RJ

12/19/03
By JACOB OGLES
Daily Commercial Staff Writer

More than 100 World Wide Web domains belonging to a group that linked Florida senators’ names to a marijuana seed seller were de-activated Thursday and Friday. The same group has attempted in the past to attach Florida congressmen to a political group promoting white rights. Friends of Chantal, an organization in Mossyrock, Wash., bought the names of a dozen Florida state senators in January as Internet domains names. Those domains were then linked to Overgrow.com, a World Wide Web site that sells marijuana seeds from Canada.

The operators of 123cheapdomains.com, which sold rights to all of the domains to Friends of Chantal, said all of the domains are now inactive.

“The owners of the marijuana site are the ones who contacted us,” said Johnny Li, 123cheapdomains.com spokesman. “Apparently he has received a lot of complaints in the last few days.”

Li said Friends of Chantal had 111 domains connecting to the marijuana site. He would not release all of those domain names. All of those sites are inactive now and will not be used unless the organization can express a legitimate use for the sites.

“We didn’t have anything to do with taking the domains down,” said Sarah Bascom, press secretary for state Senate president Jim King. “But we are pleased to know that the senators’ names are no longer associated with the site, and we are sure the senators are pleased as well.”

After The Daily Commercial notified most of the senators that their names were connected to a marijuana sites, many expressed outrage. State Sen. Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, called for a state investigation to find who was responsible for allawson.com connecting Internet users to Overgrow.com. When the marijuana site began receiving calls from Florida on the matter, it complained to the registrar of the site.

Richard Calrisian, webmaster for Overgrow.com, told The Daily Commercial via e-mail that Friends of Chantal did not have permission to connect any domains to his Web site.

All of the senator name domains were purchased Jan. 8 with a one-year reservation at a cost of $13.95. If registration is not renewed, Li said, the domains will be held for an additional 30 days before they are put up for sale widely. But this is not the first time Friends of Chantal has connected elected officials to a politically volatile issue. Four congressman from Florida, including local U.S. Rep. Ric Keller, R-Orlando, had their names purchased and connected to unpopular causes.

Shirley Wooley, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Porter Goss, R-Naples, said portergoss.com was linked to the official site for the National Association for the Advancement of White People. The U.S. House counsel office threatened legal action against Friends of Chantal then and all of the congressmen’s domains were taken down.
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“We never heard about it again,” Wooley said.

Keller’s office said they were never too distracted by the matter. Press secretary Bryan Malenius said he has forgotten where rickeller.com sent users. But he does remember Friends of Chantal tried to sell the site for an outrageous amount in an extortion attempt.

“We already have two Web sites already, the official House site and the campaign site kellerforcongress.com,” Malenius said, “So we never really thought twice about it. We certainly weren’t going to reward this behavior.”

Neither Keller nor Goss have any interest in buying to domains once they become available, spokespeople said.

Source: http://news.mywebpal.com/partners/70...ews513848.html

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Anthony

That's an interesting form of political protest, although this one seemed pretty stupid, if you ask me. I still don't see the point.