Ron Paul vs. RonPaul.com

[Truth_and_Liberty]

@John James

I agree with pretty much everything you said there in your opening distinction, Graham, and I actually appreciate the articulate way you laid it out. But my question then becomes: if you openly accept that ICANN is essentially an arm of government (an institution based in (and existent only as) opposition to libertarian principles), why/how is it that you can say we as libertarians have no quorum with its policy? If it’s an arm of government, are its “policy decisions” not by defintion “legal ones”?

That is not the distinction I made between law and policy. The distinction is not whether or not the institution is an arm of the government. It is whether the institution is a court - that is, an institution making a decision about who ought to have ultimate decision-making jurisdiction over a rivalrous good. I picked my three institutions I gave as examples - schools, drug-certifiers and hospitals - because these institutions can easily be imagined to be private or state-run. Either way, the libertarian has no opinion on the policy decisions those institutions make. The question of whether creationism is taught in schools is never answerable using libertarian principles, even when the school is an arm of the government.

@Graham Wright

I contend that the question “where should the domain name RonPaul.com point?” is a policy question and not a legal question.

Then why is it being ultimately decided by a legal institution, and enforced (or at least backed by) law, and ultimately the force of government?

Because all sides in the debate are operating with a pro-IP premise: that a domain name can be owned. So it is being treated as a legal issue when it is properly viewed as a policy issue.

This may be just a weird wording, but I think it’s pretty clear, (and you understand) that Ron Paul is certainly not arguing against IP policies of any kind. Quite the opposite. It seems you admit he is literally asserting IP rights and attempting to use those IP-infused policies to his advantage.

Indeed that is largely what this whole dispute among us sideliners is all about.

In his pro-IP mind he may believe that he is asserting IP rights. But when you are anti-IP you look at the conflict in a different way.

Suppose I download the film Avatar, burn it onto 100 DVDs to sell at a market, and then I get caught and sued by James Cameron, or whoever “owns the copyright” of the film. If you’re pro-IP, the conflict is about the pattern and who owns the pattern, and whether James Cameron’s ownership of the pattern makes my actions aggression. But if you’re anti-IP you see it differently. The conflict is really about the DVDs themselves, the physical objects. My argument would be that I own the DVDs because I created them using my own property and labor. Cameron’s argument is that he owns the DVD because they have “his” pattern on them. From the anti-IP perspective, it is literally impossible to have a conflict over an idea/pattern/name, because ideas are non-rivalrous. “IP disputes” are always really disputes over physical objects.

I’m not supporting Ron Paul in his claim. I’m defending him from the accusation that he is “using government to steal from his supporters”. I consider that a mischaracterisation.

But there’s only two aspects to that that you could object to. (1) That he’s not really using government. We’ve seen this one tried multiple times throughout this debate on the interwebs. Even by Lew Rockwell himself. But most of us here, (and seemingly you as well) do not buy that argument and are not naive enough to believe that ICANN/WIPO is not essentially government.

So the only thing left for you to object to is (2) Paul is stealing from his supporters. It sounds as though you feel this is not the case because “domains can’t be owned”, so therefore there is nothing to “steal.” But if that’s the case, what is the dispute even about? It was my understanding that the domain holders/registrants/controllers, whatever we are calling them other than “owners”, have…well…control/access(?) to something that Ron Paul does not have control/access to. And he is attempting to get that control/access removed from their power(?) and placed into his…thus allowing him to do what he can’t do now, and preventing them from doing what they can do now.

Yes, it is (2) that I’m objecting to. He’s not stealing anything.

The RonPaul.com registrants don’t have “control” or “access” to anything. They are just in the position that ICANN is currently translating the name RonPaul.com into their website, rather than any other website. Ron Paul is not in that position, and he is trying to attain that position, and so he’s appealing to ICANN’s own policies on where domain names should point.

Yes. Is that not the standard anti-IP position?

Not to my knowledge. It sounds quite restrictive to me. The idea that something must be a “physical object” to be owned (i.e. for one to have property rights in it) bothers me. Some argue bitcoins fit the bill for non-physical property. I don’t see a reason airspace can’t be owned. In fact, you’d have to have a pretty weird/stretched definition of “object” even to make the case that land could be owned under your definition. Perhaps you are of the opinion one cannot own land, I don’t know.

To my understanding ownable property is largely dependent on that which is rivalrous and scarce. Being a “physical object” is not a pre-requisite to meet those qualities.

Instead of the word “object” how about the word “resource”? Something must be a physical resource in order for it to make sense to think of it being owned. Land and airspace are physical resources, so they can be owned. Do you disagree that being a physical resource is a prerequisitie of something being property?

Bitcoins are not a physical resource and in fact talk of “owning bitcoins” is a metaphor in a similar way to “owning a domain name”. It follows from AJ’s post on this, where he explains that Bitcoin (the protocol) should be viewed as a giant ledger, rather than a network of people “exchanging bitoins”, that thinking of bitcoins (the units) as something being owned is only a metaphor.

So for this conversation you’re defining scarce to mean simply ‘unique’? That seems odd.

