Ron Paul asks UN to strip RonPaul.com domain ownership away from supporters

[leemajors]

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/11/39...rom-supporters

Ron Paul wants ownership of his namesake domain, and he's not willing to pay for the privilege. Instead, the former Congressman and presidential candidate has forged a complaint with the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization asking the agency to grant him ownership of both RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org. "Ron Paul's name and his associated Ron Paul mark have become synonymous with the Complainant and his books, articles, public appearances, and political commentary," reads the complaint. "Ron Paul has no relationship with the Respondents and has not authorized the Respondents to use the Ron Paul name."

Currently both URLs are owned by Paul supporters; RonPaul.com has gained over 100,000 Likes on Facebook since it launched in 2008. The site's operators have offered to give RonPaul.org to the former politician at no cost, but are asking Paul to lay down $250,000 for the more popular .com domain. That price tag would bring with it a mailing list of 170,000 members, according to the site. Considering Paul has bowed out of Washington, however, it's unclear what value such an email list would offer over his existing contact database(s). "We are getting our mailing list appraised right now but we are confident it is easily worth more than $250k all by itself," the site's owners say. "Claims that we tried to sell Ron Paul “his name” for $250k or even $800k are completely untrue."

[Clipper Nation]

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=217311

"From the amusing file comes the following:

Earlier today, Ron Paul filed an international UDRP complaint against RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org with WIPO, a global governing body that is an agency of the United Nations. The complaint calls on the agency to expropriate the two domain names from his supporters without compensation and hand them over to Ron Paul...


... Uh huh.


These folks registered this guy's name and started selling merchandise, which had exactly zero value except in conjunction with his name and fame.


Then they tried to sell him the domain and their mailing list which they compiled using his name and likeness without his consent for a whole ****load of money. $250,000, to be exact. [actually it was originally over $800,000]


But now that Ron Paul has instead filed a complaint with WIPO, they're all screaming foul! and claiming that as a Libertarian "trademarks" cannot exist. ...


... The simple reality is that the value of their "product", such as it is, would be exactly zero were it not for Ron Paul himself. It is his visage, his record (such as it is) and his name that have acquired secondary meaning.


That is the definition of a strong trademark -- something that has acquired secondary meaning but would otherwise be nondescript.


You don't own this folks -- Ron Paul does.


And despite not being one of his fans in this regard he is exactly correct.

[boutons_deux]

"free market"

libertarian against all govt, esp U. fricking N., intervention!

[whitemamba]

Ron Paul is the man, IMHO

[Clipper Nation]

"free market"

Can't have a free market economy (or liberty, for that matter) without protecting property rights, tbh...

libertarian against all govt

Dr. Paul isn't against all government, he's only against bloated, inept, and uncons utional government...

You fail again

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

Example # godknowswhat of Ron Paul supporters demonstrating their baggery to the point where Paul will never get taken seriously.

[Blake]

This is a good one.

I don't see how he wins control of the website though.

[Blake]

Back in 2007 we put our lives on hold for you, Ron, and we invested close to 10,000 hours of tears, sweat and hard work into this site at great personal sacrifice. We helped raise millions of dollars for you, we spread your message of liberty as far and wide as we possibly could, and we went out of our way to defend you against the unjustified attacks by your opponents. Now that your campaigns are over and you no longer need us, you want to take it all away – and send us off to a UN tribunal?

That’s not cool! We want our old pre-retirement Ron Paul back!

http://www.ronpaul.com/

Lol fools.

[Clipper Nation]

Tbh, those guys are some ty "supporters," making money off Ron without his permission and then trying to put him on blast when he asks them to stop...

[Clipper Nation]

Example # godknowswhat of Ron Paul supporters demonstrating their baggery to the point where Paul will never get taken seriously.

If a few bag supporters were enough to make someone unelectable, no politician would ever be elected

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

Yeah I'm not disagreeing but people like them and the people who buy Alex Jones water filters make Paul look bad by supporting him.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

If a few bag supporters were enough to make someone unelectable, no politician would ever be elected

This is different. When an uninformed (aka average) voter thinks of Ron Paul, he thinks of nutty people who have a 3 year supply of canned food on their basements.

To your point tho, the Tea Party and religious right has gone a long way towards making Republicans unelectable.

[Blake]

Tbh, those guys are some ty "supporters," making money off Ron without his permission and then trying to put him on blast when he asks them to stop...

If they've raised millions for Paul as they say, I'm not sure how they can be called ty.

[Clipper Nation]

As a Paul supporter, I've found that the average voter falls into one of two camps with Ron:

1. "Ron Paul is crazy because he (hates Israel/is an isolationist/wants to shut down the government/insert talk radio bull here)!"

2. "I like most of Paul's views, except..."

His supporters aren't really an issue for most average voters, it's either the same BS talking points they spew about anyone who isn't "their guy," or one or two specific policies they disagree with, tbh....

I will admit that the food-hoarding prepper conspiracy crowd are a bunch of annoying bags, but most neocons attract those kinds of losers, too... only a small minority of RP supporters are like that, though, most tend to be young, normal, politically active, and informed voters, tbh....

[ChumpDumper]

Who owns the domain name irony.com?

[Blake]

I looked for whatever reason.

Irony.com is for sale.

http://www.irony.com/

[ChumpDumper]

probably the same guys.

[boutons_deux]

"young, normal, politically active, and informed voters"

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Is this the same site with the forum posts we were inundated with positing inane bull from guys like SA210 and Cosmored during the election?

[DarrinS]

Doesn't it just redirect to infowars.com?

[SnakeBoy]

Tbh, those guys are some ty "supporters," making money off Ron without his permission and then trying to put him on blast when he asks them to stop...

How are they ty supporters? They have the rights to the domain names and they are making money off of them like good libertarians should.

[DMC]

Mike Rowe could not have the domain www.mikerowesoft.com" because it was phonetically the same as "microsoft" and he was capitalizing on that phonetic similarity, basically potlicking their fortune. Same is happening here.

[Blake]

Mike Rowe could not have the domain www.mikerowesoft.com" because it was phonetically the same as "microsoft" and he was capitalizing on that phonetic similarity, basically potlicking their fortune. Same is happening here.

This is different than that. Microsoft.com was already around first.

[Nbadan]

Ron Paul....He didn't build that...

[DMC]

This is different than that. Microsoft.com was already around first.

Ron Paul was around before the website.