I just read an interesting article about a cyber-squatter who goes after the domain names of up-and-coming politicians.

Seems no one is immune, but nowadays politicians need to be much more savvy. For a politician, it's especially bad because political opponents are sometimes the ones doing the squatting.

According to another article, the body that governs protection of domains names, WIPO, may not allow using UDRP to recover a politicians domain name. To quote from the article:

"The protection of an individual politician's name, no matter how famous, is outside the scope of the policy since it is not connected with commercial exploitation"

If you're thinking of running for office: After you get the best possible domain, be sure you've acquired all the social networking accounts for your name.

Voters will be looking for you online to learn more about your positions. And your opponents will ...

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In this interesting blog post, Brian of the band Therefore I Am laments the downward spiral of mySpace as a good place for a rock band to connect with fans.

A few great quotes...

About mySpace:

"Now if people want to check out my band they are bombarded with movie ads and singles dating ads and other bands and videos of people getting hit in the balls"

About someone else owning the COM domain for his band:

"tempted to register www.fucktheguywhoownsthereforeiam.com"

What to do next?

"In the near future we're going to have a new website and we're going to try and make it as interesting and thorough as possible"

My take on this: It's critical to use all available digital assets to advertise your band. You can't just depend on mySpace or bandCamp.com or Twitter.

-- Jorge

According to this UDRP result, Janet Jackson has claimed the domain RhythmNation1814.com from a cybersquatter nearly 20 years after the release of the 1989 hit album with that name (and the registration of the trademark).

The previous owner of the trademarked domain had held it since 2004 without the trademark being defended. The previous owner did not contest the UDRP filing. The domain had one other owner before that, but that owner let the domain drop.

I posted this as "guest contributor" over on SportsAgentBlog.com.