WIPO Decides: RonPaul.com to Remain with Grassroots Supporters

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By RonPaul.com on May 23, 2013





The domain name RonPaul.com will remain with a group of dedicated grassroots supporters, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has decided.

Ron Paul had filed a cybersquatting complaint in early February 2013, calling on the UN agency to expropriate RonPaul.com from his supporters. This week, WIPO rejected Ron Paul’s complaint, ruling that the supporters were running a political fan-site and thus had legitimate rights to the domain name.

RonPaul.com was created in 2008 as a fan-site in support of Ron Paul and his ideas. Over the years, the supporters running the site invested more than $100,000 into the website and its operations. They helped raise millions of dollars for Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns and received several thank-you notes from Ron Paul’s associates and staff members. But in January 2013, shortly after retiring from Congress, Ron Paul expressed regret over not owning RonPaul.com. He went on to file a complaint with WIPO asking it to confiscate the domain name from his supporters without compensation.

In his complaint, Ron Paul mischaracterized his supporters’ efforts, alleging that the website was a sham created only to sell merchandise. That claim was easily disproved by the thank-you notes the supporters had received from Ron Paul’s associates. Ron Paul also claimed that the supporters had only bought RonPaul.com so they could one day sell it to him at an exorbitant price. The evidence showed the opposite: The supporters had sacrificed everything and put five years of hard work into the website out of admiration and support of Ron Paul.

It is not known why Ron Paul decided to use WIPO, a UN agency, in an attempt to confiscate the domain name instead of simply asking his supporters to donate it to him. In a March 19 interview with TIME, Ron Paul supporter Tim Martin stated that the supporters at RonPaul.com would have handed over the domain name for free if they felt Paul had shown that “he honors and appreciates our hard work and support.”

After the decision was announced, Martin said, “We’re glad to put this traumatic experience behind us. Our team of liberty lovers will continue to promote and advance Ron Paul’s message of liberty, prosperity and peace at RonPaul.com and all over the Internet.”

The supporters at RonPaul.com are represented by Booth Sweet LLP of Cambridge, MA.

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Ron Paul Found Guilty of ‘Reverse Domain Name Hijacking’

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By RonPaul.com on May 23, 2013





Ron Paul committed “reverse domain name hijacking” when he sought control of the RonPaul.org domain name in bad faith, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has ruled.

Ron Paul had filed a cybersquatting complaint with WIPO in early February 2013, calling on the UN agency to confiscate RonPaul.org from a group of long-standing grassroots supporters.

This week, WIPO rejected Ron Paul’s complaint, asserting that the supporters were running a political fan-site and thus had legitimate rights to the domain name.

Ron Paul had originally registered RonPaul.org in 1999 but lost control of the domain name in August 2012 after failing to pay the annual renewal fee. His supporters quickly secured RonPaul.org to keep it in the Ron Paul community, and they offered the domain name to Ron Paul as a free gift in January 2013.

Instead of accepting the gift, Ron Paul filed a complaint with WIPO asking it to confiscate the domain name.

In his complaint, Ron Paul willfully misrepresented his supporters’ offer, alleging that they would give him RonPaul.org only if he paid them $250,000 for a different domain name, RonPaul.com. That claim was easily disproved by the letter Ron Paul submitted as evidence: his supporters’ offer clearly stated that RonPaul.org was a free, unconditional gift with no strings attached.

Ron Paul also wrongly alleged that his supporters had tried to sell him RonPaul.org back in 2010, at a time when he still owned the domain himself.

After rejecting Ron Paul’s complaint, WIPO went on to assert that an attempt of “Reverse Domain Name Hijacking” had taken place:

Reverse Domain Name Hijacking

Respondent has requested, based on the evidence presented, that the Panel make a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. In view of the unique facts of this case, in which the evidence demonstrates that Respondent offered to give the Domain Name to Complainant for no charge, with no strings attached, the Panel is inclined to agree. Instead of accepting the Domain Name, Complainant brought this proceeding. A finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking seems to this Panel to be appropriate in the circumstances.

Ron Paul’s supporters are puzzled as to why Ron Paul decided to use WIPO, a UN agency, in an attempt to confiscate the domain name instead of simply accepting it as a free gift. “We’re expecting to wake up any minute now and find out that this was all a big misunderstanding”, said Tim Martin of RonPaul.org.

The supporters at RonPaul.org are represented by Booth Sweet LLP of Cambridge, MA.

