MAN OF MYSTERY….Mystery question of the day: who owns factcheck.com? It’s not George Soros, and the domain registration record lists only a dummy corporation in the Cayman Islands. But whoever owns the site was obviously watching last night’s debate and redirected it to georgesoros.com almost instantly.
But who was it? Enquiring minds want to know.
UPDATE: In comments, Sean posts this excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:
FactCheck.com is owned by Name Administration Inc., a Cayman Islands company that engages in so-called “domain parking” — it acquires discarded Web sites and monetizes the traffic with text advertising.
The site had been showing education-related ads, mostly for online-degree programs, when Mr. Cheney mentioned the site during the debate. Suddenly, Name Administration saw a surge in traffic — about 50,000 unique visitors in the first hour — which costs the company money for Internet bandwidth, according to John Berryhill, Name Administration’s attorney.
….So employees redirected traffic to the Soros site, not because of any request nor payment from Mr. Soros’s organization or supporters, but based on their own political viewpoints, Mr. Berryhill said. “Individuals within the company are favorably disposed to George Soros’s political point of view,” said Mr. Berryhill.
Name Administration said in a statement, “The staff at Name Administration have been through some difficult times lately, due to the impact of hurricane Ivan on Grand Cayman, and they were delighted to have been given this opportunity by Vice President Cheney.” Mr. Berryhill said no one was available at the company to comment.
There you have it. Just some patriotic Americans thinking on their feet.
