eCampaign 101: Protect Your Domain

Ralph Goodale may be looking for another job: this blank looking web site (as of 3:31pm ET 2005–12-08) is either evidence of this, or, some domain squatter beat ol’ Ralph to the punch and stole the domain out from under his feet:

Either way – definitely not cool. Lets see if anyone is squatting on the domain:

%whois ralphgoodale.ca
Admin-Name:     Chris Thauberger
Admin-Postal:   Allstartech

Aha. Allstartech is a company that does some work for a mutual fund company I happen to know – if we jump to conclusions it might appear that Goodale is embroiled in a domain-squatting issue, perhaps backed by the mutual fund industry. I don’t buy that though – the domain appears to have been registered for some time; the CIRA name dispute resolution policy would have resolved the issue to Goodale’s benefit by now.

Instead, maybe the blank page, in the middle of an election while Goodale is embroiled in controversy, is a new tactic designed by cagey Liberal strategists?

Either way, candidates: reserve domain names well in advance of an election; keep control of the names; secure the .CA and ideally .COM, .ORG domains as well.

And don’t let your campaign web site go down in the middle of a campaign!