Activists “Squat” Domains-names in Protest of 2008 Democratic National Convention
February 11th, 2008 | by Crash the Conventions |Has domain squatting now turned political? Protesters try out a new form of digital civil disobedience.
Protest organizers from the Denver-based group, Recreate ‘68, are using the web to play some Abbie Hoffman-style pranks on the Democratic Party. They’re fed up with the Democrats for going along with the Republicans and “tired of being sold out by the Democratic Party. To demonize the Republicans, and say ‘it’s all the Republicans’ fault and hold up the Democrats as the salvation to the Republicans is foolish. The Republicans couldn’t have accomplished what they did without the assistance of the Democrats.” As a result, the group is planning mass protests at this year’s Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado (Aug 25-29). And they’re also using the web to play some some high-tech pranks to get their message across.
Six months ago, in a creative form of digital protest, activists bought up over 15 domain-names that the Democratic party may have wanted to use as their convention website (see the list below). And they set up a website facilitate planning the protests. Keep in mind that they had the foresight to do this six months ago, that’s over a year before the Democratic National Convention is planned to take place. There were rumors that the DNC would happen in Denver, but at that point it was not yet official. They are currently estimating that 100,000 demonstrators will attend.
The list of domains they bought includes:
- DenverDNC.org
- 2008DenverDNC.org
- Denver2008DNC.org
- Denver2008DNC.com
- 2008DNCDenver.org
- 2008Denverconvention.com
- ChangetheDNC.org
- ChangetheDNC.com
- Stopthe2008DNC.com
- Stopthe2008DNC.org
- NoDNC2008.org
- NoDNC2008.com
- Recreate68.com
- Recreate68.org
All of the domains currently forward to the Recreate 68’s website. The official website of this year’s Democratic National Convention is: DenverDNC2008.com