A) Those weren’t even my words, I quoted Kinsella saying that in an earlier post.

B) Unique as in, it is a “unique identifier”, as in, only one person can use it in the network at a time, thus making it useful as an identifier. (Obviously if more than one person could use the same number at a time, it wouldn’t be very unique would it? It also wouldn’t make a very good identifier, would it?)

I thought it was weird when he said that, but I figured it was a slip of the tongue and gave him the benefit of the doubt (like when he said “contract with the internet”). I really don’t see what being unique has to do with whether something is ownable - the criterion is scarcity and that is not the same thing as uniqueness. You skipped my earlier questions: is the number 123 unique? Can I therefore own it?

rivalrous objects, over which conflicts about ultimate decision-making jurisdiction can occur. Do you consider domain names to be rivalrous objects?

A) I’ve stated so multiple times in this thread (on this very page, in fact), with the appropriate caveats, recognizing that the rivalrous/scarce nature is essentially due to the reality of a single master root server…making them in a way de facto scarce, not necessarily scarce in the sense that one’s body is scarce.

The effect of a single master root server is no to make something non-scarce into something scarce, or vice versa, or “de facto scarce”. That makes no sense to me. To the extent that it is true that there is a single master root server, it is that much more important that registrants get favorable interpretations of the rules from them. It does not turn anything from non-scarce to scarce.

B) If they aren’t, why in the heck is there a “conflict” in which “ultimate decision-making jurisdiction” is occurring right now?? What is all this even about if there’s no conflict?

There is no conflict over property, only disagreement about the interpretation of a policy.

What exactly do you think this conflict is about? Ownership of domain names? But isn’t a domain name a type of name? And isn’t a name a type of idea? And aren’t ideas unownable?

Again, as I’ve said multiple times, it may or may not be the case that a single master root server setup would be the norm in a free society. Clayton seems to think it wouldn’t. Others might argue it would be found by the market to be the most practical. I for one don’t know. I don’t presume to know how the market would work out such things free from the interference of government. For all we know technology would advance so fast that it wouldn’t even be an issue needed to be considered. I don’t know how anyone could presume to know such things. I find it rather audacious to make such assertions. But apparently some people feel comfortable in doing so and making claims as to how everyone would technologically communicate in a completely free society. shrug

And yet what you’re doing, by siding with the RonPaul.com registrants over Ron Paul in this case, and believing your opinion to be derived from your libertarian principles, is being presumptious and audacious. You are speculating that if the (state-granted) monopoly on domain-name-translation didn’t exist, the free market institutions (or institution, if consumers prefer) would have a policy that would suit the RonPaul.com registrants, therefore you will side with them. The same as speculating that in a free society, most schools wouldn’t teach creationism, therefore you don’t think the government schools should teach creationism. A person is not being unlibertarian by saying government schools should teach creationism, any more than you are being libertarian by saying they shouldn’t. It’s the premise that’s unlibertarian.

[John_James]

@Graham Wright

That is not the distinction I made between law and policy. The distinction is not whether or not the institution is an arm of the government.

I didn’t say it was a distinction you made between law and policy. But my question is, if we are talking about an institution with the monopoly of force behind it, how is there a distinction? Can you give an example of government “policy” that isn’t essentially “legal” in nature…or, at least, has legal effect?

I honestly am not sure how one could suggest that a libertarian has no interest in government policy.

Because all sides in the debate are operating with a pro-IP premise: that a domain name can be owned. So it is being treated as a legal issue when it is properly viewed as a policy issue.

This makes no sense…in your last post you insisted that “this conflict has little to do with IP.” Now it sounds like you’re claiming that a pro-IP premise is the only way the conflict could even exist in the first place…that a pro-IP premise is actually a pre-requisite for this conflict. Are you now changing your position, and admitting this conflict has almost everything to do with IP?

Also, just to be clear, you are asserting that Stephan Kinsella is operating with a pro-IP premise?

Instead of the word “object” how about the word “resource”? Something must be a physical resource in order for it to make sense to think of it being owned. Land and airspace are physical resources, so they can be owned. Do you disagree that being a physical resource is a prerequisitie of something being property?

Is air-less space a physical resource? Is it “physical” at all? How can essentially “nothing”, be “physical”?

@Graham Wright

Bitcoins are not a physical resource

I’m aware of that. That’s kind of why I introduced it as an example of something that isn’t a “physical object.”

Bitcoin (the protocol) should be viewed as a giant ledger, rather than a network of people “exchanging bitoins”, that thinking of bitcoins (the units) as something being owned is only a metaphor.

What’s the difference between the bitcoin ledger and the balance sheet of a bank?

I thought it was weird when he said that, but I figured it was a slip of the tongue and gave him the benefit of the doubt (like when he said “contract with the internet”).

So when you have a “contract with the Internet”, the Internet is a network of physical connections that are owned by different infrastructure and “backbone” providers and people like this; when you enter into a contract with these people, that ends up resulting in your contractual right — which is distributed across a group of people…

Is there something wrong about this statement?

