Domain password giveaway: NickDelehanty.ie Irish Elections 2024

After the Irish elections, I canceled the auto-renewal for various domain names that look similar to rival candidates. This means that the registrations will lapse at the end of 12 months, in November 2025 and anybody else can then register the same names.

There are five years between general elections in Ireland and these domain names won't be very useful for me in that period.

Why wait for the domain names to lapse in November? I decided to stagger the transfer of the domain names by releasing the passwords publicly. I'm saving the best for last.

Here is the domain transfer password for NickDelehanty.ie:

as4awdybzslmajcO

To take NickDelehanty.ie from me, you can use any domain name registrar who you prefer. It is currently hosted with Gandi. The Irish .IE registry has a full list of registrars that you can choose from.

There is a good chance that other people may have more creative ideas for using some of the domain names. There are many people with the same name as some of the candidates. I don't want to stand in their way.

At the count center, I reached out to some of the other candidates and let them know I'd be happy to gift the domain names for Christmas. Some of them never got back to me.

In a couple of cases, the candidates had previously owned the domain names and failed to renew them. This creates a much higher risk that somebody could acquire their former domain name and deliberately impersonate them. I'll hold back on releasing those domain names for a little bit longer.

The domain names were acquired in good faith but simply letting the former domain name of the justice minister lapse into the hands of a cybersquatter could create a risk for innocent members of the public. Look at how much money the FSFE people have taken by impersonating the FSF. Politics aside, I'd prefer to just give Jim the domain name so that doesn't happen.

Then again, it raises some ethical questions: if I give a domain name to a member of the cabinet, is it a gift? If he owned it before too, and I've helped him get it back with no real benefit to myself, is it still a gift? If it is a gift and if the transfer of the domain is public knowledge, does that neutralize any ethical concerns and comply with disclosure rules?

I hope my acquisition of the domains will encourage some productive ethical discussions about the role of technology in our democracy. While people are distracted by that, cybersquatters are busy buying up domain names that look like future candidates to replace Pope Francis. It's not polite to say that while people are praying for the Pope's recovery from illness but nonetheless, that is the behavior of real cybersquatters.

Each .IE domain name costs about EUR 20 to register. I haven't even asked anybody to reimbourse me for that expense. Every candidate who's vote tally exceeds a quarter of a quota is able to fully recover their expenses, including domain name fees, from public funds.

After somebody takes NickDelehanty.IE off my hands I'll wait a few days and then share the next domain in the list. Please follow my RSS feed to be first to know when the next opportunity appears.

 

Daniel Pocock is a Debian Developer.

Please see the chronological history of how the Debian harassment and abuse culture evolved.