-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Correction on Dick Cheney and domain name misstatement Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 14:13:44 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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From: Adam Rosi-Kessel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [Politech] Dick Cheney's domain name misstep Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Thu, Oct 07, 2004 at 05:11:44AM -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
George Soros capitalized on Cheney's error, snatched up the URL, and now if you type "factcheck.com" into your browser, you get redirected to a page titled, "Why we must not re-elect President Bush: a personal message from George Soros."=20
Declan:
This isn't quite correct. According to this Yahoo news story:=20
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=3Dstory&cid=3D694&u=3D/ap/20041006/ap_on_el= _pr/debate_web_sites_1&printer=3D1=20
As well as the George Soros site itself <http://www.georgesoros.com>, the site administrator for factcheck.com decided to redirect to Soros' site on his own:=20
The company decided to redirect traffic to the Soros site after it became inundated with hits . about 100 a second after the debate, John Berryhill, a Philadelphia lawyer for FactCheck.com, said Wednesday. =20
"This was to relieve stress on the service and to express a political point of view," said Berryhill, who spoke with the site's administrators shortly after the debate ended. =20
I checked the URL during the debate, and it was, indeed a banner advertising site. It was only later that the site director redirected to georgesoros.com. Interestingly, at this moment, georgesoros.com appears to be down or responding poorly. --=20 Adam Rosi-Kessel http://adam.rosi-kessel.org
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 09:21:44 -0400 (EDT) From: Paul Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [Politech] Dick Cheney's domain name misstep In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
talking points memo covers this well. i blogged the soros link plus other related links at http://ibiblio.org/pjones/wordpress/index.php?p=68 for tpm: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_10_03.php#003585
Subject: RE: [Politech] Dick Cheney's domain name misstep From: "Erik Sojka" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Declan McCullagh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I know it's highly popular these days to cite the blogosphere as a true news
source but at the end of the day even bloggers who write random nonsense must
"check their facts" as well (pun intended).
If you check the WHOIS information for "factcheck.com" you will see that it has nothing to do with Soros, and was registered in February, long before Tuesday's debate.
You should also check the following news story, where the author actually talks to the parties involved: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&u=/ap/20041006/ap_on_el_pr/deba te_web_sites_1&printer=1
I'd urge you to check things before submitting them to your list.
[Unfortunately that's not feasible for Politech -- that would be a full-time job. I do have a pretty good record of rejecting false claims and sending out corrections when necessary, though. --Declan]
From: "Peter Swire" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'Declan McCullagh'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: [Politech] Dick Cheney's domain name misstep (correction) Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 10:00:44 -0400 Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Declan:
What a great example of people finding conspiracies where none exist!
The better-researched story shows that George Soros did not "snatch up the url." According to the lawyer for the company that owns factcheck.com, their site was overwhelmed by hits after the debate. The company decided "to exact revenge on Cheney for causing it such grief." On its own, the company decided to redirect traffic to the Soros site.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12901-2004Oct6.html?sub=A R
Not a "vast left-wing conspiracy." Instead, a company taking action to prevent its system from crashing after a mistake by the Vice President.
Peter
Prof. Peter Swire
Moritz College of Law of the
Ohio State University
John Glenn Scholar in Public Policy Research
(240) 994-4142, www.peterswire.net
From: "Meeks, Brock (MSNBCi)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: [Politech] Dick Cheney's domain name misstep Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 07:17:07 -0700
And of course, we know now that the GeorgeSoros.com folks did nothing of the sort, did not "snatch up the URL."
As the Washington Post points out, after having actually DONE SOME REPORTING on this, rather than shooting their mouth off on a hipshot blog,
From the WPost story:
The company behind the site, Cayman Islands-based Name Administration Inc., which also owns sites such as Lipbalm.com and Antarctica.com, was quickly overwhelmed.
"Suddenly they had 48,000 hits in an hour, then 100 hits a second," said John Berryhill, a lawyer for the company. "They had a technical problem on their hands."
To avoid crashing, and to exact revenge on Cheney for causing it such grief, Name Administration decided to forward traffic to GeorgeSoros.com -- a site that could handle the traffic, was not soliciting funds and clearly wasn't tied to Bush. "And you got to admit it was kind of cute," Berryhill said.
From: Brad Templeton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [Politech] Dick Cheney's domain name misstep Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
No, Soros didn't snap up the domain. The owner of the domain found his site overwhelmed, and figured for the duration to exact revenge on Cheney, it is reported, and redirected it to georgesoros.com, without asking Soros.
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