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News)
Everybody's got issues in
Politics
An announcement
from the Patent and Trademark
Office, part of the Commerce Department, concludes in typically
understated bureaucratese that there's no pressing need for "a
centralized accurate list of official candidates and potential
candidates" for public office.
The report's reasoning isn't as much principled as practical: How
would such a system work? Who would maintain the master list of
government-approved websites? What about existing websites that
already use a politician's name?
One obvious choice to regulate this mess is the Federal Election Commission. After
all, the FEC already keeps track of officially declared candidates,
though only for federal office.
In fact, one version of an unsuccessful bill introduced in the
last Congress, H.R.
3028, would have created a second-level domain name under .us,
like .politics.us or .elections.us, exclusively for use by
politicians.
Problem is, the FEC doesn't want the job.
"Given the large number of federal, state and local candidates
and officeholders, compiling and maintaining a complete list of all
persons who are eligible would likely be a sizable undertaking....
The commission does not have the resources to assume responsibility
for a task of this magnitude," the FEC said in a March
2000 letter to the Commerce Department.
The most the FEC is willing to do, it said in the letter, is
compile a list of links to "the official websites of all current
federal candidates" and campaign committees.
That's what's known in Washington as bureaucratic infighting, or
buck-passing, and maybe a little of both. In any case, the first
round went to the FEC.
Given that anything-but-enthusiastic response from America's top
electocrats, the Commerce Department's PTO essentially threw up its
hands. Its report concluded that even though some members of the
public writing official comments wanted the FEC to get involved, the
agency wouldn't budge.
In comments
submitted to the PTO last year, the Democratic Party suggested
creating .pol.us or .elect.us or some kind of seal of approval.
Even if the FEC changed its mind, the report advised, there could
be First Amendment problems afoot. After all, political parody and
complaints about the press are as venerable a tradition as the
presidency itself.
Even Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of
Independence, once complained
that: "Our newspapers, for the most part, present only the
caricatures of disaffected minds. Indeed, the abuses of the freedom
of the press here have been carried to a length never before known
or borne by any civilized nation."
The 1999 law ordering the report asked for advice on how to
protect "the public from registration of domain names that include
the personal names of government officials, official candidates, and
potential official candidates for Federal, State, or local political
office in the United States, and the use of such domain names in a
manner that disrupts the electoral process or the public's ability
to access accurate and reliable information regarding such
individuals."
The report also addressed other areas, such as general
cybersquatting, and said the Clinton administration supported
ICANN's dispute-resolution process. It also said the "time is not
ripe" for new laws in the area.
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