Monday, May 11, 2015

#domaingate redux









ChuckTodd.org now forwards to Fiorina's presidential campaign web site.

Todd, like Meyers a few days earlier, was at least gracious in his response: "@CarlyFiorina very clever. Campaign works fast."

It's strange that use of the dot-org domain was originally intended to be for not-for-profit enterprises, primarily charities, and somehow got co-opted as something available for more general use.

It's stranger that the press is obsessed over Fiorina's "failure" to register CarlyFiorina.org — a definite oversight, but certainly not a sign of disorganization or disarray — when there has been a proliferation of potential dot-whatever domains. It's overwhelmingly likely that the press would be making the same noise and amplifying the claims of Fiorina's antagonist if that person had instead registered dot-us, dot-net, or any one of several other popular domain extensions.

Far stranger is the fact, as pointed out by a NewsBusters commenter several days ago, that BarackObama.org goes to a "server default page." Additionally, BarackObama.net goes to a stale independent web page supporting President Obama's 2008 presidential candidacy, meaning that the supposedly well-oiled David Axelrod machine failed to register it in their candidate's name. BarackObama.ws goes to a site promoting "Income for life from home." Yet none of these occurrences have been thrown in the President's face as some kind of implication of incompetence — because they really aren't.

Fiorina's isn't either. So enough already.
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