In a recent op-ed column in the Washington Post, Sanderson makes the case for ICANN to institute a new .pol top-level domain that would be reserved exclusively for real politicians and candidates ... and be off limits to the speculators.
He cites as examples of the need the troubles encountered by President Obama and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman in securing their eponymous .com names in advance of running for president and governor of California, respectively. Both eventually bought off their cybersquatters.
Boo-hoo, you say? Whitman's a billionaire and Obama raised enough money online to bail out the auto industry. ... Well, this isn't merely about the money, or even primarily about it.
Sanderson writes: "In 2004, for example, a cybersquatter deceitfully solicited funds through JohnFKerry-2004.com, which was nearly identical to Sen. John Kerry's authorized site. Likewise, in 2008, the cybersquatter site JohnMcain.com featured a contribution page almost indistinguishable from the similarly spelled official campaign site, JohnMcCain.com. Such counterfeit contribution pages raise serious monetary- and identity-theft concerns; they are also likely to become more common as others imitate these schemes."
At least these crooks are non-partisan.
Reading Sanderson's column prompted a few questions in my mind so I sent him an e-mail asking, among other things: Given that .com dominates the public's consciousness, wouldn't candidates still be compelled to fight for and or buy the .com versions of their campaign sites lest those .com sites be used against them? In other words, is it fair to say that .pol would be at best a partial solution?
His reply: "No, I don't think it is a partial solution. In the long term, most Internet users would grow accustomed to visiting .pol sites to volunteer, contribute, etc., much the way they now know to visit .edu to visit a university's official site. Eventually, candidates would not feel any more compelled to purchase a .com site than a university does.
"In the short term, though, you are right that many users will want to turn to .com sites. But even though this is the case, I think .pol would help significantly reduce the price that cybersquatters are able to fetch for a domain name."
There was more to our exchange, which, if you're interested, can be read
Back in February, Facebook users wailed about new terms-of-service language they saw paving the way for Facebook to sell their every scribbling and photo to the highest bidder. The company backed off the changes and opened up a dialogue with interested parties to craft another version. ... Good move.
Then Facebook went one step further by offering users an opportunity to vote: Do you want the newly drafted terms that include all the privacy-protecting goodness collected from concerned parties? Or, would you prefer the original legalese?
What could be more democratic?
Well, there was a catch. Facebook attached to the referendum a condition, namely that 30% of its 200 million active users -- roughly 60 million -- would need to participate for the results to be binding. (See, you really do need to read the fine print.)
Only about 650,000 of us voted (three-quarters picked the new terms, which presumably will be adopted).
Next time, let's skip the faux vote.