@Graham Wright

I really don’t see what being unique has to do with whether something is ownable - the criterion is scarcity and that is not the same thing as uniqueness. You skipped my earlier questions: is the number 123 unique? Can I therefore own it?

Within a system requiring unique identifiers, where only one node can use a certain series of numbers at a time, yes, the number is unique within that system, and is therefore rivalrous within that system. I’m not sure how you can simultaneously acknowledge the fact that a “unique indentifier” is, well, a unique identifier…and allege it isn’t unique or rivalrous.

See next post…

[John_James]

CONTINUED from above…

I distilled your argument down to your main stated points, and received a response from Kinsella. Perhaps this will aid in your (and everyone else’s) understanding:

[NOTE: numbered points: Graham’s, emphasis: mine]

1. “A domain name can’t be owned (or homesteaded or traded or stolen) because it isn’t a physical object. This isn’t a property conflict, and it has little to do with IP. […] Something must be a physical resource in order for it to make sense to think of it being owned.”

Kinsella: I think he’s right, in a sense, that domains can’t be legally owned as ownable objects, in the same sense that scarce resources can. Yet in a given system a domain name has uniqueness and a type of scarcity, and can be economically valuable. Consider having the phone number 1800FLOWER. Or even consider something like standing in a long line to get a popular movie ticket or to get the latest iPhone: your “place” in line is not a property right either but it acts in practice like one, as people recognize it, it can even be sold or traded, it can be valuable, and it’s first-come-first served similar to Lockean homesteading. People tend to use property-like rules for these kind of “goods” even though they are not strictly speaking legally ownable.

In a sense they also cannot be “stolen” but on the other hand, you can’t say it doesn’t matter whether you have it or not, otherwise Paul would not be trying to “get” it. To me this whole case centers around IP law (trademark). It is illegitimate to use IP at all, ever, to do any kind of economic damage to other people, whether it is used to steal property or not. Imagine you are first in line and have been waiting there for 2 days for the apple store to open. Steve Wozniak shows up and asks the store owner (who owns the property all the people are sitting on; so they are in a “line” with the owner’s implicit permission, in a sense) to kick you out and let Woz get first in line. the store owner agrees to do this favor for Woz, so the store owner asks you to leave, and lets Woz take your place. Is this a dick thing for Woz and the store owner to do? Yeah. Is it any kind of stealing of your property? No. Does it do you economic damage? Possibly, but on the other hand you have no contract (arguably). But in the phone number or domain name case you (arguably) do have a contract with the registrariCANN and phone company that you get to keep using that number so long as you keep paying your bill. In any case Woz here is just using his fame to persuade someoen to do something assholish. In the RP case he is using trademark law. That is the problem. The means used are illegitimate.

2. “I’m not saying Ron Paul has a claim to it any more or less than the other party. No one has a legitimate claim to it, because a domain name is not a piece of property (as an anti-IP person, this should be clear) - it is a name, a pattern, an idea. […] I’m not supporting Ron Paul in his claim. I’m defending him from the accusation that he is ‘using government to steal from his supporters’. I consider that a mischaracterisation.”

Kinsella: it may be somewhat inaccurate. He has some points about the property ideas being used as metaphors in the Internet context. But in a sense he is stealing something: he is taking money from the domain owners, using trademark law: he is taking money they otherwise would have earned. This is why when people breach contracts or commit torts, they often have to pay monetary damages to the injured party, to compensate them for the damage done. It’s not always simply a sum of money to pay for the replacement value for some stolen or damaged physical object. There are consequential damages. Here, RP is seeking to use trademark law to “take” (metaphorically) a domain, causing real consequential damage. The domain is “metaphorically” “stolen”, which is a way of saying: trademark law is used to cause ICANN to change its relationship with the domain owner, in a way that damages him significantly.

Often I point out that IP is illegitimate because is protects people from competition; the counter is often that if I copy your products then I am stealing from you. I point out: I didn’t take anything from you. THey retort: but you took money from me that I ‘could have made." But you see, you had no title to the money in your customers’ pockets. So you can’t say I stole that from you; you might call them “your” customers but possessives in grammar do not imply ownership.

Now why does not not apply to the case above? Because competing with someone on the market by emulating some successful company is a legitimate means. It’s okay to do “economic damage” to people so long as the means are legitimate, since no one has a right to profit in the first place. If I open up a burger joint next to yours I “steal” some of “your” business but hta’ts okay, it’s legitimate.

But suppose I get a subsidy from the state which permits me to lower my burger joint costs and undercut you. Illegitimate means. (This is one reason public schools outcompete private ones.) Or suppose I get a court to use trademark law to order you to change your name, resulting in me getting more of your business and you losing business.

3. “He’s not stealing anything. The RonPaul.com registrants don’t have “control” or “access” to anything. They are just in the position that ICANN is currently translating the name RonPaul.com into their website, rather than any other website. Ron Paul is not in that position, and he is trying to attain that position, and so he’s appealing to ICANN’s own policies on where domain names should point.”

Kinsella: Right. Their trademark policies. Polices that would not exist had the states not basically imposed this IP scheme on them. Policies that are tantamount to another IP-enforcement mechanism, in addition to normal courts, now there is the UDRP scheme.

