Domain profiteers snare candidates in tangled Web

Politicians are scrambling to buy up Web sites based on any future campaigns, as cyber-squatters aim to profit from and bully would-be candidates by holding claims on their Internet domains.

The most recent example comes from Susan Payne of Montgomery County, who last week joined the Web squabble between Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, and his challenger Charles R. Floyd, a Republican.

Mr. Floyd owns several sites with variations of Mr. Van Hollen’s name, and has used them as attack ads. Mr. Floyd, who used the same tactic against his primary opponent, said Mr. Van Hollen should have purchased all Web configurations of his own name. Mr. Van Hollen’s campaign site is vanhollen.org.

Miss Payne, who is registered as an independent and does not live in Mr. Van Hollen’s congressional district, has bought more than 30 domain names — including Floyd4congress.com — for $10 each.

She told the Floyd campaign she will post negative information she has found about Mr. Floyd unless he removes the negative Van Hollen sites.

“Now I have a voice,” said Miss Payne, a full-time mother and longtime local political activist. “I’m not threatening anyone. I want the regular, independent, free-thinking voter in this state to be empowered.”

Miss Payne also offered to give Mr. Van Hollen his domain names if he agrees to meet her.

Mr. Floyd said he would remove the sites only if Mr. Van Hollen agrees to debate him. Because Mr. Floyd’s sites include disclaimers and links to Mr. Van Hollen’s official congressional Web site, lawyers say, the legality of his actions is uncertain.

Elizabeth Rader, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property and Internet law, said she advises such domain owners to post disclaimers and links to real sites, and disclose that the site is intended to be a parody.

“The law is quite scattered in this area,” she said.

One test is how confusing the parody site seems.

“There’s a lot of stupid people out there — they could probably find some people who believed it was real,” Miss Rader said.

Miss Payne also has purchased duncan4governor.com, .net and .org in anticipation that Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, a Democrat, will run for governor in 2006.

She is waiting to see how Mr. Duncan deals with tax issues and term limits before she decides what to do with the domains.

Other Maryland politicians are stuck in the web of cyber-squatting.

Story Continues →