4 ms·

>The website printed on the plates is not owned by the Motor Vehicle Administration. Where there is the problem. Maryland sub-contracted out the site, probabl

by jmclnx 3y ago

>The website printed on the plates is not owned by the Motor Vehicle Administration. Where there is the problem. Maryland sub-contracted out the site, probably stopped paying for it or the "contractor" closed done. Someone grabbed it. Well I hope Maryland is enjoying what may be mo more than 10 cents per year per plate they are saved in taxing people. And as a bonus, they also are now giving out free advertising. Next step, force people to replace the plates and maybe charge them a fee for doing that.

dylan604 3y ago
You left out the last half of the quote which is just as telling to me, "and is working with the agency’s IT department to identify options to resolve the current issue.” Their options are Jack & Shit, and Jack already left town. You think this gambling site is going to voluntarily give back the domain for pittance that this state agency could afford to offer it? You think a DMV of a state is going to come up with the funds for a highly publicized domain squabble? The public blowback from that should be intense. The agency's IT department has already shown their incompetence and lack of funding by not being able to pay the registration fees for a domain long enough for something they used on an official state "document".
- sp332 3y ago
  Even though the original company went out of business, maybe the trademark is still owned by someone. They could use ICANN's dispute channels to challenge ownership of the name.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    This is a website used on official government issued "documents" (I don't know what the proper word for a non-paper item like this would be). The fact that it was a 3rd party entity that registered the domain is also farcical. That would be like the federal government letting some 3rd party register whitehouse.gov or healthcare.gov and then that 3rd party allowing the domains to lapse. Let's just pretend for the sake of the argument the .gov and .com TLDs being equivalent. If that's too far of a stretch, why in the world was a .com TLD allowed on a gov't document? Why not a conical to the already existing maryland.gov domain? The whole thing reeks of incompetence or even some sort of corruption
jrochkind1 3y ago
The good news is, the number of people who actually haver ever followed the URL found on the bottom of the license plate is probably pretty darn minimal. maybe slightly higher since you can get your phone to automatically picture-to-text recognize it instead of having to type it in yourself, but... probably still pretty minimal. I mean, I'm most shocked that anyone noticed the url's contents have changed! I wonder how long it took anyone to.
- arp242 3y ago
  Domain was last updated in Nov 2022. It's been displaying this since at least December: https://web.archive.org/web/20221202223252/https://www.starspangled200.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221202223252/https://www.stars... So it's taken over half a year before the media to notice.

by jmclnx 3y ago

dylan604 3y ago

You left out the last half of the quote which is just as telling to me, "and is working with the agency’s IT department to identify options to resolve the current issue.” Their options are Jack & Shit, and Jack already left town. You think this gambling site is going to voluntarily give back the domain for pittance that this state agency could afford to offer it? You think a DMV of a state is going to come up with the funds for a highly publicized domain squabble? The public blowback from that should be intense. The agency's IT department has already shown their incompetence and lack of funding by not being able to pay the registration fees for a domain long enough for something they used on an official state "document".

sp332 3y ago
Even though the original company went out of business, maybe the trademark is still owned by someone. They could use ICANN's dispute channels to challenge ownership of the name.
- dylan604 3y ago
  This is a website used on official government issued "documents" (I don't know what the proper word for a non-paper item like this would be). The fact that it was a 3rd party entity that registered the domain is also farcical. That would be like the federal government letting some 3rd party register whitehouse.gov or healthcare.gov and then that 3rd party allowing the domains to lapse. Let's just pretend for the sake of the argument the .gov and .com TLDs being equivalent. If that's too far of a stretch, why in the world was a .com TLD allowed on a gov't document? Why not a conical to the already existing maryland.gov domain? The whole thing reeks of incompetence or even some sort of corruption

jrochkind1 3y ago

The good news is, the number of people who actually haver ever followed the URL found on the bottom of the license plate is probably pretty darn minimal. maybe slightly higher since you can get your phone to automatically picture-to-text recognize it instead of having to type it in yourself, but... probably still pretty minimal. I mean, I'm most shocked that anyone noticed the url's contents have changed! I wonder how long it took anyone to.

arp242 3y ago
Domain was last updated in Nov 2022. It's been displaying this since at least December: https://web.archive.org/web/20221202223252/https://www.starspangled200.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221202223252/https://www.stars... So it's taken over half a year before the media to notice.