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Ron Paul: The IRS’s Job Is To Violate Our Liberties

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By RonPaul.com on May 20, 2013




by Ron Paul

“What do you expect when you target the President?” This is what an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent allegedly said to the head of a conservative organization that was being audited after calling for the impeachment of then-President Clinton. Recent revelations that IRS agents gave “special scrutiny” to organizations opposed to the current administration’s policies suggest that many in the IRS still believe harassing the President’s opponents is part of their job.

As troubling as these recent reports are, it would be a grave mistake to think that IRS harassment of opponents of the incumbent President is a modern, or a partisan, phenomenon. As scholar Burton Folsom pointed out in his book New Deal or Raw Deal, IRS agents in the 1930s where essentially “hit squads” against opponents of the New Deal. It is well-known that the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson used the IRS to silence their critics. One of the articles of impeachment drawn up against Richard Nixon dealt with his use of the IRS to harass his political enemies. Allegations of IRS abuses were common during the Clinton administration, and just this week some of the current administration’s defenders recalled that antiwar and progressive groups alleged harassment by the IRS during the Bush presidency.

The bipartisan tradition of using the IRS as a tool to harass political opponents suggests that the problem is deeper than just a few “rogue” IRS agents—or even corruption within one, two, three or many administrations. Instead, the problem lays in the extraordinary power the tax system grants the IRS.

The IRS routinely obtains information about how we earn a living, what investments we make, what we spend on ourselves and our families, and even what charitable and religious organizations we support. Starting next year, the IRS will be collecting personally identifiable health insurance information in order to ensure we are complying with Obamacare’s mandates.

The current tax laws even give the IRS power to marginalize any educational, political, or even religious organizations whose goals, beliefs, and values are not favored by the current regime by denying those organizations “tax-free” status. This is the root of the latest scandal involving the IRS.

Considering the type of power the IRS excises over the American people, and the propensity of those who hold power to violate liberty, it is surprising we do not hear about more cases of politically-motivated IRS harassment. As the first US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall said, “The power to tax is the power to destroy” — and who better to destroy than one’s political enemies?

The US flourished for over 120 years without an income tax, and our liberty and prosperity will only benefit from getting rid of the current tax system. The federal government will get along just fine without its immoral claim on the fruits of our labor, particularly if the elimination of federal income taxes are accompanied by serious reduction in all areas of spending, starting with the military spending beloved by so many who claim to be opponents of high taxes and big government.

While it is important for Congress to investigate the most recent scandal and ensure all involved are held accountable, we cannot pretend that the problem is a few bad actors. The very purpose of the IRS is to transfer wealth from one group to another while violating our liberties in the process, thus the only way Congress can protect our freedoms is to repeal the income tax and shutter the doors of the IRS once and for all.

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Ron Paul: Neither Republicans nor Democrats Want to Hear the Real Lesson of Benghazi

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By RonPaul.com on May 13, 2013




by Ron Paul

Congressional hearings, White House damage control, endless op-eds, accusations, and defensive denials. Controversy over the events in Benghazi last September took center stage in Washington and elsewhere last week. However, the whole discussion is again more of a sideshow. Each side seeks to score political points instead of asking the real questions about the attack on the US facility, which resulted in the death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Republicans smell a political opportunity over evidence that the Administration heavily edited initial intelligence community talking points about the attack to remove or soften anything that might reflect badly on the president or the State Department.

Are we are supposed to be shocked by such behavior? Are we supposed to forget that this kind of whitewashing of facts is standard operating procedure when it comes to the US government?

Democrats in Congress have offered the even less convincing explanation for Benghazi, that somehow the attack occurred due to Republican sponsored cuts in the security budget at facilities overseas. With a one trillion dollar military budget, it is hard to take this seriously.

It appears that the Administration scrubbed initial intelligence reports of references to extremist Islamist involvement in the attacks, preferring to craft a lie that the demonstrations were a spontaneous response to an anti-Islamic video that developed into a full-out attack on the US outpost.

Who can blame the administration for wanting to shift the focus? The Islamic radicals who attacked Benghazi were the same people let loose by the US-led attack on Libya. They were the rebels on whose behalf the US overthrew the Libyan government. Ambassador Stevens was slain by the same Islamic radicals he personally assisted just over one year earlier.

But the Republicans in Congress also want to shift the blame. They supported the Obama Administration’s policy of bombing Libya and overthrowing its government. They also repeated the same manufactured claims that Gaddafi was “killing his own people” and was about to commit mass genocide if he were not stopped. Republicans want to draw attention to the President’s editing talking points in hopes no one will notice that if the attack on Libya they supported had not taken place, Ambassador Stevens would be alive today.

Neither side wants to talk about the real lesson of Benghazi: interventionism always carries with it unintended consequences. The US attack on Libya led to the unleashing of Islamist radicals in Libya. These radicals have destroyed the country, murdered thousands, and killed the US ambassador. Some of these then turned their attention to Mali which required another intervention by the US and France.

