I never said anything about “justly acquired property.” You’re putting words in my mouth. The closest thing I said to that was “They got it as legitimately as possible in the illegitimate setup.”
And it doesn’t bar you from ever marching. That’s more bullshit. It bars you from marching on that street only, and even then, only if I don’t want you to. It is essentially as if I own the street. You are free to negotiate with me on when or how you may use the street, and you are free to buy the street from me. Nothing “bars” you from marching down that street permanently, let alone marching at all.
And you can quite easily “own” your own street that you are free to march on all you want.
Sure, if you want to get to the very root of it, I might agree with you,
“One has the ability to map their site to ronpaul.com which they should have, and the monopoly on being the only ones to be able to do so, which they shouldn’t have. RP on the other hand doesn’t have the ability to map his site to ronpaul.com, which he should have, but also doesn’t have the ability to preclude all people other than himself from doing so, which he should not have.”
But bringing it back to the land analogy, all of this land in the United States isn’t exactly “justly aquired”. Me buying a piece of property from the government or from some descendent of some European settler who “homesteaded” the land after it’s original inhabitants were murdered doesn’t exactly give me full “just” rights to it. But where do you draw the line, and how far back does it have to go? Again, it’s still the eminent domain argument. You don’t have a “legitimate” claim to the land, so as long as I can convince the de facto “owner” that I should get it instead of you, you can fuck off?
Surely you don’t want to go down that road. (Parden the pun.)
The whole situation really boils down to the fact that a single (essentially centralized) master root server exists, whereas in a free society, it might not. That is the basis for your claim that a domain registrant “ha[s] the ability to preclude all people other than himself from [mapping his site to a specific domain], which he should not have.”
But the fact of the matter is, that situation could exist in a free society…it could feasibly come about that a single master root server was the most practical (perhaps like a universal money is most practical). And in that case, “there would be no reputation rights, no IP law, no trademark, no copyright, no right of publicity, so I doubt the private companies running the internet infrastructure would ever have a quasi-IP-based domain name dispute policy”.
So either way, you have no leg to stand on in defense of Ron Paul here.
You’ve got a system of de facto scarcity of domains, which it is debatable whether such a scarcity would exist in a free market. If it wouldn’t exist in a free market, then you essentially come to an eminent domain argument…where you have to draw a line of assertion as to when “legitimate” ownership started. In that case, if you want to side with Ron Paul, then you have to defend Mr. Moneybags-Politicalconnections and his takeover of Grandma Jones’ cottage to build his stadium, because in both situations, you’re basically resting on the “nobody has a better claim than anybody else, so it’s basically whoever can convince the government to give it to him” argument.
On the other hand, if such a scarcity of domains would exist in a free market, then you come to a legitimate dispute situation…which would have to be resolved, but which would have no quorum for reputation rights, or any sort of IP rights (no trademark, no copyright, no right of publicity, etc.)…meaning the grounds on which Ron Paul is making his claim would have no standing. They are illegitimate.
Let’s also not forget RP had the domain and let his registration expire. One could argue he had his shot in this monopoly system and gave it up. Even if you want to argue “this is the system”, that still offers no reason he should be able to take back a position he forfeited.
And once again, the bottom line is:
Is it fair to say that Ron Paul is using government to steal from his supporters?
“Yes.”