Editorial

After three days of inquiries by police, local and television media it is time for Rustikat Internet Services to "set the record straight" about a certain website hosted, but neither owned nor designed by Rustikat.

On Friday, kinstonpress.com and the Free Press both published stories about the controversy sparked by the website, www.vanbraxton.com.

Rustikat Internet Services has been hosting and designing websites since 1997. At that time the internet was in its infancy and the process of becoming educated about the design and protocol of internet business was not as simple as enrolling in a class or reading just one of the versions of "Anything for Dummies." After months and years of online research, reading almost every national trade publication and exercising the necessary discipline to hone the essential skills to operate an internet hosting service, Rustikat now hosts approximately 100 websites. Many Rustikat has designed, others it has not.

To more easily set the record straight, there are several basic concepts the public needs to understand, so Rustikat offers this class in Internet 101.

First, all websites must reside on a server somewhere. We can compare the server to a hotel with many rooms. A hosting service such as Rustikat rents the rooms or website space to people wishing to have an internet presence. The client then furnishes or designs the room. Owners can design the room themselves or they can hire Rustikat or any other web designer to provide the content of the website. Customers can also purchase domain names through Rustikat. By doing so, "Registration Service Provided By: Rustikat" will show up on line one and "Rustikat/Fred Riggs" will show up as the Administrative/Technical Contact regardless of who is actually purchasing the name.

To eliminate the confusion about who actually owns a website lets take a look at what you might see if you visit "whois" to find out who owns a website; The following information was copied and pasted from whois.domaintools.com. When you visit http://whois.domaintools.com/ or any other whosis source here is what is listed:

Registration Service Provided By: Rustikat
Contact: rustikat@rustikat.net
Visit: http://www.rustikat.net

Domain name: vanbraxton.com

Administrative Contact:
Rustikat
Fred Riggs (rustikat@rustikat.net)
+1.2525270698
Fax: +1.2525215405
PO Box 973
Kinston, NC 28502-0973
US

Technical Contact:
Rustikat
Fred Riggs (rustikat@rustikat.net)
+1.2525270698
Fax: +1.2525215405
PO Box 973
Kinston, NC 28502-0973
US

Registrant Contact:
Rustikat
Fred Riggs (rustikat@rustikat.net)
+1.2525270698
Fax: +1.2525215405
PO Box 973
Kinston, NC 28502-0973
US

Status: Locked

Name Servers:
NS1.RUSTIKAT.NET
NS2.RUSTIKAT.NET

Creation date: 19 May 2006 22:37:47
Expiration date: 19 May 2007 22:37:47

Nothing in the listing says that Rustikat is the owner of the site. The Name Servers - NS1.RUSTIKAT.NET and NS2.RUSTIKAT.NET confirm that Rustikat is hosting the site.

Rustikat will always ensure its clients' confidentiality; and all clients securing hosting services from Rustikat must agree to abide by the Acceptable Use Policy. (You may read the policy at by clicking AUP on the Rustikat.net home page.) If Rustikat receives a complaint about any of the sites it hosts, the owner will be contacted and if the content is deemed to be in violation of the AUP steps will be taken to correct the situation. Since the site was purchased Rustikat has not received any complaints, or comments about vanbraxton.com.

And with the contact information so easily available we wonder why people in the Braxton camp didn't contact us directly rather going through the N.C. Attorney General and let it trickle back down through the system and having two detectives from the Kinston Office of Public Safety knock on my door Wednesday afternoon.

When the detectives arrived they said a call came from the Attorney General's office to the local District Attorney and then to the Kinston Office of Public Safety inquiring as to who designed the site. The detectives never asked who "owned" the site. After about 45 minutes of conversation Rustikat asked the detectives "what do they want done?" Both detectives remained silent.

Since Wednesday, Rustikat has fielded questions from kinstonpress.com, the Free Press and two television reporters from WCTI-12 in New Bern. As of 11 p.m. Friday no report had aired on Channel 12. The reporters indicated Braxton's primary concern was that the vanbraxton.com site is listed before his official campaign site on google.com. After doing a google search for "van braxton" www.vanbraxton.com is listed first and his official campaign site second.

Rustikat is not surprised that a site satirizing Braxton's legacy as a member of the Kinston City Council has appeared during his campaign for the 10th District House seat. In the course of modern day elections, satire and political cartoons are the norm and not the exception. We just wish that Braxton would pay more attention to the issues of Wayne, Lenoir and Greene counties, rather than attempting to squelch one citizen's exercise of free speech and robbing another person of the time he needs to devote to his customers while he has to prove himself innocent of a non-crime.