The Hijacking of Petaluma Tomorrow's Domain Name

In August, 2002, after 16 months of successful grassroots and neighborhood organizing in and around Petaluma, California, Petaluma Tomorrow felt the time had come to create a website for the organization. The immediate impetus was the upcoming local elections on November 5, 2002. We felt a website was crucial to our organizational purpose of, "public advocacy, voter education, and candidate endorsement and support."

To that end, on August 15, we went to register our obvious internet domain name, petalumatomorrow.org and discovered it was already taken, along with its .com and .net variants. More surprising, the registrant was well known to us -- Sobel Communications of Petaluma, California.

Here is the registration information as we found it (courtesty of the betterwhois.com website).

Sobel Communications' proprietor, former Petaluma City Councilmember Brian Sobel, is locally well known as a right-of-center political consultant and commentator. He has prominently opposed issues and candidates Petaluma Tommorow has backed, as in the March 2002 county supervisorial election.

When first discovered, the hijacked domain names pointed to an "under construction" page. On August 21, we noticed that Brian Sobel had redirected them to point to the website of another local political advocacy organization, www.petalumapothole.com which promotes issues, candidates, and officials generally different from those backed by Petaluma Tomorrow.

On September 16, Petaluma Tomorrow put out this press release. That same day, we mailed this cease and desist letter to Brian Sobel, demanding that he immediately turn the names over to us.

The following morning, September 17, the following appeared in Chris Smith's column in the Press Democrat:

Weren't we just talking about the hostile tone of politics in once-neighborly Petaluma?

In the latest bout of figurative scratching and hair-pulling, the environmental group Petaluma Tomorrow went to register its Web site and found that all the likely domain names had been grabbed up by political rival Brian Sobel.

Sobel, a political consultant, told me he bought the rights to petalumatomorrow.com, petalumatomorrow.net, and petalumatomorrow.org because he thinks the group's Scott Vouri is loose with the truth.

"That guy ought to go to ethics school," Sobel said.  "My main focus was taking the name away from someone I thought would misuse it."

"How sleazy can you get," shot back former city councilman David Keller, an ally of Vouri and member of Petaluma Tomorrow.

Vouri said the group wants to get a Web site up and running so it can publish candidates' statements and endorsements for the Petaluma City Council elections in November, but first it needs Sobel to relinquish the Petaluma Tomorrow domain name.

Sobel replied that he'll be happy to talk about it -- any time after the election.

If Petaluma Tomorrow gets desperate for a domain anme, briansobel.com appears to be available.

Then, on September 30, 2002, we received this letter from Brian Sobel's attorney.

What's next? We will arrange to get the names back, while we continue to investigate our legal options.

Epilogue

In early October, Scott Vouri and Larry Modell of Petaluma Tomorrow arranged for the transfer of the three domain names from the control of Sobel Communications to Petaluma Tomorrow. On October 18, 2002, www.petalumatomorrow.com, www.petalumatomorrow.org, and www.petalumatomorrow.net are all redirecting web traffic to Petaluma Tomorrow's authentic website, which is also still addressable at www.petaluma-tomorrow.org