4. "I thought it was weird when [Kinsella] said [‘they are scarce in the same sense that they are unique’], but I figured it was a slip of the tongue and gave him the benefit of the doubt (like when he said “contract with the internet”). I really don’t see what being unique has to do with whether something is ownable - the criterion is scarcity and that is not the same thing as uniqueness. […] is the number 123 unique? Can I therefore own it?"

Kinsella: Well I think my qualification was good enough to make my statement accurate. I said they are scarce “in a certain sense”–and clarified that the numbers are unique. You cannot own 123 but if you “owned” the domain www.123.com it is worth a lot of money because there are a finite amount of 3-character domains.

5. “There is no conflict over property, only disagreement about the interpretation of a policy. What exactly do you think this conflict is about? Ownership of domain names? But isn’t a domain name a type of name? And isn’t a name a type of idea? And aren’t ideas unownable?”

Kinsella: I would agree that names are unownable but the “contractual status of having an arrangement with ICANN to have a certain domain name point to your designated IP address and server” [which people metaphorically refer to as “owning” a domain because it is less unwieldy and because it is similar in many respects to normal ownership rights] is obviously some valuable status to have, otherwise RP would not be trying to acquire it by use of trademark law.

6a) “what you’re doing, by siding with the RonPaul.com registrants over Ron Paul in this case, and believing your opinion to be derived from your libertarian principles, is being presumptious and audacious. You are speculating that if the (state-granted) monopoly on domain-name-translation didn’t exist, the free market institutions (or institution, if consumers prefer) would have a policy that would suit the RonPaul.com registrants, therefore you will side with them.”

Kinsella: yes, because it is reasonable to speculate that in a world free of state IP law, state IP law would not be forced into such private agreements.

6b) “The same as speculating that in a free society, most schools wouldn’t teach creationism, therefore you don’t think the government schools should teach creationism. A person is not being unlibertarian by saying government schools should teach creationism, any more than you are being libertarian by saying they shouldn’t. It’s the premise that’s unlibertarian.”

Kinsella: this is a bad analogy. We know that there would be no trademark law in a free society. we do not know there would be no creationists [Though I would bet there would be virtually no creationists in a free society, since the only way we achieve such a society is by people being more rational overall.]

[NOTE: Further comments, slightly edited (mostly chronologically) to make for the most efficient display of the information]:

John James: does something really have to be a physical resource to be ownable?

Kinsella: I think it has to be a rivalrous or scarce resource to be ownable, but as noted, takign someone’s property is not the only way you can use illegitimate means to cause them damage.

JJ: [Graham] would argue that the phone number belongs to no one, that it is simply a pattern of numbers, and that therefore it can’t be “owned” or “given” or “stolen”. My point would be that the ICANN is for intents and purposes here, government, so its “policy” is essentially “law” (backed by monopoly force)…therefore it’s not just a simple policy dispute…and the “position” that is being fought over is actually scarce and rivalrous within the network in which it exists, therefore, it does take on characteristics of ownable property.

SK: That may be one way to look at it. But I think maybe a better way to look at it is: in a distributed network like the Internet, one party that offers the domain-pointing function can only do so if they have a reputation for being fair and neutral, etc., and not just re-allocating people’s domains willy-nilly. If they had a policy for doing that people would not use their service. Why would I pay a domain registration fee and start working on kinsella.com if ICANN was capricious and did not give me a contractual promise to let me keep the domain so long as I paid the fee? If they were capricious then some other domain-pointing service would emerge. There is no reason to think any ICANN-like organization that would emerge, would ever insert trademark-like rules because there is simply no no reason from them to do this other than being surrounded by and pressured by states and their trademark laws.

I think [Graham] may be right that you do not literally “own” the domain, any more than you own your phone number. Yet you want to have a certain domain and be secure in your “ownersip” of it, so you enter into arrangements with registrats and people like ICANN to achieve this status. People use metaphors like ownership for conceptual simplicity and b/c of the economic similarities–it is “scarce” within the system, as you noted, and it has economic value to the “owner.” If RP uses trademark law to cause ICANN to change the domain “owner” this is using an illegitimate means (trademark law) to cause the domain “owner” to suffer significant financial damage. Given these nuances I think it’s okay to say that the domain is stolen because there is aggression (trademark law) being used to “take” the domain that has economic value; or you could say that what is stolen is the money-lost by the domain holder.

JJ: I suppose one could just argue that the contract between ICANN and the registrant of a domain is simply an unenforceable contract in Rothbard’s title transfer sense, because it pertains to a domain name, which (as Graham asserts) is something other than ownable property. He might argue that the ICANN “contract” is really nothing more than simply a promise to map a certain domain to a certain IP address…but that none of that involves any actual transfer of property.

SK: I dont agree that ICANN’s contract is unenforceable on Rothbardian grounds. First, the contract could be viewed as allocating to customers certain usage rights of its servers, etc. But even if not, it could be a contract for ICANN to pay you money damages IF it doesn’t allocate your name in a certain way. There are lots of ways you can make that contract valid.

