I suspect the Republicans feel better if they have a woman somewhere in the mix when Hillary is running.
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pretty much:
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Even though I probably donât like the politics of that particular candidate, I do think the domain should be hers.
But apparently, the names of products and corporations enjoy more protection that the names of people, as the rules seem to clearly state.
Baaaaaaaaahahahaha. Canât wait to see her campaign ads!
Are you saying all that botox isnât for her run at the presidency? 
The trouble with giving people âtheirâ names is that very few of us are uniquely named enough to have an uncontested claim, so it becomes a trademark-esque popularity contest whether you like it or not.
(Also, the rules only provide for protection of products and corporations against other people engaging in commerce: this is why companies can certainly attempt to snap up all the potentially perjorative or mocking variants of their names and their products; but they canât do too much if somebody else gets to foocorpsucks.com before they do.)
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Part of the reason might be that products and corporations tend to have unique names. People often donât. It seems like it could be a nightmare deciding which Bob Smith is the most deserving of bobsmith.com. Bob Smith the dentist? Bob Smith the baker? How would you set up and enforce rules about peopleâs names as domains?
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Maybe in 1995. Very few people associate .com as standing for commercial any more.
Yeah, my recollection appears to be skewed. Upon some searching, the only case I can find of somebody being forced to give a realname website over was juliaroberts.com - where the owner had set up a fansite, but then was forced to give it up to her when he tried to auction it off. Itâs more the bad faith purchasers, who buy it for the exclusive purpose of extorting money out of the ârightfulâ owner, that seem to get their domains ganked.
So I wouldnât presume to decide to take a way bobsmith.com from one Bob Smith in order to give it to the other.
But it would be perfectly possible to transfer bobsmith.com from someone who has no legitimate claim to the name Bob Smith to someone who does, especially if the purpose of the web page goes against Bob Smithâs interests.
I just looked up how things are done in Austria for the .at domain - and, surprise!*, thatâs how the rules work here. Interestingly, the law in question was passed in 1916 (ABGB: § 43, my translation):
If someone is denied the right to use his name, or if he is disadvantaged by the unauthorized use of his name (or pseudonym), he can sue for cessation and - in the case of culpability - for damages.
The courts later interpreted running a website âwww.bobsmith.atâ as âusing the nameâ; âwww.bobsmithsucks.atâ would probably be a different case.
* I donât know whether I believe thatâs the way things should be done because I was raised here, or whether things are done this way in Austria because the people who wrote the law were raised in the same culture as me.
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I hadnât remembered that Fiorinaâd been at Lucent; I lost track of who was doing what in management there after the AT&T/NCR/Lucent split. Iâd worked with her husband briefly on a project in the ~late 80s (didnât like him; he was an aggressive sales guy, which wasnât appropriate given our place as a subcontractor on that gig, but I also hadnât seen how AT&T treated sales people yet⌠)
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