For the week of October 2 - 8, 2002

What’s in a name?

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What’s in a name?

Nothing, if you ask Latham Williams, a Sun Valley City Councilman, the first Idaho GOP vice president from Blaine County and the governor’s new Park and Recreation Commission appointee. Williams was unmasked last week as the owner of an undeveloped web site with the name clintstennett.com. State Sen. Clint Stennett is a Ketchum Democrat running for re-election in a contested race.

Williams, who refused comment when asked why he paid to reserve clintstennett.com for his own use, now blames the good senator for not registering his own name and claims it was a joke.

Why is no one but Williams laughing? Because the act smacks of political dirty tricks and raises concerns and fears about the increasingly sensitive and serious issue of identity theft.

Without specific and well-tailored laws, today’s World Wide Web is the Wild Wild West, used by upstanding citizens who risk all kinds of electronic attacks by masked cyberbandits and vandals

Under Williams’ logic, any person wishing to protect and control use of their own name will have to pay to do so by registering it or any number of permutations. Stennett, for example, could be registered in a number of ways—therealclintstennett.com, senatorclintstennett.com, clintstennetidaho.com—and on and on under address extensions including .org, .biz, .info, .com, .gov and others. It’s absurd.

Instead of yucking it up, Williams ought to be offering up abject apologies.

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.