Mark Robinson at RichmondMagazine.com wrote a piece on some dirty domain politics. Nate Peterson who is just 25 years old and has never held office wants to run for Mayor of Richmond.
After registering NatePetersonformayor.com he decided to register the names of several other prospective candidates.
From the article:
Aside from the paperwork, Peterson has also taken strides to establish his web presence. He purchased his domain name – natepersonformayor.com – then bought brucetylerformayor.com, chadingoldformayor.com, joemorrisseyformayor.com, levarstoneyformayor.com, lillieestesformayor.com, and michellemosbyformayor.com.
According to the article he also registered some typos and different phrases.
All but LillieEstes.com is registered without the formayor suffix. Peterson did register MichelleMosby.com so she could possibly go the UDRP route. Peterson said that if any candidate wants their name he would be willing to sell for a substantial campaign contribution.
Read the full article on RichmondMagazine.com
This candidate is already showing he has no integrity. Registering domain names of his competition is unintelligent.
So he targeted 6 different rival candidates? That means they can split the cost of filing a UDRP against him 6 different ways. That’s an 83%-off discount. Should be a piece of cake to establish bad faith and get these domains without paying this guy a penny.
Then all the other candidates can point to Nate Peterson as a documented cybersquatter who tried to extort money. At that point, his political career is dead (or damn well should be) at age 25. If he’ll do that for money, why not pressure local business interests for bribes too once he’s in office?