Cast-off political Web sites provide an X-rated eyeful

By Faith Bremner and Carl Weiser
Gannett News Service

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WASHINGTON — Do political candidates know where their cast-off campaign Web addresses are?

If they don't, they should check. The sites may have been taken over by online pornographers.

Click on the old Web addresses for a Colorado congresswoman, a Kentucky Republican running for the House, and former Montana supporters of Howard Dean. Instead of candidates' photos and links to campaign events, Web surfers will receive an X-rated eyeful.

"It's just outrageous," said Rep. Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado, a conservative, family values Republican known for sponsoring a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriages.

"You know good and well that they desire people going to my campaign site would get a little shock," she said.

"It's a shame it's out there, but it's a fact of life," said Justin Braswell, campaign manager for Geoff Davis, who is running for Congress from northern Kentucky. "Geoff Davis supports limiting access to that type of filth."

Davis and Musgrave have unadulterated Web sites for their 2004 campaigns, but they failed to renew the Web site addresses used by their 2002 campaigns.

Those old addresses went into a pool where they were snatched up by a domain reseller. That reseller is offering to sell them again for $500. Meanwhile, the addresses are parked at a porn site.

This happens to a lot of expired Web addresses and candidates shouldn't take it personally, said Kieran Baker, spokesman for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a nonprofit that manages the domain-name system.

"It happened to a 9/11 victim recently with a Web site dedicated to her husband," Baker said. "She forgot to renew it and lost it, and now it's a porn site."
 
Other than buying the address back, if it's for sale, there's nothing an aggrieved former owner can do, Baker said.

Pornographers don't care who owned the old Web addresses or whether their previous visitors are likely to be uninterested in their X-rated wares, said Phil Noble, editor of Politics Online, a newsletter about how the Internet is used in politics and public affairs.

"It could be an old address for someone selling flea collars for anteaters. If it has enough traffic, a porno guy will grab it," Noble said. "If they can hijack a little bit of that traffic to their site, they'll do it."