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Sen. Clinton Wins Rights to HillaryClinton.com

Posted by timothy on from the also-interns-are-skanks.com dept.

SteveBlink writes "The National Arbitration Forum announced today that a ruling has been issued in favor of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton regarding rights to the Internet domain name hillaryclinton.com. A quick search of the Yahoo! phone book reveals at least 3 other people sharing the name Hillary Clinton living Ohio, California, and Delaware, respectively. It's curious to note that Sen. Clinton's full legal name isn't "Hillary Clinton," and the website itself is a generic link farm that makes no overt reference to the senator."

6 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. Not quite as the submitter suggests by Jhon · · Score: 5, Informative
    I've seen a lot of RTFAs in my day, but it's rare to need to suggest the submitter RTFA!
    A quick search of the Yahoo! phone book reveals at least 3 other people sharing the name Hillary Clinton living Ohio, California, and Delaware, respectively.
    What does that have to do with the price of Tea in Washington? The one who HAD and was USING the domain WAS NOT a "Hillary Clinton", it was a "Michele Dinoia" who was using it to redirect traffic to search (*cough*)SPAM(*cough) engines.

    Good riddance to a bit more sleezy domain profiteering. I don't even like Clinton, but I'm glad she won.
    1. Re:Not quite as the submitter suggests by Seumas · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Exactly. I don't think that Mrs. Clinton should be given ANY priority to the ownership of the domain over anyone else with that name. However, anyone with that name should be given priority over someone who doesn't have that name and is not acting in good faith with the domain.

      In other words, if another Hilary Clinton wanted the domain, they should have just as much right to it as the Senator (after all, she already has a .gov or .us domain in her state by nature of her office). But some guy using it to redirect to porn or host whatever else (unless it is specifically related to Mrs. Clinton) should should not have priority over any of the Hilary Clintons.

      I don't like her either. I'm just saying, as someone with a domain name of his own name (and I know other people want it as they've emailed me asking for it over the last decade), I feel that I have a right to it more than someone just grabbing domains - but as far as anyone else with the same name as myself - I'd consider "First come first serve" very acceptable.

  2. Doesn't matter that it doesn't reference her by etymxris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The very act of using a popular domain to set up a link farm is cybersquatting at its finest. I've seen some bad domain handovers, but this isn't one of them.

  3. easy victory, not much of a story by FidelCatsro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    She forced a cybersquater off a page , fair enough plenty other people may also have rights to this domain , but she is the one that sought it first .
    Im sick fed up of these domain farmers , They obviously just bought up this domain in hopes of making a bit of cash off the name , which is in clearly wrong .Hell i would have suported Anyone (nearly) in a case like this, the sooner we get better regulation in to stop the domain farmers , the better our web experiance shall be.

    --
    The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
  4. Generic link farm? by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This isn't such a "generic" site...it references "Hillary Rodham Clinton", "Senators", and even "Monica Lewinsky." It's intended to make money off of her popularity. (I'm not sure of the wisdom of adding the latter...it's pretty much guaranteed to anger Sen. Clinton.)

  5. This was a correct decision by cleetus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IAAL. The dispute was brought to the right venue, the National Arbitration Forum (which is one of the domain name dispute fora available to alleged victims of cybersqatting--this keeps most stuff like this out of US courts and keeps taxpayer dollars from being spent on it). According to the decision, the arbitrators took statements and evidence, and, wonder of wonders, the initial registrant of HillaryClinton.com didn't even bother to respond to the complaint. In that case, all they have to go on is the statements of the complainant, which is what they used to make their findings. Finally, the arbitrators used the correct criteria to make the decision. Cut and dry and correct.

    Anyone need a lawyer?