I would think the best way to view the contract is ICANN either becomes a co-owner of its own servers and equipment, with the domain registrants, so that it has no right to use its own servers in certain ways; that is, changing the domain to another registrant so long as the first one is paying appropriate fees, is impermissible. Or, perhaps simply that ICANN implicitly agrees to pay damages IF it changes the domain. Either one is a Rothbardian contract b/c it is just a way of allocating or transferring title to owned things (servers/equipment, and/or money).

JJ: The argument that the contract with ICANN is just a promise would seem to actually work in line with the RP-defense argument that RP is simply appealing to the institution that made the promise, and asking them to break that promise and map the domain to him instead…as it seems there’s nothing unlibertarian about that.

SK: What RP is doing is using state trademark law to change the contract someone has in a way that financially damages them. Again, suppose a company names Flowers R US sues 1800flowers using trademark law and gets a court order directing the phone company to “give” them the phone number. This costs 1800flowers millions of dollars, even though no owned object was “Stolen” from them.

Or what if Flower R Us sues under trademark to get the domain 1800flowers.com from them? Why is that different, just b/c they use the UDRP? It’s all just a way of enforcing trademark.

I do think [something can have an objective market value without being ownable property]. Having 1800FLOWERS telephone number or domain is very valuable. how we would economically classify this valuable thing, I am not sure. I don’t think it’s a scarce good in the same way that rivlrous resources are, but not sure if it’s a nonscarce good either.

[Truth_and_Liberty]

I got involved in this thread to defend Ron Paul from the accusation that he is “using government to steal from his supporters”. Since Stephan now agrees with me and recognises that characterisation as inaccurate, I feel somewhat vindicated.

He agrees with me that the use of property-related terms (own, steal, aggress, homestead, etc) is only a metaphor when applied to domain names.

He agrees with me that domain names are not scarce – they are only “scarce-in-a-sense” – which is to say they are only scarce if we change (broaden) the definition of what the word means.

Personally I think introducing this “second sense” to all these terms is problematic. At the risk of being unwieldy, I think it is better to say what is actually meant rather than use metaphors.

As libertarians, we try to identify if actual, non-metaphorical aggression, the initiation of a coercion, has taken place. And if it has, then we try to identify the aggressors and the victim(s) of the aggression. If a person suffers “economic damage” but there is no aggression involved, then whoever inflicted that economic damage cannot be considered guilty of anything, other than perhaps being an asshole. We are not in the business of identifying assholes, but aggressors, and not metaphorical aggressors, but real ones. So I am looking for the real aggression.

A contract violation would be an example of aggression. Has anyone violated a contract in the RP case? No. If RP’s legal team are right, then the Wingate-ICANN contract contained a “famous person clause” allowing ICANN to terminate the contract without paying damages and switch from pointing RP.com to Wingate’s website to pointing RP.com to RP’s website.

SK says the problem is that RP is “using trademark law to change the contract someone has in a way that financially damages them”. But that isn’t the case. The contract is not going to be changed; the famous person clause, which is already written into the contract, is simply going to be invoked, assuming RP’s legal team are right that RP meets the famous person standard written into the contract.

If ICANN is to be viewed as a non-government organisation, and if it is true that the state imposed trademark law onto ICANN and forced them (aggressed against them) to write famous person clauses into their contracts, then the aggressor was the state and the aggressed-against party was ICANN, and this aggression took place long before RP made his complaint. On the other hand, if ICANN is to be viewed as an arm of the government, then we can’t say that the state aggressed against ICANN to force them to write famous person clauses into their contracts – one cannot aggress against oneself. The only aggression in this view is whatever aggression was/is used by the state to establish/maintain ICANN’s dominance in the domain-name-translation industry. This aggression also took place long before RP submitted his complaint, and continues whether or not RP makes his complaint. These are the only two instances of aggression I can identify associated with this issue.

You could then say that RP is taking advantage of a previous act of government aggression, or ongoing acts of government aggression. But this is far removed from saying that RP is “using government to steal”. And don’t all of us take advantage of a previous act of government aggression – by driving on subsidised roads, for example? Do hauliers “use government to steal”? Do welfare-recipients “use government to steal”? Do burger joint subsidy-recipients “use government to steal”? Is it a matter of degree – is there some boundary where if you take “too much advantage” of the state’s aggressive acts, you can then be said to be somehow complicit in the aggression?

Furthermore, if RP is a bad guy for taking advantage of a previous act of government aggression, then Tim Wingate is doing the same thing, as Clayton pointed out. His contract with ICANN would presumably not be worth nearly as much money if not for the government-privileged status that ICANN enjoys, so he would be benefiting considerably from state aggression if RP had agreed to pay him the $250k.

In any case, I think it could be argued that the state did not aggress against ICANN and force them to write the famous person clause into their contracts, because a free market ICANN could well have written such a famous person clause into their contracts voluntarily. ICANN-like organisations, operating in a free society, would have to decide on a policy for this, and it is not clear to me that they would not include famous person clauses in their contracts. Their business is about getting people to where they want to go, and the benefits they get from being good at directing people might outweigh the negatives of making domain registrants less secure in their registrations. We just don’t know what their policy would be. And a policy of writing contracts with a famous person clause is no ‘less libertarian’ than a policy of writing contracts without such a clause.

