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By now, you’ve no doubt heard about the lawsuits that the Edwin Mellen Press brought against McMaster University librarian Dale Askey. One of those suits (which also named McMaster as a plaintiff) was subsequently dropped, but as far as I know at this writing the other (naming Askey alone) still stands.

I’m not writing to argue the relative merits of the case, which others who are much better qualified have done, but merely to point out an odd sideshow (among several, it must be acknowledged, including letters sent to the Scholarly Kitchen; also, look up their office addresses in Google Maps). It is this: The Edwin Mellen Press has registered domain names using Dale Askey’s name. Here is the evidence.

The registration record for DaleAskey.com:

The record for DaleAskey.net:

The (very) thinly obfuscated identity is kind of a nice touch. And since if you attempt to go to http://daleaskey.net/ you are redirected to http://daleaskey.org/, here is the record for .org, which you will see has been privately registered:

What does this all mean? I really don’t know, and I will not speculate. I am just reporting it. Also, a shout-out to Andy Woodworth, who first brought this to my attention.

Update: Andy reports that the credit really belongs to Christa Burns – sorry Christa! I had heard it via Andy.