On the surface, Washington attorney Matt Sanderson would appear to be pitching a tough sell: special protection online for politicians and would-be politicians. However, because the villains here are predatory cybersquatters, it should be easy enough for all but the anarchists to see that he has point.
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 for real politicians and candidates … and be off limits to 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. Both eventually bought off their cybersquatters.
Boo-hoo, you say? Whitman’s a billionaire and Obama raised enough online to bail out an industry or two. … Well, this isn’t merely about the money, or even primarily about it. Sanderson write:
Many political cybersquatters simply hope to ransom their purchases to candidates who must quickly secure a site in a time-sensitive environment. Others’ motives are more menacing. 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.
And how would a .pol TLD address the problem?
A “.pol” domain would reduce cybersquatters’ economic incentives to hoard candidate sites because candidates’ easy access to “.pol” sites would undercut cybersquatters’ ransom price for similarly named sites ending in .com, .net and .org. Creating such a domain would also be a relatively non-invasive solution because political cybersquatters would lose nothing but the opportunity to take advantage of candidates in an entirely new area of the Internet. Moreover, a top-level domain reserved solely for candidates and voters to fundraise, organize and communicate would lessen the damage done by political cybersquatting. Internet users would be able to easily locate candidate sites because the “.pol” ending would provide a reliable shortcut for finding and identifying official Web pages.
Reading Sanderson’s column prompted a few questions in my mind so I sent him an e-mail. Here are the questions and replies:
Q: Has the .pol TLD been officially proposed by anyone to ICANN?
“No. The “.pol” proposal is based off of legislation that was considered in a previous Congress, which called for a “.pol” second-level domain under the “.us” ccTLD. But no one has yet proposed this to ICANN. That is my plan going forward, though.”
Q: 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 or otherwise for ill purposes? In other words, is it fair to say that .pol would be at best a partial solution?
“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.
“Currently, two factors largely determine a domain name’s price: (1) The candidate’s need to access a domain; (2) The amount of traffic that might visit the site. If .pol were created, candidates would have a much less urgent need to obtain a .com, .org., or .net site because he/she could still get online easily with a .pol site.
“Also, as the candidate advertises his/her website at .pol and Internet users grow accustomed to looking to .pol sites, the amount of potential traffic that would visit MatthewSanderson.com would be less than would visit MatthewSanderson.pol. In other words, even before .pol achieved universally recognized status in the long-run, it would allow candidates to buy .com, .org, and .net site for less money because it takes the desperation out of the situation for the candidate and gradually moves traffic looking for official campaign sites away from .com and other TLDs.”
Q: How do you answer the “free market” defenders of cyberquatting?
“I think the real question is not necessarily whether cybersquatting is a legitimate activity. I think that policy decision has already been made, and that’s an old discussion. I’m much more interested in this question–why do we protect against commercial cybersquatting but not political cybersquatting?
“Political cybersquatting creates the same kind of “market confusion” problem that commercial cybersquatting does. There is also evidence of monetary- and identity-theft concerns with political cybersquatters.
“Moreover, campaigns seem to be more vulnerable to cybersquatting as a general matter than for-profit businesses because (1) general public outreach is the sole function of campaigns and seizing tools for that outreach arguably inflict more harm; (2) campaigns, unlike corporations, are not perpetual entities — they are short-term enterprises that require quick start-up, and cyberquatters have exploited this urgency in the past to extract a higher premium from candidates; (3) campaigns often start well after public speculation begins, giving cybersquatters a head-start–most corporate startups don’t have to deal with this type of a problem; and (4) campaigns, unlike corporate operations, involve hot-button issues that energize a large pool of non-commercial cybersquatters.”
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