The price of free speech is $14.95

It costs just $14.95 to register an Internet domain name through Dotster.com. I’ll get back to that. But keep that in mind as you make your way through this tangled tale of alleged campaign chicanery and legal threats.

On Thursday morning, the Republican-oriented Web site HubPolitics.com posted an article claiming that the independent gubernatorial campaign of convenience-store magnate Christy Mihos may have violated campaign-finance regulations. HubPolitics, published by brothers Matt and Aaron Margolis, had information obtained through a “whois” search that the domain name christymihos.net had been registered not by the Mihos campaign but rather by Mihos’ business, Christy’s of Cape Cod, based in Yarmouthport. The Margolises further presented evidence that the Mihos campaign had not reported this as an “in-kind contribution” to the state’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance. Finally, the brothers wrote, if you actually went to christymihos.net, you would find that the content “mirrored” what you’d find on the official campaign site, christy2006.com.

Late yesterday afternoon, HubPolitics posted a follow-up, charging that the Mihos campaign was trying to shut down the Margolises’ site, claiming their information was false and libelous. According to the brothers, the threat came from Mihos’ campaign manager, Peter Pendergast, who also claimed that the Margolises’ post violated their Internet service provider’s “acceptable use policy.” The Margolises say that their Web host has told them to remove the post in order to be “cautious.” (For some background on Pendergast, click here.)

In case HubPolitics suddenly disappears, Cape Cod Today impresario Walter Brooks, who tipped me off to this, has posted pretty much everything here. Nobody’s going to mess with Walter.

Now, back to our story. If you do a “whois” search of christymihos.net today on Dotster.com, which is where the name was registered, you’ll see that the registrant is listed as “Personal” — not “Christy’s of Cape Cod LLC,” as the Margolises claimed. But you’ll also see that the registration information was “last updated” on Thursday — conceivably right after the Margolises’ post went up. It also turns out that “Personal” has precisely the same address that the Margolises reported had been listed for Christy’s of Cape Cod: 58 Arrowhead Drive of Yarmouthport. The administrative contact, Kenneth Camille, allegedly told HubPolitics that he, not Christy’s of Cape Cod, is the proud owner of christymihos.net. (By the way, christy2006.com is properly registered to the Mihos Election Committee, and there has been no change to that record since Feb. 1.)

Cruise on over to christymihos.net this morning, and you’ll see that it does not take you to christy2006.com, suggesting — assuming the Margolises have their facts straight — that there was some quick footwork performed in order to sever the connection between the two sites.

Now, back to my first observation. What does this all mean? The Margolises claim that christymihos.net was “mirroring” the official christy2006.com site, and, since it appeared to have been bought and paid for by Mihos’ business rather than by his campaign, it amounted to an unreported in-kind contribution.

But I seriously doubt that anyone bothered to set up christymihos.net as a mirror. Rather, it almost certainly was set up to forward visitors to the official site, something that requires virtually no server capacity. Thus it strikes me as extremely unlikely that anyone paid more than $14.95 for anything associated with christymihos.net. I’m sorry, but that casts a considerable element of ridiculousness to this whole thing — the alleged violation, the alleged threats, the Margolises’ solemn pledge to “continue to publish articles of an investigatory nature as merited.”

As best as I can figure out, HubPolitics caught the Mihos campaign in what was, at worst, a hypertechnical violation of campaign-finance regulations valued at $14.95 — and that the Mihos campaign grossly overreacted.

Still, based on the Margolises’ account, it appears that the Mihos campaign is now threatening HubPolitics over a story that, though silly, appears to be true. Is this how Mihos wishes to conduct his long-shot campaign for governor? He’s got a Web site. He’s got access to the media. Let him respond in public rather than going after a couple of bloggers.

Update: Adam Gaffin and Jay Fitzgerald beat me to the punch on this. For some reason, their posts didn’t pop up when I went to Google Blogsearch this morning.