(May 19, 1999, Reuters)

By Alan Elsner, Political Correspondent
    WASHINGTON, May 19 (Reuters) - As politics tries to adjust to the digital
revolution, Texas Gov. George W. Bush's presidential committee is wading into
uncharted waters, trying to limit what is written about him on the Internet.
    Bush's senior campaign adviser Karl Rove bought the rights to 200 Internet
domain names last year, including bushsucks.com and bushblows.com, to prevent
critics of the governor using those sites to disseminate anti-Bush material.
    But Zack Exley, a Massachusetts computer consultant, got in ahead of Rove in
 registering three sites -- GWBush.com, GWBush.org and GBush.org.
    Exley, who said it was inconvenient for him to be interviewed but responded
to questions from Reuters by e-mail, said his original idea was to sell the
sites to the Bush campaign. In an exchange with Bush's legal counsel Benjamin
Ginsberg, he offered to hand them over for $350,000.
    "If Ginsberg had offered any amount I probably would have taken it at that
time. However, he would not make an offer and pressed me to give him a lower
number. I made a one-time offer to sell at $80,000," Exley said.
    "Though I would have accepted much, much less, I had no idea what they
thought was reasonable and didn't want to undersell myself. But I told him that
if he still didn't want to buy the names, I would continue with other plans and
couldn't guarantee that the names would even ever be for sale again," he said.
    Exley turned to a company in California, RTMark, to build an anti-Bush web
site which currently displays unproven allegations that Bush dabbled in drugs
during his youth.
    Whereupon Ginsberg on April 14 wrote Exley a "cease and desist" letter
accusing him of using material from the exploratory committee's official web
site without authorization and containing links to sites that "promote violence
and degrade women."
    Ginsberg followed up in an official letter of complaint to the Federal
Election Commission on May 3 in which he argued that Exley was operating like a
political action committee and should therefore be required to file regular
financial disclosure reports.
    "It (the site) is filled with libelous and untrue statements whose aim is to
 damage Gov. Bush ... The headline of the site is, 'Just Say No to Former
Cocaine User for President'. This site's innuendoes and false statements attack
the governor's positions on tough standards for convicted drug users,"
Ginsberg's letter said.
    RTMark has posted both letters on its web site and Ginsberg confirmed their
authenticity in an interview with Reuters.
    "We're not concerned about web sites that poke fun or parody a candidate but
 there are certain bounds we have to disassociate the governor from," he said.
    Many political analysts believe the 2000 presidential election will be the
first campaign in which the Internet plays a substantial role. But that role is
far from clear.
    Candidates have been quick to spot the potential advantages of the new
medium in signing up supporters, collecting campaign contributions and
disseminating information.
    Republican presidential hopeful Elizabeth Dole told Reuters in an interview
on Tuesday her web site registered one million hits in the first three hours of
its existence and she signed up 7,400 campaign volunteers in the first week, of
whom 1,234 expressed interest in fund-raising.
    But Ginsberg said there was also a dark side. "We're grappling with what the
 Internet is doing to the flow of information which gets passed around in new
and different ways than ever before," he said.
    As for Exley, he still sees the chance of making big money, especially if
Bush is elected president. He said his site was getting thousands of hits a day
from people looking for the official Bush site.
    "It's possible that advertising revenue alone over the next nine years (if
Bush becomes president) could add up to more than $350,000," he said.