Who Owns ‘Hillary.Com’? Political Speech and the First Amendment in Cyberspace

« Abstract: In the lead-up to the next presidential election, it will be important for candidates both to maintain an online presence and to exercise control over bad faith uses of domain names and web content related to their campaigns. What are the legal implications for the DNS? Although, for example, Senator Hillary Clinton now owns ‘hillaryclinton.com’, the more generic ‘hillary.com’ is registered to a software firm, Hillary Software, Inc. What about ‘hillary2008.com’? It is registered to someone outside the Clinton campaign and is not currently in active use. This article examines the large gaps and inconsistencies in current domain name law and policy as to domain name use in the political context. »

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