When Ron Paul ran for the Republican nomination for President the first time in 2008, not many people expected the grassroots movement that grew up around him, which is probably why Paul’s campaign never bothered to secure the domain RonPaul.com back then. Someone else did, though, and they turned it into a site for Ron Paul supporters and activism that lasted through the 2012 campaign. Now, the former Congressman is turning to a United Nations agency to get the domain from them:
Ron Paul has filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization against the proprietors of RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org, according to a blog post on their site on Friday.
The authors of RonPaul.com see the move as the ultimate betrayal from a politician who, more than many others, depended on an astounding level of grassroots support on the Internet in order to keep his longshot presidential campaigns running.
“Last month, after Ron Paul expressed regret on the Alex Jones show over not owning RonPaul.com (in an interview titled “Ron Paul: The Internet Is Our Last Chance to Awaken America”), dozens of supporters urged us to contact Ron Paul to work out a deal,” the owners of RonPaul.com write.
They say they offered Paul the use of RonPaul.org as a “free gift” but wanted to keep RonPaul.com. Their price, should Paul really want RonPaul.com, was $250,000.
“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,” they write.
Perhaps what may be most irking to Paul supporters, though, is the fact that Paul filed his Complaint not in a court of law, but with the World Intellectual Property Organization, an agency of the United Nations tasked with the international enforcement of copyrights and trademarks. Now, you might wonder why Paul went this route instead of filing an action in a court here in the United States, I certainly did at first. Then, I did a WhoIs search and found this:
Domain ronpaul.com:
Whois Privacy Services Pty Ltd
Domain Hostmaster, Customer ID : 95459852061642
Email: 95459852061642-1ef430@whoisprivacyservices.com.au
PO Box 923
Fortitude Valley QLD 4006 AUAdministrative contact:
Technical contact:
Billing contact:
Whois Privacy Services Pty Ltd
Domain Hostmaster, Customer ID : 95459852061642
Email: 95459852061642-1ef430@whoisprivacyservices.com.au
PO Box 923
Fortitude Valley QLD 4006 AU
Phone: Phone: +61.730070090
Fax: Phone: +61.730070091
Whoever the actual owners of the domain might be, they chose to utilize a privacy service to act as the administrative contact for their website. That’s not unusual, of course, indeed I’ve done it myself. In this case, though, they’re using an administrator located in Australia and therefore effectively outside the jurisdiction of American Courts. As for the Complaint itself [PDF], it appears to be a standard domain-squatting complaint alleging that the parties are utilizing Ron Paul’s name and trademark for their own purposes for no legitimate reason. Legally, Paul appears to be on pretty solid ground here and one would expect that this will either end in some kind of settlement or a decision in his favor. At the same time, though, one has to wonder what his fans are going to think about this move.
