Domain high jinks don’t help
By IR Staff 10/08/07
Politics often seems to take place in a quarrelsome world in which Republicans and Democrats gleefully spar over matters great and small, oblivious to what the rest of us might think.
How else to explain, for instance, the games played during the last legislative session, even as the voters were looking on, distinctly unamused?
The latest example of political high jinks, recounted in an Associated Press story on Sunday’s front page, involved the pilfering of Web domain names. It turns out that the domain name www.lindamcculloch.com, which one might think belonged to Democrat Linda McCulloch, currently superintendent of public education and a candidate for secretary of state, actually was purchased by Republicans. It isn’t saying nice things about her.
On the other side, Democrats have bought www.BobKeenan.com, just in case the former Republican state senator decides to run against Sen. Max Baucus or Gov. Brian Schweitzer.
Some call this “political cyberfraud,” a form of identity theft. Others say it’s just a logical maneuver in a political reality increasingly dominated by new technology. In any event, Mikki Berry, president of the Domain Name Rights Coalition, told the AP that no harm is done because “voters are smart enough to understand that a site attacking a candidate is not likely endorsed by that candidate.”
The practice has been going on for some time now, and there is little talk of outlawing it. Only California has a law against it; Jacqueline Lipton, an expert on technology law at Case Western University, said she knows of no similar legislation elsewhere. But that really isn’t the point. What politicians and party faithful on both sides forget (or don’t care about) is that most people don’t see politics as a game of one-upmanship. They see government as a serious business that affects everyone, a business that really matters.
To treat the process of democracy as an excuse for juvenile antics turns a lot of people off. Americans have plenty reasons to be sick and tired of politics these days. Why add more?
How else to explain, for instance, the games played during the last legislative session, even as the voters were looking on, distinctly unamused?
The latest example of political high jinks, recounted in an Associated Press story on Sunday’s front page, involved the pilfering of Web domain names. It turns out that the domain name www.lindamcculloch.com, which one might think belonged to Democrat Linda McCulloch, currently superintendent of public education and a candidate for secretary of state, actually was purchased by Republicans. It isn’t saying nice things about her.
On the other side, Democrats have bought www.BobKeenan.com, just in case the former Republican state senator decides to run against Sen. Max Baucus or Gov. Brian Schweitzer.
Some call this “political cyberfraud,” a form of identity theft. Others say it’s just a logical maneuver in a political reality increasingly dominated by new technology. In any event, Mikki Berry, president of the Domain Name Rights Coalition, told the AP that no harm is done because “voters are smart enough to understand that a site attacking a candidate is not likely endorsed by that candidate.”
The practice has been going on for some time now, and there is little talk of outlawing it. Only California has a law against it; Jacqueline Lipton, an expert on technology law at Case Western University, said she knows of no similar legislation elsewhere. But that really isn’t the point. What politicians and party faithful on both sides forget (or don’t care about) is that most people don’t see politics as a game of one-upmanship. They see government as a serious business that affects everyone, a business that really matters.
To treat the process of democracy as an excuse for juvenile antics turns a lot of people off. Americans have plenty reasons to be sick and tired of politics these days. Why add more?
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Reader Comments:
purple wrote on Oct 10, 2007 8:42 PM:
" al-Gore's global warming theories are beginning to fall apart. Those pushing global warming are relying solely on "recorded" weather conditions and patterns. How many know that something in the neighborhood of 80 MILLION years ago, the north pole was located in the middle of the pacific ocean which put the location of the north pole, back then, on the equator. The polar ice caps and the glaciers around the globe are the final remnants of the last ice age.
"
MACMT wrote on Oct 10, 2007 11:07 AM:
" THIS IS THE TYPE OF POLITICAL SCUL-DUDDERY THAT MAKES VOTERS NOT VOTE, OR VOTE FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS. "
consider_this wrote on Oct 10, 2007 10:30 AM:
" If the thinning projects proposed by timber industry groups really were interested in removing the "...deadfalls and shrubs on the floor of the forest, not the living trees..." then no one would stand in their way. But the reality is that whenever a timber company proposes "forest thinning" what they really mean is a clear cut that looks like a nuclear wasteland when they are finished--with more "deadfalls and shrubs on the floor of the forest" than when they started. Their idea of "thinning" is what a bald guy calls his situation. That is why no one trusts them. "
consider_this wrote on Oct 9, 2007 9:46 AM:
" But, John, don't you realize that there are still paleolithic neo-cons afraid for their wallets who still maintain that global warming is "the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" (US Senator James Inhofe, R-OK)? I actually wonder if knuckle-headed politicians like Inhofe really believe this bunk or do they just have to say it because some greenhouse spewing industry bought them off. "
purple wrote on Oct 9, 2007 8:29 AM:
" A good solution to solve the wildfire issue is to thin out the forests, however the eco-kooks have a strangle hold on state and federal government entities and are preventing forest thinning from happening. The real fuel of forest fires is the deadfalls and shrubs on the floor of the forest, not the living trees. Has anyone ever heard of a forest fire in the Black Forest in Germany? Why don't they have firest there? Could it be that they have a year-round program for keeping the floor of that forest clean, unlike the jumbled mess the floor of this nation's forests are?
"
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consider_this wrote on Oct 12, 2007 11:49 AM: