
Cybersquatting is not really to biggest issue, either. The more basic problem is commonality of names. What does the company 'Delta' mean to you? Travel? Electronics? Faucets? Power tools? It's like asking what 'Dave Smith' means. There are many in the phonebook, but only one or two are significant to you and your cellphone knows the difference.
What we have today is like the first generation of speeddial. That improved, and so will browsers. It won't be long before your browser can make a decent guess at where you actually want to go. (No, that is not a Microsoft plug...they just happened to hire a good slogan writer. "Where do you want to go today" is a very futuristic question.)
Are you seriously saying that the truth of statements you make is not a valid defense to libel in parts of Australia?
Correct. In those states, a statement has to be true AND in the public's interest for it not to be considered libel.
So, you aren't allowed to put flyers up saying that so-and-so is a Nazi war criminal - even if it's true, it hurts him more than it benefits the public to know it.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
I'd disagree with your specific restrictions. However, I'd suggest requiring that any such political site include a "Paid for by the Joe Blah for Senate Campaign" on each page, with a link to a web page version of the usual "I'm the candidate, and I approve this message". If put up by a PAC, use "Paid for by Citizens Against Jim Mumble", with a link to a page stating the group's charter, directorship, and business office. If put up by a private citizen, "Paid for by BillyBob Doe", linked to a page informing people that they are doing this as a private citizen, saying whether they are a registered voter, and if so, noting if they are registered in a precinct that will vote on this election.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
If you're rich and powerful and have enough money to sue the people using your name, it's cybersquatting.
If you're a poor nobody, who cares?
When I'm not impersonating a glorified light bulb holder online, my name is Deborah. I'd love to use Deborah.com or at least see it used for something other than pr0n. But I'm a poor nobody, so who gives a shiat?
The name is also biblical (which few people know, but Deborah was a tough enough chic back in the B.C. days to rate a couple of chapters in the male dominated Good Book). Now all Debbie is known for is the mark she made on Dallas.
I guess that's part of the point as well though. If you're known well enough for people to be googling you or think that your name should equal dotcom somewhere in the netaverse, then maybe just maybe, the person who feels they're being maligned should be master of their own domain.
The funny thing is that this question didn't come up when the site http://whitehouse.org/ opened or when http://bush2004.com (or .net or .org) opened. This just doesn't sound like an agrument on principle. I'm so used to seeing sites like this, that I've really stopped caring. It's the same as the X-sucks.com domains, but deceitfully subtle. This is just another case of the net not being the most reliable place to find information.
The real answer in the case of campaigns is to set up a campaign site at local, state and federal levels that serves as a (very) small site or forwarding service to the candidates' official site. It should be a service provided to anyone on the ballot in a race. (Put third party rants below.) If you go any where else, you could get the candidate's site, a supporter's site, a basher site or even a beer company site.
In the 60's many people (noteably the FBI) did exactly that (soemtimes they didn't even rip off the mask). By sending hate-filled letters in the name of one anti-vietnam group to another or posing as members and then carrying out some crime they sought to discredit the peace, and civil rights movements.
In the last election people posing as community members were reportedly circling through some neighborhoods encouraging people to remember to vote on November 3rd. Or warning them that they would face arrest at the polls unless they had no traffic tickets, back-rent, etc.
Basic political sleaze.