Ron Paul Looking to Get Ownership of Domain Name
Updated, Tuesday, 9:34 a.m.:
In an email statement Tuesday, Ron Paul's lawyers said the action between RonPaul.com and the former Texas representative involve "a private arbitration proceeding, not a UN proceeding," arguing that the World Intellectual Property Organization, a subsidiary of the United Nations, is "serving here merely as an approved dispute-resolution service provider."
Original story:
Ron Paul wants a pair of domain names back from his fans, but he doesn’t want to pay for them.
The former presidential candidate and congressman filed a complaint Friday with the World Intellectual Property Organization, a United Nations ...
Comments (2)
Jim Vance
Internecine wacko wars erupt as the Libertarian movement figurehead jettisons his grass roots legion of ground-pounders to wrest control of the Internet domains previously set up on behalf of his quixotic run for the Presidency that were used to organize and pump up the true-believer faithful with propaganda and demagoguery. Since their buyout asking price was far too exorbitant for Paul's penurious ways (or his campaign's bank account), he'll just apparently ignore that longstanding "principled" blather demonizing the international oversight agencies of modern civilization and make a straightforward attempt to cut the grass-roots organizers out completely through an administrative deal with the devil and get it for free.
Jon Roland
The article contains several errors. First, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has no authority to "confiscate" any domain name. It is just a forum to enable national members to harmonize their intellectual property (IP) policies and practices. No organization or agency has such power, including the U.S. government, although it has been asserting the powers of a government of the Universe whenever people are foolish enough to let it. Domain name assignments are entirely a matter of voluntary cooperation among thousands of system administrators around the world that host domain name servers (DNS), and which are, in the U.S., loosely organized under the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (CANN), a California non-profit membership organization. What Dr. Paul is seeking is consensus among such sysadmins that the name should be assigned to him, and if they agree, they will just do it. If they don't, he will be stuck.
The Internet is the very essence of anarchy, yet it works better than governments. It is inherently uncontrollable by anyone. Let's not be spreading misinformation about it, or allow governments to attempt to interfere with it.