The digital election: domain grabbing in politics

When it comes to politi­cians, the name is an important component of their brand. So finding the right domain name really is the meat and potatoes when it comes to a politi­cian’s online presence, as it’s the first stop for in­ter­ested parties. But finding that the ideal domain is no longer available is a problem that even politi­cians have to deal with. With over 190 million re­gistered domains, many of the most popular com­bin­a­tions are already taken – leaving business owners, politi­cians, celebrit­ies, and more having to come up with an al­tern­at­ive.

Not all of these 190 million re­gistered domains are in use, however, because of a lucrative business model called domain grabbing. This process involves a user re­gis­ter­ing domains that he or she doesn’t actually intend to use, but that might be valuable to other users or companies. Then they decide to put the domain up for sale and try to earn as much as possible from it. This is tech­nic­ally illegal in the UK, but can be a grey area depending on the terms of use for the domain. For detailed in­form­a­tion on the legal back­ground of brand or trademark rights, please view our digital guide on domain grabbing and cy­ber­squat­ting. But what if the domain owner wasn’t actually domain grabbing for profit, but instead was taking a strategic approach to profit from a famous name or to damage the image of a com­pet­it­or? In the past few years, the unusual technique of domain grabbing has been a feature in politics, par­tic­u­larly over the course of a run up to a big election. This election has seen un­pre­ced­en­ted new levels of domain grabbing, but what are the UK laws on domain grabbing and cy­ber­squat­ting?

In the UK

Cy­ber­squat­ting and domain grabbing haven’t been in the spotlight much with the recent UK elections, though that’s not to say that there haven’t been instances. One memorable example was the purchase during the last election of the ‘Con­ser­vat­ives 2017’ website by an anonymous, anti-Con­ser­vat­ive buyer. The domain names were purchased and re­gistered and, when they first went up, would simply direct visitors to the website Labour.org. Soon after, though, visitors to the Con­ser­vat­ive website would be met with a satirical Con­ser­vat­ive manifesto, which pledged broken promises, electoral cor­rup­tion, and health care privat­isa­tion. In response to this domain grabbing attack, a similar anonymous buyer purchased the ‘Labour 2017’ website and used it for a redirect to the official site of the Con­ser­vat­ives.

In the USA

There have been a few notable examples of political domain grabbing in the US since the turn of the century. Two of the biggest cases involved household political names: Bush and Clinton. 2005 saw Hillary Clinton win a case against a user from Italy who had purchased the domain hil­laryc­lin­ton.com. The usage and reasons for the purchase were deemed to be in bad faith against the Clinton name. Another famous example took place in 2008, when the domain for the George W. Bush Library Found­a­tion, georgew­bush­lib­rary.com, expired and was bought for less than $10 by a private user. It was then sold back to the library for $35,000 – a sub­stan­tial profit. But these wouldn’t prove to be the last times that two of the best-known names in recent US political history were caught napping by domain grabbers and cy­ber­squat­ters. Cue the entrance for Donald J Trump.

You could certainly argue that politi­cians like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush should be ex­per­i­enced in dealing with slip ups and potential pitfalls in an election. Es­pe­cially when you consider the examples we’ve looked at above - Hillary had en­countered domain trouble over a decade ago and Jeb must have been aware of the expensive slip up his brother’s team of rep­res­ent­at­ives made in allowing their library found­a­tion domain to expire in 2008. Yet in this long, fierce, and emotional US election campaign, these two political pro­fes­sion­als and pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates were undone by a classic domain grabbing candidate by a newcomer to politics: Donald J Trump.

Re­pub­lic­an candidate Jeb Bush re­gistered the domain jeb2016.com as his official homepage for the election, but failed to notice that the address jebbush.com was still up for grabs. Bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man and new Re­pub­lic­an candidate for pres­id­ency Donald Trump spotted this mishap and took full advantage, re­gis­ter­ing the domain with a for­ward­ing address to his own website. He ‘trumped’ Democrats candidate Hillary Clinton in a similar fashion, with hil­laryc­lin­ton.net another re­dir­ect­ing page to Trump’s pres­id­en­tial campaign site. And they’re not the only two – typing pres­id­ent­sanders.com, a potential domain for Democrats candidate Bernie Sanders, into your browser’s task bar will also give you exactly the same result.

Of course, Trump wasn’t foolish enough to fall for his own tricks. The Re­pub­lic­an nominee took the time to register thousands of domains that have even the slightest con­nec­tion to his name or the name of his daughter Ivanka, ranging from the routine to the quite bizarre. A list of around 3,200 domain names is in cir­cu­la­tion in total – many of which are connected to Mr. Trump’s numerous business activ­it­ies already in existence, while others offer a little wink and a nod towards what Trump may be planning in the future: don­aldtrumpart.com, 3dtrump.com, trump­grapes.com, trumpsoda.com, and trumptables.com are just some of these examples. But Trump is also using this tactic to prevent being bad­mouthed by rivals, par­tic­u­larly Clinton sup­port­ers. Perhaps wary of the domain hil­laryc­lin­ton2016.com, a site that looks like the real deal but actually features many mocking articles and a damning as­sess­ment of her political views, Trump took it upon himself to add several derog­at­ory domains to his personal list too, addresses like don­aldtrumpnet­work­sucks.com.

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