FC: Denver city councilman buys up his rivals' .com names

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2003 23:26:18 -0700
To: "Declan McCullagh"<declan () well com>
From: Charlie Oriez <coriez () oriez org>
Subject: Lanham Act and political campaigns
Cc: k.swearingen () attbi com

Declan -

Back in Feb, 2002, you covered a fight in Texas where the Texas Dems 
registered a parody site criticizing the ties between the Texas Republican 
Party and Enron, and the attempt of the Republicans to get the site taken 
down or modified on Lanham act grounds.  The Dems ultimately won since the 
site was fairly obviously protected parody.

http://www.politechbot.com/p-03144.html

A candidate in Colorado has taken a different tact, registering likely 
domain names of his opponents with the sole intent of preventing their 
use.  He's stated his intention to keep the sites blank and merely deny 
there use to the opponents whose names are in the domain names.

The Anti Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999 (signed by Clinton 
in November of that year) expanded the Lanham Act to cover bad faith 
registrations of domain names so as to intentionally deny their use to 
trademark owners or owners of personal names.

Story here: 
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_1650692,00.html

The wiggle room is the language of the act that says that the squatter has 
to intend to profit from the act.  My tendency is to interpret that as the 
cybersquatter is intending to sell back the domain to the rightful 
owners.  However, since the person who wins this election gets paid for the 
position at risk, at least one political operative raised the possibility 
that the post election payments might be sufficient to trigger Lanham.

Penalties are $100,000 per violation.

From the political perspective, if I were an opponent, I would spend the 
spring accusing the candidate of the Lanham Act violations and hammering on 
this action as symptomatic of his lack of ethics.  The candidates are 
running for City Auditor, and the voters at least would want the person 
holding this office to be purer than Ceaser's wife.

News reporter: sanchezr@rockymountain news.com or (303) 892-2231

I've been unable to reach any of the candidates though I've taken the 
liberty of cc'ing the admin contact for Debbie Ortega, one of the victims 
of the Lanham violations, on this note.

I also alerted the reporter to my perceptions of the Lanham act's involvement.

Charles Oriez   coriez () oriez org
39  34' 34.4"N / 105 00' 06.3"W
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