More on bending the rules regarding domain name registration.

Now this is getting a little more interesting the more I look at it. As Weasel Boy himself points out back here, it's not just the GOP that have been abusing the ".gov" domain name registration process. Apparently, the Dems are similarly sleazy, given the existence of the site democrats.gov. So what exactly are the rules here?

Well, according to just one of many online sources, there are pretty strict rules for registering a ".gov" domain name:

Restricted. May be registered for U.S. government sites - for example, whitehouse.gov, senate.gov, loc.gov/ (Library of Congress), usgs.gov (US Geological Survey)

Note the requirement for being a "U.S. government site". And, as hard as it may be to believe, I'm pretty sure that a political party doesn't constitute an official "U.S. government site," regardless of whether they're running the country or not. It strikes me that, according to the rules, neither of those two submissions should have been approved when they were first made. But the fact that they were does seem to open up a whole, messy can of worms.

If the Repubs and the Dems can get their own ".gov" domain names, why not other official political parties? Under the circumstances, shouldn't the Libertarians simliarly be allowed to register "libertarians.gov"? What about "greenparty.gov"? Or even "communistparty.gov"?

It's hard to imagine how the registration process could accept the first two names above, then reject everyone else. If someone's feeling ambitious, perhaps they'd like to try to register one of those latter names and see what happens. At the very least, I have to imagine it would be worth the entertainment value.

And, no, I'm not done with this whole issue yet.