[ClaytonB]

they are only “scarce-in-a-sense”

I think this is the core of the debate - you have to either piss or get off the pot… either they are scarce goods, available in nature which can be homesteaded like any scarce good available in nature - or they are not. If they are not, then we may suppose they are private property (which can be allocated as the owner sees fit) or they are simply unownable. If you argue they are not private property because USG/ICANN created the artificial system in the first place, then you are accepting that domain-names are unownable. If, on the other hand, you assert they are not unownable, then you are accepting that they are private property of ICANN/USG in the same sense that national forests or other reserves are the property of USG.

If these alternatives are not to your taste, then you migh reach out in desperation and invent a new kind of quasi-IP that is “scarce-in-a-sense”… but still not IP. But, as has already been exhaustively argued, scarcity is not a sufficient condition for something to be ownable and property. Once you get into the details of what constitutes “homesteading” of these “scarce-in-a-sense” resources, you run smack into the wall of ICANN’s rules… which contractually permit ICANN to re-allocate these “scarce-in-a-sense” resources according to certain rules… the very rules Ron Paul is appealing to.

Clayton -

[Seraiah]

Hello. I was shocked when I heard what Ron Paul did from the AmazingAtheist, and since I know the AmazingAtheist is routinely wrong about alot of things I came to this forum hoping to learn more about the issue, and I think I now have a pretty good grasp on it.

This is a complicated issue, but I think it can be refined and wrapped up into a pleasant doobie.

A domain name is not property, and it can’t be classified as Intellectual Property because most of us know that Intellectual Property is a farce.

So what is a Domain Name? A Domain Name is nothing more than text that represents an IP Address.

The servers that provide these strings of text are private businesses certified and lorded over by ICANN, who holds a monopoly position in this regard.

Now, Ron Paul wants the Domain Name Servers to point to his IP Address when people go and look for RonPaul.com . He is requesting this of the service providers because they have a rule that would allow him to do this through an Intellectual Property argument (Trademark).

The point that Clayton, gotlucky, and Lew Rockwell are making is that this is a perfectly legitimate excercise of contract law. That if people decide voluntarily to contract with an agency that has in its provisions a rule that would alter a service disfavorably for one user and favorably for another, under the framework of Trademark law, then it is not against libertarianism to request that this rule be enforced.

The key point there is that it is completely voluntary. You may not know this, but Domain Names are not necessary for the internet to function. No one has to use the service to use the internet, and it is open to competition.

So, John James, what Ron Paul is doing is lawfully correct, even if we lived in a libertarian society. There’s no way around that.

However, the problem that John James and I have is that what Ron Paul has done is morally reprehensible.

An analogy would be an Atheist that preached that stealing was absolutely wrong and that no one should do it under any circumstances and he is in a homeowners association that in its provisions, that he agreed to, a homeowner may steal from his neighbor because in the bible it says that under a very specific circumstance he is justified in doing it.

Maybe he didn’t read the agreement, maybe at first he thought he would never make use of that rule, doesn’t matter. One day this Atheist decides he wants to use this rule to steal property from his neighbor.

If everyone agreed to this contract he would have the authority to go and steal from his neighbor under those specific circumstances. I don’t see how any arbitrator could make any other decision,

but the key point is that the Atheist is still a reprehensible douchebag because he went against his own beliefs to lawyer his way into legally doing harm to someone else.

Would that be a fair assessment?

[ClaytonB]

However, the problem that John James and I have is that what Ron Paul has done is morally reprehensible.

An analogy would be an Atheist that preached that stealing was absolutely wrong and that no one should do it under any circumstances and he is in a homeowners association that in its provisions, that he agreed to, a homeowner may steal from his neighbor because in the bible it says that under a very specific circumstance he is justified in doing it.

Maybe he didn’t read the agreement, maybe at first he thought he would never make use of that rule, doesn’t matter. One day this Atheist decides he wants to use this rule to steal property from his neighbor.

If everyone agreed to this contract he would have the authority to go and steal from his neighbor under those specific circumstances. I don’t see how any arbitrator could make any other decision,

but the key point is that the Atheist is still a reprehensible douchebag because he went against his own beliefs to lawyer his way into legally doing harm to someone else.

Would that be a fair assessment?

No, because you’re injecting morality into something that, in my view, is essentially amoral. I earlier gave the illustration of a government-created parking lot with numbered parking spaces, which I think closely mirrors this situation. We could change my original scenario slightly and say that the spaces are name-able but the names have to be unique (again, according to the government’s monkey-brained rules)… and let’s say there is a parking space named “Ron Paul” and a vendor has set up a little van where he sells Ron Paul promo items.

The parking lot becomes a popular destination for buying trinkets, etc. and then Ron Paul later asks to have his name in the parking lot. The government administrators inform him that the names have to be unique, so he can’t have “Ron Paul”, it has to be something else like “Ron Paul’s Official Parking Space” or whatever. The current occupiers of the Ron Paul space do not agree to hand the space over for the price they paid for it but ask to be paid a large sum of money to move - a fair request in itself, even though Ron Paul rejects the purchase price.

