[ga] Re: FC: Denver city councilman buys up his rivals' .com names

[Jeff Williams <jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com>]

Declan and all,

  Thank you for pointing this terrible situation out again.  It is obvious
that the situation is politically overheated ...
I found http://www.enronownsthegop.com/news/cease.htm
to be very interesting...

Declan McCullagh wrote:

> ---
>
> 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
> **
> The internet views censorship as damage and routes around it
>     -- attributed to John Gilmore
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>
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Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 129k members/stakeholders strong!)
================================================================
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com
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