For a short time early in the week, if you made the mistake of typing www.gaston-cassidy.com, you found yourself looking at the Web site for the campaign team of Seth Murphy and Alicia Bryant.
While the use of Internet domain names is still highly disputed, there has been a lot of controversy over the use of domain names that use an individual's name.
The correct domain name for Jenn Gaston and Josh Cassidy's campaign Web site is www.gastoncassidy.com and the correct domain for Murphy and Bryant is www.murphy-bryant.com. Just a small difference, but enough to send people who confused the addresses to a site that advertised the Murphy-Bryant team.
By yesterday afternoon the Web site was redirected to a comical site called www.cowswithguns.com. This site was then changed to redirect www.gaston-cassidy.com to the Marshall University homepage.
Seth Murphy claimed that he purchased three domain names for the campaign. The team bought www.murphybryant.com, www.murphy-bryant.com and www.gaston-cassidy.com. Murphy claims that purchasing the third domain was a strategic move and does not believe that redirecting the site back to the Muprhy-Bryant Web site was unethical or unfair.
Jen Gaston, as can be expected, doesn't feel that the site being redirected to Murphy-Bryant Web site was ethical, but does not plan to file a complaint with the Student Court.
The difficulty in this situation is that the Internet is still an area that is mostly unregulated. Questions of copyrighting one's name are still going before the U.S. Supreme Court and being dealt with on a national level.
The Parthenon staff does not agree with Murphy's contention that the action is ethical, but we cannot say that it is illegal. The question is one of what should be done versus what can be done.
Many people think that the Parthenon attacks the team of Murphy and Bryant by publishing recent articles and student-submitted letters and political cartoons. A letter-writer mentioned that Murphy has been a target for attack because he writes and speaks out more than other candidates. That could be part of it, but the Parthenon thinks that some decisions that he has made with regard to this campaign have not been the best decisions.
The issue with the Web site domain names has prompted election commissioner Elizabeth Clemons to make a suggestion in her post-election report that there be an addition to the SGA election rules that offers guidelines to Web site domain registration.
The Parthenon thinks this is a good way to avoid the problem in the future. Whether one sees it as clever strategic move or as the unethical railroading of information-seeking students, we think finding a way to avoid the situation in the future is the best decision.
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