Now, Ron Paul decides that he’s going to file the paperwork to have the Ron Paul parking space assigned to him on the grounds that his name is notable enough that it is essentially a trademark and the rules of the big parking lot are that trademarks can’t be “squatted”, that is, the trademark-owner can later come and have the space reassigned. These were “the rules from the beginning”… everybody who signs up for the parking spaces knows this is how the game works. There are no surprises here.

Who’s right here? Who’s wrong? I don’t think anyone really is morally right or wrong, either way. If the current occupiers of the space keep it, this doesn’t prevent Ron Paul from setting up shop and doing business… he just has to choose a different space. So, it’s not like they are actively aggressing against him in any way. But it’s a mistake to conclude from this that, therefore, Ron Paul is aggressing against them to file to have the space re-assigned to him. After all, precisely the same logic applies the other way around: Ron Paul is not doing anything that will prevent them from going on doing business as before. They will just have to move over to another space.

And as a pure matter of bargaining strategy, I can’t see how Ron Paul wouldn’t file something - if they say “$250k” and he says, “$100k”, why should they respond with anything less than, “As we said, $250k”? Without filing these papers, he has absolutely no leverage from which to bargain. My hope is that they will settle the matter through peaceful and reasonable negotiations.

As always, we can thank our wise overlords for creating completely unnecessary conflicts as the inevitable consequence of policies they implement in the pursuit of other goals, such as global domination of telecommunication and intentional weakening of telecom information-security models, etc.

Clayton -

[ClaytonB]

Here’s a hypothetical to challenge those who are opposed to Ron Paul’s actions in this situation, to try to diagnose if you’re actually applying property/morality rules or something else. Imagine that, instead of sympathetic fans selling pro-Ron Paul merchandise, that someone of the Daily Kos persuasion or whatever, had registered the site a long time back. They post all sorts of materials demonizing Ron Paul, demonizing liberty, and sell anti-Ron Paul, anti-liberty trinkets and promo items - all pro-state, pro-welfare, pro-tyranny, anti-market, etc.

In that case, would you still object to Ron Paul filing these papers to try to have the ronpaul.com domain reassigned to himself, in accordance with ICANN rules? In that case, I can say I would whole-heartedly support him and might even contribute to that end - but I would still see it as an amoral issue… I would not think that Ron Paul should get the domain because “it’s really, actually his.” In the current case, my support is ambivalent because both parties are operating the domain for aligned interests and they both have a commercial stake in it and the whole conflict is a consequence of lobotomized government interference in the telecom industry.

Clayton -

[Seraiah]

I get what you’re saying, Clayton, but the John James and Kinsella see clearly is the hypocrisy of a man that has spent 30 years defending the principals of libertarianism, standing up and making an argument based on Trademark Law ( Which is rejected by Libertarians) to economically damage his own supporters.

Imagine there was a pacifist that stood every day on a pulpit and talked about how violence is always illegitimate, but one day his wife is murdered and the murderer is apprehended. According to the society he has every right to have the man killed and he does have him killed!

What should the followers of this man feel about this? They’d think he’s a fraud and a hypocrite. They’d feel betrayed. At the very least they’d say he’s a man that either doesn’t understand or doesn’t follow his own principals.

Or how would you feel if there was a man, that spoke about how evil headhunting and cannibalism is, flying over to a tribe in Africa to participate in head hunting and cannibalism? He might argue that he’s in a society that accepts these things, and that he’s just taking advantage of their own moral depravity. That it doesn’t say anything about his own moral character or the society in which he would want to live in. He just does it because, hey, it’s fun and it tastes good and they all believe in it.

What should the followers of this man feel about this? They’d think he’s a fraud and a hypocrite. They’d feel betrayed. At the very least they’d say he’s a man that either doesn’t understand or doesn’t follow his own principals.

And now we have Ron Paul using Trademark Law, agreed to in a voluntary contract, to gain leverage against someone because he happens to live in a society that largely sees Trademark Law as legitimate.

What should the followers of this man feel about this? They’d think he’s a fraud and a hypocrite. They’d feel betrayed. At the very least they’d say he’s a man that either doesn’t understand or doesn’t follow his own principals.

Ron Paul should be petitioning ICANN to remove the section that allows people to gain a Domain Name based on Trademark Law, not using it to his advantage because he can get away with it. (Though I’m sure Kinsella is right when he says Ron Paul will lose this case.)

If you look at this as a private law dispute, Ron Paul is insisting on a non-libertarian arbitrator under a non-libertarian argument to rule in his favor because the person he is disputing with is non-libertarian and because it is to his economic advantage.

We have a name for people that will say anything to get their way: A politician.

Not an honest politician, not the best politician since Thomas Jefferson, not a principled politician. Just a politician. And I, for one, expected better.

[ClaytonB]

I get what you’re saying, Clayton, but the John James and Kinsella see clearly is the hypocrisy of a man that has spent 30 years defending the principals of libertarianism, standing up and making an argument based on Trademark Law ( Which is rejected by Libertarians) to economically damage his own supporters.

