Friday, November 7, 2008

Change.gov

The official website of President-elect Obama is change.gov. The site invites readers to share ”…your story and your ideas, and be part of bringing positive lasting change to this country.” That’s fine except, according to the blog Polysigh, there are restrictions “governing” the use of a .gov domain. According to Wikipedia, it is “…a sponsored top-level domain restricted for use by government entities in the United States of America. The .gov domain is administered by the General Services Administration (GSA), an independent agency of the federal government.”

The official guidelines also state that:

The Gov domain is for the operation of government, not the political, political party, or campaign environment. No campaigning can be done using Gov Internet domains. The Gov Internet domain websites may not be directly linked to or refer to websites created or operated by a campaign or any campaign entity or committee. No political sites or party names or acronyms can be used. Separate webites [sic] and e-mail on other top-level domains (TLDs), such as .org, will have to be used for political activity.

So, is change.gov an official government site or an extension of the Obama campaign site?

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