WIPO Panel Says Ron Paul Guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking 303
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."
Re:For free? (Score:4, Interesting)
"In a free market"... What utter BS. "Finders keepers" is a fine argument for the schoolyard, but it's moral value is negligible. Ownership rights come with responibilities, especially ownership rights to unique resources. If a party decides to take ownership of something with the sole purpose of ransoming it to an owner who will actually use it, that is not "free market" - it's exploitation.
"Free market" only works when the market is actually free. Ransoming a unique resource is not the free market in action.
Re:For free? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Finders keepers" is a fine argument for the schoolyard, but it's moral value is negligible. Ownership rights come with responibilities, especially ownership rights to unique resources. If a party decides to take ownership of something with the sole purpose of ransoming it to an owner who will actually use it, that is not "free
market" - it's exploitation.
So when applying that "logic" of yours to the oil and gas companies pulling the unique and limited resource of fossil fuels out of the ground, how exactly do you explain away the obvious moral problem?
Re:For free? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Finders keepers" is a fine argument for the schoolyard, but
Actually, "Homesteading" is a central part of libertarianism. And according to that philosophy, no one has the moral authority to be able to tell the homesteader that they are not "responsibly" using their homestead/resources. Provided they make a clearly defined claim, and maintain a clear boundary, the claim is theirs.
[Disclaimer: I'm not a libertarian, but then, it would seem neither is Ron Paul.]
Re:For free? (Score:4, Interesting)
But he didn't cross his stated principles.
Yes it did. He tried to use government to force to transfer ownership of private property to himself. It's a betrayal of everything he claims to stand for (and it's not the first time he's betrayed the principles he claims to hold). It's also pretty stupid to turn on your supporters in such a hypocritical way. The Libertarain solution would have been to start a kickstarter (or other) campaign to raise the money to buy the domain if he wasn't willing to pay the money out of pocket or out of an election campaign fund.