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Clinton.democrat sold to some guy in Kansas

Kevin Murphy, May 21, 2014, 19:21:28 (UTC), Domain Registries

Some guy in Kansas registered the domain name clinton.democrat before Rightside’s new gTLD went into general availability today.
It’s one of 38 .democrat domain names in today’s zone file — a mixture of trademark protections registered during the sunrise period and names sold during a three-week landrush.
Judging by the registration date, the name clinton.democrat appears to have been registered during landrush, one of only a small handful currently in the zone file.
The Whois record for the domain lists one Jared Mollenkamp of “Politically Correct Personal Computers” in Topeka, Kansas as the registrant.
While the email address appears to be protected by Whois privacy, a quick Google reveals that a genuine individual by that name lives in Topeka and is involved in PC enthusiast groups.
Quite why he wants clinton.democrat is not clear. There are many reasons the registration could be completely legit.
It seems to be the only personal name of a politician registered prior to .democrat going to general availability.
The Clintons — Bill and now Hillary, who is tipped for a 2016 run at the presidency — are of course one of the most famous Democratic dynasties, probably second only to the Kennedys.
The string “clinton” has been registered in 22 new gTLDs so far, including clinton.center, clinton.watch and clinton.sexy.
Rightside does not have any special mechanism in place to protect the names of politicians, though it has published a policy that prevents registrants using its gTLDs to mock its own employees.
Public figures generally do not have trademark protection for their personal names, and as such have been ripe for cybersquatting and other types of mischief over the years.


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Comments (2)

  1. Fred says:

    .yawn
    As predicted, this gtld fiasco is turning into a squatter’s dream. The only ones who are benefitting are squatters, IP attorneys, ICANN and a handful of retail registrars.
    The sponsoring registries will not do well due to the very low volume (wow – who woulda thunk?!) while the end users couldn’t care less about this worthless .crap and continues to insist on .com

    • zack says:

      so what is low volume?
      I’m going to assume that the sponsoring registries do not need much to be profitable, especially if they are a portfolio player –

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