Internet records identified the owner of the addresses Kerry-Edwards.com, Kerry-Edwards2004.com and Kerry-Edwards2008.com as Kevin Draftz of Chicago. A man who answered the phone at the Web sites' contact number identified himself as Draftz. He described himself as a 42-year-old "lifelong Democrat" and said he wants the Kerry campaign to pay him "thousands of dollars" for the addresses Kerry-Edwards.com, Kerry-Edwards2004.com and Kerry-Edwards2008.com. He bought the addresses on Jan. 19, the day of the Iowa caucuses.

"I'm now just waiting to hear from Mr. Kerry," he said, adding that the campaign had not called as of late yesterday afternoon. He said that his first choice of buyers is the Kerry campaign but that he would not rule out the possibility of selling to the competition. One proud owner of a handful of Kerry-Edwards domains says he will not turn them loose for any price. Mark Alexander is the editor of the Chattanooga, Tenn., Federalist Patriot, a conservative e-mail journal with 500,000 subscribers. Alexander said he bought Kerry-Edwards04.net, Kerry-Edwards04.org and Kerry-Edwards04.info in 2003.

"We predicted early on in this thing that this would be a Kerry win and that he would almost have to pick Edwards as his running mate," Alexander said. All of Alexander's Kerry-Edwards addresses link to a Web site designed to look like Kerry's official site but are loaded with criticism of the candidate. The site's banner reads "John Kerry President?"

Democrats have also registered Web sites that attack the other side's candidates. Zach Exley, a Kerry-Edwards staffer and the former online chief of MoveOn.org, owns the anti-George Bush Web site www.gwbush.com.

Alexander said he ran the site by his lawyers, who concluded that because he was not trying to extort money from the Kerry campaign, he was not "cybersquatting."

A 1999 law made it illegal to register an Internet domain name with the intention of forcing a trademark owner or a namesake to pay to reclaim it. The Internet addressing system's main oversight body also disapproves of the practice and offers a dispute resolution process for people who feel their names or trademarks have been improperly registered as Internet addresses in a bid to extort money.

But "use for political commentary is clearly okay," said Wendy Seltzer, a staff attorney for the San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation and an expert in intellectual property law. Seltzer said Edwards probably is not breaking the law because he registered the address in good faith several years before Kerry made his announcement.

But speculators who bought the domains to sell them to the Kerry campaign at higher prices might get in trouble if the campaign sues to recover them, Seltzer said. Draftz said he is aware of the law but does not think he is violating it.

David McGuire is a reporter for washingtonpost.com.