Time Immortal

Why bother, really?

Premier Ed Stelmach says he’ll do what he must — including launching a lawsuit, if necessary — to protect himself from a mischievous blogger who holds online rights to his name.

On Thursday, a day after a spokesman said the premier wanted a truce, Stelmach instead dug in further.

Many Albertans, he said, likely support his fight against the current owner of www.edstelmach.ca, a 24-year-old University of Alberta student, blogger and former Alberta Liberal Party staffer.

Dave Cournoyer’s stunt, however, has taught the Stelmach Conservative Party something: It has registered edstelmach.org and edstelmach.net so no other prankster or partisan can cyber-squat on them.

I’m sorry, but I fail to see what the big deal is here. So some arrogant twit of a blogger registered the premier of Alberta’s name as a .ca domain. Sorry to say it, but who cares? Stelmach obviously never saw the need — at any prior point in his 15-year political career — to register the domain name, and Dave Cournoyer took advantage of that to…well, I’m actually not sure what the guy behind Daveberta was trying to demonstrate, exactly. I’m sure it was a very important statement [tm], of the sort progressives are wont to make. Perhaps I’m too ‘provincial’ to get the joke?

But whatever…Cournoyer made the move, and his statement (whatever it might be), and that’s just too bad for Ed Stelmach at present; from where this blogger sits, it’s an issue of freedom of expression, and the government really has no business — nor any right — to sue the blogger. What has happened is that the government has learned its lesson, as has Stelmach, and they have already taken steps to ensure that they have Stelmach’s name registered under other top-level domains.

Besides, in most cases the initial registration period for a domain name is just a year anyhow (and if Cournoyer only paid $14 for the name — ‘.ca‘ addresses tend to be pricier than ‘.net‘ or ‘.com‘ addresses — he almost certainly only went for the one-year option…unless he found a really, really cheap domain registration service). If he doesn’t renew the domain name, this becomes a non-issue.

And really…why all this fuss about a ‘.ca’ address anyhow? Isn’t ‘.net’ so much cooler?

Anyhow, it’s well within the realm of stupid that Stelmach and the Alberta government have embroiled themselves in this triviality, so if the Reader feels motivated to do so I encourage him or her to contact the Premier and make known what thoughts may occur:

Mail: Office of the Premier
Room 307, Legislature Building
10800 - 97th Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta
T5K 2B6

Phone: (780) 427 2251

Fax: (780) 427 1349

I don’t read Daveberta all that often. He’s a prog-blogger, and he’s a political science student; generally, I find him to be a barely palatable jerk.

But there’s a danger that he might be sued by the Alberta government over his registration of the domain name edstelmach.ca, which redirects to the Wikipedia entry for Harry Strom.

This isn’t an HRC issue, but it is a freedom of speech issue. I can only guess at Daveberta’s motives for registering the domain name and his choice of destination page for visitors to it — some kind of important [tm] political statement, I suppose. And the Ed Stelmach government would be absolutely wrong to sue him over the domain name. Whatever kind of point he’s trying to make, Daveberta has a right to make it.

And so I’d just like to take this moment to speak out for him, too. I probably don’t agree with him on a single issue (save for this one), but I can regocnize that he has a right to freely express opinions (even in obtuse ways), and that is a right which must be defended by his fellow Canadians. I hope — earnestly, honestly hope — that the Stelmach government doesn’t pursue such a foolish course of action as to file suit. That’s a dangerous precedent to set — bloggers of every political stripe should take note of how this particular drama plays out. The implications for the rest of us maya be severe.