Ron Paul deploys UN Black Helicopters in attempt to seize domain name from supporters

[troung]

lolz

Ron Paul Is Feuding with His Fans
Ron Paul Is Feuding with His Fans - Politics - The Atlantic Wire
Connor Simpson 156 Views 6:09 PM ET

Ron Paul is feuding with his rabid fan own rabid fan base over the ownership of RonPaul.com. Paul wants it, but his fans own it. They're willing to sell it to him... for a price Paul doesn't agree with. So now he's taken the dispute all the way to the United Nations.

Paul was interviewed by Conservative radio show host Alex Jones at the beginning of January and said he wished he had control of RonPaul.com. It's not an uncommon wish. Everyone wants to own theirname.com. The site was registered by his fans years ago, though it's unclear who exactly owns the domain. Ownership have protected their identity from public searches. Regardless, Paul supporters have used the site as an organizational tool to help the popular libertarian since.

The proprietors of RonPaul.com say they reached out to the retired politicain and offered him RonPaul.org as a free gift, but if he "insisted" on owning RonPaul.com then they would sell it to him. There was a catch, though. It would be part of a "liberty package" with the site's 170,000 person mailing list for... wait for it... $250,000. They think the price is totally worth it:

The value we put on the deal was $250k; we are getting our mailing list appraised right now but we are confident it is easily worth more than $250k all by itself. Claims that we tried to sell Ron Paul “his name” for $250k or even $800k are completely untrue, and there is little doubt that our mailing list would have enabled Ron Paul to raise several million dollars for the liberty movement this year. It would have been a win/win/win situation for everyone involved.

But Paul did not respond to their generous offer. Instead, he went to the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization to file a 13 page complaint asking for control of both domains. Oops! Paul's opting for legal action is notable because he's spoken out against the U.N. in the past. They generally aren't very popular among libertarians. They aren't so bad now that he wants control of his own name's website.

And now his fans are pissed:

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?

They have 21 days to get a lawyer and respond. This relationship might be irreparable, though. "That’s not cool! We want our old pre-retirement Ron Paul back!" they say. Paul couldn't be reached by Buzzfeed's Rosie Gray for a request for comment.

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at [email protected]. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.

[Bigfella]

Priceless!

[dalem]

O, the poor poor PaulBots...

-dale

[Parihaka]

I remember that battle I had with them the election before last when they were spamming the forum day and night. I perused their site then and I have to say they were nothing if not dedicated to the cause....

[Bigfella]

I remember that battle I had with them the election before last when they were spamming the forum day and night. I perused their site then and I have to say they were nothing if not dedicated to the cause....

Being a cult leader is all well & good....until you want your life back.

[dalem]

Chilliwack - My Girl - YouTube

Hi bigfella!

-dale

[Minskaya]

I checked. ronpaul.com/co/org/net/info/us/ are all taken.

ronpaul.dumbass

[troung]

There is a paultard internet feud going on over this.

Ron Paul Turns to United Nations to Seize Website from his Supporters
February 9, 2013 By Daniel Greenfield 5 Comments
Ron Paul Turns to United Nations to Seize Website from his Supporters

Ron Paul’s hypocrisy is well known by now. He sticks earmarks for his district into bills that he knows will pass and then makes a show of voting against them. He thinks that the United States should not take a position on the affairs of other countries, except for Israel. And he is against the United Nations exercising power over American citizens… unless it’s for his own benefit.

“The UN has no authority to make “laws” that bind American citizens, because it does not derive its powers from the consent of the American people. We need to stop speaking of UN resolutions and edicts as if they represented legitimate laws or treaties. They do not,” Ron Paul wrote in 2003, when arguing that the United States has the right to go to war in Iraq without UN authorization.

Legally speaking, Ron Paul has a pretty good case against RonPaul.com. Ethically, his case is pretty bad. And Ron Paul might want to remember that he who lives by UN laws, get screwed by UN laws.

Public figures do have a right to claim websites named after them, but Ron Paul’s entire campaign was built on the willingness of his supporters to build an online infrastructure for him free of charge. The only presidential candidate who treated his online supporters that way was… Barack Obama

Now that Ron Paul is transitioning from politics to private life, he’s trying to take over RonPaul.com for his own use. The last time he left politics for private life, he began putting out a newsletter full of crazy bigotry and disaster marketing. And he’s likely to turn RonPaul.com into more of the same. But he could just as easily work with the owners of RonPaul.com to do that.

More problematically Ron Paul has turned to WIPO to seize RonPaul.com for his own use. WIPO stands for World Intellectual Property Organization and is a specialized United Nations agency based out of Switzerland.

WIPO was not Ron Paul’s only UDRP resolution option. The National Arbitration Forum is an American organization that provides domain name dispute arbitration. Instead Ron Paul went to the United Nations. His complaint claims that his own fan base has no “legitimate interest” in the domain name. That’s a curious argument since the RonPaul.com owners have shown that Ron Paul’s people used them to help promote Ron Paul’s campaign.

Ron Paul claims that the owners of RonPaul.com registered it only in order to sell it to him. That seems like an unlikely argument since Ron Paul has a ton of fan sites and it’s doubtful that the owners of RonPaul.com have kept it going for 5 years just in the hopes of one day being able to sell it to him.

The Paul complaint does list an offer that the owners of RonPaul.com made to sell the website to him for either $250,000 to $848.000. On the other hand the complaint claims that the RonPaul.com owners took no other action with the site except to offer it for sale and that their only real cost was a $9.99 registration fee. That’s clearly not true as the site shows that extensive content promoting Ron Paul had been posted on it over the years and the domain name comes with the page rank that this content helped create.

Ron Paul can legitimately claim that under international law the domain name belongs to him. But it’s telling that he made no such claim until recently. Paul’s internet presence relied on sites like RonPaul.com and he never objected to their existence or their turning a profit using his name. But now that his campaign is over for good, he’s using the United Nations to seize the domain name so he can use it for his own purposes while accusing the owners of bad faith.

As usual, the only truly bad faith is Ron Paul’s.

[Surreal McCoy]

The URL and email DB are barely worth $2,500 much less the offered price. Well done Ron Paul for not being blackmailed.

[Gun Grape]

Ron Paul and Alex Jones together.

That's an awful lot of crazy in one place.

[omon]

UN has black helicopters??? last time I checked, all their helis are white. or was it figure of speech?

[Doktor]

Amazon.com: Here Come the Black Helicopters!: UN Global Governance and the Loss of Freedom (9780062240590): Dick Morris, Eileen McGann: Books

Book Description

When it comes to spotting political abuses and covert conspiracies designed to strip Americans of their rights and freedoms, no one is more vigilant than #1 New York Times bestselling authors Dick Morris and Eileen McGann (Screwed!, Revolt!, Fleeced, Outrage). In their latest call-to-arms, Here Come the Black Helicopters!, Morris and McGann expose the most potent threat to date to our cherished way of life: the brazen and treacherous Liberal plan to circumvent our democratic processes by putting ultimate governing power in the hands of unaccountable international organizations. Filled with shocking, incontrovertible evidence as well as a concrete action plan, Here Come the Black Helicopters! is an essential read that will open the public’s eyes to the catastrophe that will surely occur if we allow our misguided politicians to hand the reins of government over to a devious and frighteningly inept United Nations.

[Bigfella]

frontpagemag taking on Ron Paul. Let me get my...:pop: