INDCJournal: Factcheck Redirect Update

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October 07, 2004

Factcheck Redirect Update

Posted by Bill

Evidently, Cheney meant to say FactCheck.org a site run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Instead, he directed the nation's attention to a Web site that refers people to sellers of dictionaries and encyclopedias -- at least at first. The company behind the site, Cayman Islands-based Name Administration Inc., which also owns sites such as Lipbalm.com and Antarctica.com, was quickly overwhelmed.

"Suddenly they had 48,000 hits in an hour, then 100 hits a second," said John Berryhill, a lawyer for the company. "They had a technical problem on their hands."

To avoid crashing, and to exact revenge on Cheney for causing it such grief, Name Administration decided to forward traffic to GeorgeSoros.com -- a site that could handle the traffic, was not soliciting funds and clearly wasn't tied to Bush. "And you got to admit it was kind of cute," Berryhill said.

Yeah, cute, but instead of redirecting visitors to the non-partisan political analysis site that features plenty of factual criticism of Cheney, they sent millions of people to a work of partisan spin. I suppose that this prioritization is a reflection on the "educational materials" sold by their company. USA Today adds:

The lawyer, John Berryhill, said Wednesday that the company's owners � whom he declined to name � are not fans of Bush or Cheney. When they saw the number of users clicking on "factcheck.com" start to soar Tuesday night, they feared the traffic would "crash" their computer. But they also saw a chance to tweak the president and vice president.

I'll repeat - the smallest things matter in a debate watched by tens of millions of people.

Posted by Bill at October 7, 2004 05:02 AM | TrackBack (1)

Comments

Bill,

Can't say I wouldn't have done the same thing in their position. The veep screws up a Web address and sends traffic my way, why not have a little fun?

--|PW|--

Posted by: pennywit at October 7, 2004 09:50 AM

I heard on the radio that the Soros website had put up a link to factcheck.org so that people could eventually find it. I was honestly surprised that they did that.

Posted by: Master of None at October 7, 2004 09:52 AM

Can't say I wouldn't have done the same thing in their position. The veep screws up a Web address and sends traffic my way, why not have a little fun?

I grasp this point. But what would have been funnier, less amoral, and more effective would have been to send them directly to a factcheck.org article that hammered the VP.

Posted by: Bill from INDC Journal at October 7, 2004 10:23 AM

I'm having a hard time believeing they did that without being coerced to do so.

Posted by: Chris W. at October 7, 2004 12:21 PM

Well, factcheck.com still redirects to the soros site. At this late date, it's hard to see how "have a little fun" characterizes the situation.

Since the original owners of the site are still not getting the pointed traffic about dictionaries and encyclopedias that they would have otherwise expected, I suspect that *something* other than playfulness is causing them to sustain the redirection.

Posted by: CERDIP at October 7, 2004 02:23 PM

How bout they can't handle the traffic on their server. It shut down factcheck.org on wednesday, and they're used to tens of thousands a day, unlike this nothing spec. site.

Posted by: mantis at October 7, 2004 08:15 PM

The lawyer for factcheck.com said that the reason for the redirect was two-fold. Political statement, and a re-direct keeps their server from being taken down by traffic. I can vouch that the redirect will keep their server active, although, as CERDIP pointed out, they are not getting the traffic for their product. But, they don't really want the traffic, anyone can figure that out. It's all political.

The important thing is that, there are no laws to keep the owner of factcheck.com from doing what he is doing. George Soros does not even need to put a link to factcheck.org on his site. He is probably only doing because there is some rather damning stuff there for the Bush admin.

Neither factcheck.com nor Soros are claiming to be anything than what they are -- there's no deception. Just because the domain name (factcheck) is the same for both, neither has control of the other - different extensions mean different property (.com, .org). The best example: nothing can be done to keep whitehouse.com from posting porn.

Posted by: Anonymous Scientist at October 7, 2004 11:14 PM