Previously secure weapons in Libya flooded the region after the US attack, with many of them going to Islamist radicals who make up the majority of those fighting to overthrow the government in Syria. The US government has intervened in the Syrian conflict on behalf of the same rebels it assisted in the Libya conflict, likely helping with the weapons transfers. With word out that these rebels are mostly affiliated with al Qaeda, the US is now intervening to persuade some factions of the Syrian rebels to kill other factions before completing the task of ousting the Syrian government. It is the dizzying cycle of interventionism.

The real lesson of Benghazi will not be learned because neither Republicans nor Democrats want to hear it. But it is our interventionist foreign policy and its unintended consequences that have created these problems, including the attack and murder of Ambassador Stevens. The disputed talking points and White House whitewashing are just a sideshow.

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Ron Paul: The Federal Reserve Blows More Bubbles

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By RonPaul.com on May 5, 2013




by Ron Paul

Last week at its regular policy-setting meeting, the Federal Reserve announced it would double down on the policies that have failed to produce anything but a stagnant economy. It was a disappointing, but not surprising, move.

The Fed affirmed that it is prepared to increase its monthly purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities if things don’t start looking up. But actually the Fed has already been buying more than the announced $85 billion per month. Between February and March, the Fed’s securities holdings increased $95 billion. From March to April, they increased $100 billion. In all, the Fed has pumped more than a half trillion dollars into the economy since announcing its latest round of “quantitative easing” (QE3) in September 2012.

Although many were up in arms when the Fed said it would buy $600 billion in government debt outright for the previous round, QE2, all seems quiet about the magnitude of QE3 because it doesn’t come with huge up-front total price tag. But by year’s end the Fed’s balance sheet could hit $4 trillion.

With no recovery in sight, where’s all this money going? It is creating bubbles. Bubbles in the housing sector, the stock market, and government debt. The national debt is fast approaching $17 trillion, with the Fed monetizing most of the newly issued debt. The stock market has been hitting record highs for the past two months as investors seek to capitalize on the Fed’s easy money. After all, as long as the Fed keeps the spigot open, nominal profits are there for the taking. But this is a house of cards. Eventually, just like in 2008-2009, the market will discipline the bad actions of the Fed and seek to find the real normal.

In the meantime, real families are suffering. While Wall Street and the government take advantage of access to the Fed’s new “free” money, the Fed claims there is no inflation. But who hasn’t paid higher prices at the grocery store, the gas pump, for tuition, for insurance? It’s bad enough that household incomes have stagnated, but real purchasing power has declined so much that one in seven Americans, 47.3 million people, are on food stamps. Five million are collecting unemployment insurance with 21.5 million afflicted by unemployment according to the government’s own figures. That’s 13.9 percent — close to double the 7.5 percent unemployment number reported last week.

We are certainly not in a recovery. We don’t see the long unemployment and soup kitchen lines like in the Great Depression, but that’s just because the lines are electronic now.

It is not surprising the Fed has decided to hand the American people more of the same failed policies. But it is disappointing. We know what the real solution is: allow the marketplace to work. Allow entrepreneurs the chance to create instead of stifling innovation with arbitrary regulations. Allow interest rates to rise to equal the risks in the economy. Allow bad debts to be liquidated so we can build on a firm foundation. Stop printing money to benefit the government and big banks. Restore sound money to the economy and the American people. Sound money is the bedrock for prosperity and the best check on big government and crony capitalism.

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Ron Paul: We’re Already Very Much Involved in Syria

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By RonPaul.com on April 29, 2013





Transcript

Neil Cavuto: This is Neil Cavuto, and whether President Obama ends up sending troops or just some well-placed tomahawks, the President is in a very tough placed now. He’s already warned Syria that if he ever got proof it used chemical weapons on its people, there would be hell to pay, even if we can’t pay for that hell. Dr. Ron Paul says, the truth is, consequences costs, so quit offering ultimatums we can’t pay for, even if we did have the money to pay for them. The Congressman and former presidential candidate joins us right now. Congressman, you would just say, “Don’t even get involved, let the Syrians do whatever they want”?

Ron Paul: Yes, pretty much that way, because it’s not our business, our national security isn’t threatened, and it smells a little bit like the argument going into Iraq: weapons of mass destruction, poisonous gasses, and all that. He drew the line in the sand, or whatever he called it, but for him to worry about going over that line, I don’t know where the evidence is. No, they don’t have evidence, I think he overstated that in the first place, and he shouldn’t be in a dilemma, he should just stay out of it.

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