Maori Party websites

Helen Bain in the SST reports on how a doofus registered the domain name maoriparty.co.nz and had it redirect to a KKK site.

I must say tht I am slightly annoyed that after being persuaded by the Maori Internet Society to set up maori.nz as 2 second level domain, major Maori groups ignore it and we have maoritelevision.com and maoriparty.com. Perhaps this will be an incentive to also get the .nz versions of their names before someone else does!

Incidentially I am on a working group exploring whether there should be a process where contested domain names can be adjudicated on, without having to go to court. The issues are fairly complex as you do want to prevent infringement of intellectual property rights, but you also want to protect free speech in the form of criticism and parody sites.

I wonder if the Maori Party have trademarked their name? Merely registering it with the Electoral Commission does not give the same protection.