Ron Paul is taking his fans to court over their free market attempt to sell him his domain name at a premium price.

abaldwin360:

(The Atlantic Wire) - Ron Paul is feuding with his 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. 

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#1: I thought Ron Paul was oh so very anti-UN.

#2: I thought this is how the “free market” was supposed to work, Mr. Paul. These folks are entrepreneurs, it’s not their fault they got the name first, right Ronnie? Right? 

#3 Crying to the U.N. when the ~free market~ isn’t working to your favor? Hypocrite.

Free marketeering is hard, y’all.