Discussion: Dems Quietly Bought Websites Implying Incumbent Senators Were 'For Sale'

Is it safe to say that this scenario demonstrates that maybe the Dems are finally getting on board with fighting the GOP with its own weapons?

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Such defensive purchases are routine. We do the same thing at my company. Remember when whitehouse.com was a porn site? Well that is one of the things a marketing department wants to head off.

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Yup, almost like someone is getting serious about this Russian influence thing.

Hoping thatā€™s true.

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US population 325 million people and growing.

US Domestic programs and government agenciesā€¦all are being cut and are smaller than what is needed to govern a nation of 200 million.

The US is beginning to look like a Wall Street Bank just before the Bush Financial Collapseā€¦a nation that is too big to manage and too big to save especially as the Republicans and Trump purge all the experienced life time civil servants who are key to surviving a major event (catastrophe).

The US people should be worried: If you thought the Katrina response under Bush was badā€¦you would be shocked to see how bad it has been in Puerto Rico following their 2 cat. 5 hurricanes. This failure under Trump is going largely unnoticed but people better realize this is whatā€™s happening to our entire government and including the military whoā€™s morale is at its lowest level ever!

The US is at the tipping pointā€¦one national disaster and the US is gone.

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Why is this a news story? At some points it seems to be trying to play it up, but then at others admitting that its routine and normal for people to buy webspaces like this.

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Because the AP needs something they can use to paint the Dems as shady to ā€œbalanceā€ their reporting on all Trumpā€™s crazy.

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I donā€™t understand the focus on Dems in the headline and the body, especially given

APā€™s review found roughly 280 political web addresses registered under the ā€œforsaleā€ domain[...] The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said it was responsible for at least 27 of them

So Dems were responsible for less than 10% of these defensive purchases as far as the writer knows, but the focus is squarely on that 10% and ignores the other 90%?

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so I could start a site like DonaldTrumpchildmolester.com and someone would buy it?

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Iā€™m broke ā€¦ could I at least comment ? ? ā€¦

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Am I supposed to be upset that democrats are protecting themselves by buying web addresses so bad actors canā€™t use them?

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Yes, yes you are. Because next thing you know someone will send EMAIL to those addresses.

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please do.

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ā€œItā€™s a really nutty thing to do unilaterally because itā€™s going to set off alarm bells,ā€ Urbelis said.

How the heck do you buy a domain in a way that is not ā€œunilateralā€?

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I should think itā€™s in the nature of the ā€˜both sides do itā€™ meme. Of course, they do - itā€™s how the game is played. Doesnā€™t make one side look any worse than the other.

What disturbs me is the headline, making it look like the Dems are doing something nefarious when the GOP has been doing this and worse for years.

@darrtown

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Exactly. I manage websites for a non-profit and have a bunch of similar domains parked to protect the organization from having fake sites created. This is such a non-story to start with, and that the DNC registered about 10% of what AP found sure points to smart due diligence, not something nefarius. But itā€™ll get clicks while the con man in chief threatens war with Iran yet ignores actual evidence of real interference with elections. Jeez.

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I donā€™t understand any of this digital stuff. I have my 9 yr old grandson for all that. On occasion he has been recruited to explain computer and smart phone stuff to his ā€œgampaā€. In return I have astounded him with stories of the pre-computer era. Of how phones were something you spoke into and that was all and you couldnā€™t carry them with you. And the biggieā€¦ computers and computer games didnā€™t exist for ordinary people because only big universities or big corporations had computers. And those computers were huge.

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Nutty? Why do businesses and non-profits do this all the time? Somebodyā€™s nutty, but not the DNC.

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Exactly. What TPMā€™s excuse for running it is, I donā€™t know.

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Politicians and celebrities, especially, have trademark rights to their own names, and can file a complaint and request arbitration through the World Intellectual Property Organization or the National Arbitration Forum with whoever registered the website, according to Alexander Urbelis, a partner at the New York-based Blackstone Law group who detected the new registrations.

Say what? Thatā€™s just not true. First, this article wasnā€™t about celebrities so injecting that is a red herring. Second, politicians donā€™t have trademark rights in their own names for Peteā€™s sake, any more than anyone else does. They might have trademark rights to the extent that they are using their name as a source indicator for goods and services sold in commerce, but not the names themselves. And third, thereā€™s this thing called the First Amendment. Buying a domain even with a trademark for the purpose of commentary rather than use in commerce, is not a violation of the UDRP, which is what heā€™s referring to w/re WIPO and NAF. The UDRP requires ā€œbad faith registration and useā€ and using a domain for the sake of political commentary ofā€¦ politicians ā€¦ is certainly not a bad faith registration and use.

WTF.

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