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WIPO Panel Says Ron Paul Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking
An anonymous reader writes "Ron Paul lost his two cybersquatting complaints against RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org. In the case of RonPaul.org, Paul was been found guilty of 'reverse domain name hijacking'. A reverse domain name hijacking finding means that the arbitration panel believes the case was filed in bad faith, resulting in the abuse of the administrative process. The panel ruled this way since Paul filed the case after the owner of RonPaul.org had already offered to give him the domain for free. The panel also ruled against Paul for the RonPaul.com domain name."
I may lol.
Paul filed the case after the owner of RonPaul.org had already offered to give him the domain for free.
Why was Ron Paul trying to use the force of government to coerce someone into doing something they were already going to do?
I predict the Pauls will use this for political gain. All it takes is a bit of spin:
Clearly the "official" establishment is failing to support the little guy who just wants to use his own name. Because they obviously aren't catering to the desires of a particularly-vocal individual, they must of course just be a tool for oppression by the Big Government. After all, what good are these "rules" and "procedures" when they hinder the industrious and innovative people building their own future, and instead help the lazy people just using others' names?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
He was being a hypocritical bastard.
Free market will fix that! There's always www.ronpaul.bs or www.ronpaul.museum available.
Here is what I posted in the last thread on this:
According to whois, RonPaul.com was registered in 2000 while RonPaul.org was registered in 1999. The current owner of RonPaul.org is DN Capital Inc, a company based in Panama, while RonPaul.com is owned by WKF Corp, another company based in Panama.
This right here is sending up red flags. A "fan site" whose domain name is owned by some corporation in Panama? This isn't some Hary Alderson in Vermont who owns the domain name, as one might expect from a fan site. It is some company in Panama who, for all we know, may or may not be a shell company.
Second, Ron Paul DID NOT go to "The UN" for this, he went to the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center, whose JOB it is to settle disputes like this. There is nothing hypocritical about this. WIPO would exist absent the UN for this purpose. He may not LIKE the UN, but he is working within the system as it currently exists even though he would like that system changed. I don't like the city government where I live and wish it were set up differently, but you bet your butt I go to them when I have a problem or need something taken care of under their jurisdiction.
RP wanted only the domain name, yet the "owners" of the site wanted to sell him the whole thing for a huge chunk of cash? That's not "Fan site", that's "trying to hit up a public figure for money and cash out". Wanting to sell the whole nine yards so eagerly, and for so much, doesn't sound like any "fan site" I've ever heard of.
Sorry, the owners of ronpaul.com are looking awfully shady. Say what you want about Dr. Paul, the owners of the domain are not looking so innocent and it is looking that Dr, Paul may have a decent case for cybersquatting. We simply don't have enough information to be 100% sure. Considering Dr. Paul's past, I'm tending toward giving him the benefit of the doubt for now, but I would certainly like more information before definitively siding one way or the other on this. There is probably a lot of details that we don't know about.
...it doesn't actually look like Paul is guilty of anything but refusing to accept a settlement that was unreasonable in the first place.
"You want this one? You can have it for free - but this one over here we've added a shit-ton of value to so we want some compensation (below free-market rate IMO) for it."
Doesn't seem terribly unreasonable to me, even ignoring the fact that RP likes to tell people that he's something close to a pure libertarian.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
So is cognitivedissonance.com. Both seem so much more... appropriate now.
This comment is off topic, and you may freely moderate it so.
Once upon a time long ago I was intrigued by the rapid absorption of domain names and their escalating value. Particularly short names. And so I wrote a perl script to permute all possible 4-letter domains and look them up in the hope of identifying some interesting names to squat. I'm not really proud of that, but it was long ago when such stuff wasn't as abhorrent as the current day. I was sipping Maker's Mark on the rocks all night. I identified and registered a few, and one came up - iran.com, which could have been lucrative with the runner community. I was placing the order for the iran.com domain on Christmas eve when just then my wife came up, stroked my neck and said "come to bed." I got some. That was the most expensive nookie I ever got.
Help stamp out iliturcy.