Politicians Clash Over Domain Name
Schuylkill County in Pennsylvania (USA) is known as the Coal Region and the home to Yuengling, America's Oldest Brewery.
But this month the county made the news because two of its candidates for the position of Controller clashed in a domain dispute.
Democratic candidate Melinda Kantner filed a complaint with the election board alleging that her opponent, Republican Jason Gherghel, violated the Pennsylvania Election Code when he registered a domain name bearing her name - MelindaKantner.com - preventing her from using it for her own electoral purposes.
The domain was not merely registered; it actually redirected visitors to Gherghel's own website JasonGherghel.com
When Kantner became aware of the stunt, Gherghel tried to hide his involvement by protecting the domain's whois data using the privacy services of GoDaddy's DomainsByProxy service.
During a telephone interview Thursday, Kantner said:
My opponent is touting his credentials and integrity, but I just feel that if he had any decency and integrity about him, he would do the responsible thing and relinquish my name and apologize.
Gherghel responded by claiming that registering and using an opponent's Internet address is a "common practice":
It's a tool a lot of politicians use, but I don't need it so it's easy for me to just give it up.
However, he claims, Mrs. Kantner turned down the offer.
He even added, "If she calls, I'll give it to her. If she doesn't call, I'll probably just abandon it." And that's what he has apparently done - the domain now displays a PPC links page monetized by domain registrar GoDaddy. Gherghel still has exclusive rights to the domain until its expiration date in March 2008.
The Kantner complaint requests the Election Board conduct "a full investigation "with the results to be referred to the County District Attorney for a determination of possible criminal action.
The full text of the complaint is available here. It's a funny read because of the arcane language used. And they actually mislabel an address bar type-in as an "Internet search".
The lesson? Everyone, and certainly everyone in the public eye, should preemptively register their own domain name. Melinda Kantner and Australian politician Morris Iemma are just some of the individuals who had to learn this lesson the hard way.
Aug 1st, 2007 at 6:05 pm
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