Posted on 08/25/2006 8:38:56 AM PDT by CounterCounterCulture
Call it a case of cyberantics with a cause. The dueling camps over Proposition 87, the November initiative that would impose a fee on oil extracted in California, have been duking it out all week over control of Web site domain names.
In what's being acknowledged as a stunt to drum up support for the initiative, campaign backers got control of a number of Web site addresses with names more suited for the opposition. This week, Web users who clicked on www.noon87.com or www.noonprop87.org, for example, were led to a site created by backers of Proposition 87. The opposition's own site is www.nooiltax.com.
Supporters of the controversial initiative include Silicon Valley venture capitalists, environmentalists and Hollywood liberals. But the cyber prank was no barrel of laughs for opponents that include major oil companies and the powerful California Chamber of Commerce. They sued.
Turns out in California there is a law against such pranks, the California Political Cyberfraud Abatement Act. The legislature passed it in the wake of reports of Web profiteers snapping up politician's names and initiative numbers to create mischief, such as diverting Web surfers to pro-marijuana or white supremacy groups and selling off the sites to the highest bidder.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
I like this.
I'm an oil industry employee and I hate working in California. More business will be sent to the other states and countries.
The idiots of this state will buy into this Prop. 87 lock, stock and barrel. They're all so brainwashed into believing the oil companies are the ones to blame for California having the highest gasoline prices in the nation rather than that we have the highest gas taxes and oh yeah, their hero Bill Clinton enacted a special clean burning boutique fuel blend just for California that can't be refined anywhere other than within California's limited refinery capacity. No, instead the braindead dummies of California will just buy into the idea of punishing the oil companies and then marvel when gas prices go up 15 cents a gallon as they give into their knee-jerk, anti-corporate, enviro-wacko mentality.
Any tax on oil, whether at the gas pump, on the shipping costs or at the well, ends up as a consumer tax. Anyone who thinks that these taxes will not be passed on to the consumer is a fool.
Too bad they can get serious about spliting the state into three smaller states.
( No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo!)
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