You’re simply assuming the argument: that his actions are immoral. I’ve clearly lined out why I believe it is an amoral situation.

Imagine there was a pacifist that stood every day on a pulpit and talked about how violence is always illegitimate, but one day his wife is murdered and the murderer is apprehended. According to the society he has every right to have the man killed and he does have him killed!

Yeah, that’s exactly like what is happening with ronpaul.com. Exactly.

What should the followers of this man feel about this? They’d think he’s a fraud and a hypocrite. They’d feel betrayed. At the very least they’d say he’s a man that either doesn’t understand or doesn’t follow his own principals.

Principle. Principal means something else.

Or how would you feel if there was a man that spoke about how evil headhunting and cannibalism and is then flying over to a tribe in Africa to participate in head hunting and cannibalism? He might argue that he’s in a society that accepts these things, and that he’s just taking advantage of their own moral depravity. That it doesn’t say anything about his own moral character or the society in which he would want to live in. He just does it because, hey, it’s fun and it tastes good and they all believe in it.

Your posts are very enlightening, I especially like the parts where you make analogies that do not resemble the topic under discussion in any way shape or form.

And now we have Ron Paul using Trademark Law, agreed to in a voluntary contract, to gain leverage against someone because he happens to live in a society that largely sees Trademark Law as legitimate.

Please quote the passage where Ron Paul has indicated that he is anti-IP / anti-trademark law. I don’t think Ron Paul is anti-IP, so how can his use of IP law possibly be an example of hypocrisy?

What should the followers of this man feel about this? They’d think he’s a fraud and a hypocrite. They’d feel betrayed. At the very least they’d say he’s a man that either doesn’t understand or doesn’t follow his own principals.

You’re not Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., you know.

Ron Paul should be petitioning ICANN to remove the section that allows people to gain a Domain Name based on Trademark Law, not using it to his advantage because he can get away with it. (Though I’m sure Kinsella is right when he says Ron Paul will lose this case.)

If you look at this as a private law dispute, Ron Paul is insisting on a non-libertarian arbitrator under a non-libertarian argument to rule in his favor because the person he is disputing with is non-libertarian and because it is to his economic advantage.

There is so much distortion in these two paragraphs, it boggles the mind.

Clayton -

[Seraiah]

@Clayton

Your posts are very enlightening, I especially like the parts where you make analogies that do not resemble the topic under discussion in any way shape or form.

It closely resembles it. In all cases they are teachers of a moral philosophy that are making decisions that they can get away with because they are making those decisions in a society that has a moral philosophy that they openly reject.

@Clayton

You’re not Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., you know.

I’m repeating myself alot because what I’ve found is that unless you repeat the same point again and again and again, you can’t get your point across. There will always be some semantic garbage that will come out in any one particular instance, but taken as a whole should demonstrate my point.

I used to always wonder why older writings, like Thomas Jefferson, or the Bible, or heck any old philosopher, would repeat themselves again and again, but it’s really not a mystery anymore. Language is imprecise and messy.

@Seraiah

If you look at this as a private law dispute, Ron Paul is insisting on a non-libertarian arbitrator under a non-libertarian argument to rule in his favor because the person he is disputing with is non-libertarian and because it is to his economic advantage.

I did want to amend that. Ron Paul is using a non-libertarian arbitrator to arbitrate a non-libertarian argument because he happens to be in a situation in which he can get away with it. Really his opponent is forced to argue from a non-libertarian position because they are disputing a contract that is distinctly non-libertarian.

Other than that, I don’t know what’s distorted.

[ClaytonB]

a moral philosophy that they openly reject.

Please cite when/where Ron Paul has “openly rejected” IP.

Clayton -

[Seraiah]

I said he was either ignorant or a hypocrite.

So you’re going with ignorant?

Either way, it’s a bad situation when one of your best cheerleaders is making a mockery of your team.

[ClaytonB]

You said that you and others clearly see Ron Paul’s hypocrisy. That statement was not qualified or conjuncted with another logical possibility. If you want to change your statement now, that’s fine, but don’t pretend you said he’s “either hypocrite or ignorant” when anyone can scroll up and see you said no such thing.

So, given your new claim that Ron Paul is either a hypocrite or ignorant, and that you have not cited any place where Ron Paul has opposed IP, what is it that you are then asserting Ron Paul is ignorant of?

Clayton -

[h.k]

@Clayton

You said that you and others clearly see Ron Paul’s hypocrisy. That statement was not qualified or conjuncted with another logical possibility. If you want to change your statement now, that’s fine, but don’t pretend you said he’s “either hypocrite or ignorant” when anyone can scroll up and see you said no such thing.

So, given your new claim that Ron Paul is either a hypocrite or ignorant, and that you have not cited any place where Ron Paul has opposed IP, what is it that you are then asserting Ron Paul is ignorant of?

Clayton -

At this point it doesn’t matter, he’s taken the incorrect position. Ronpaul.com seems to have homesteaded their website to a higher degree than Ron Paul has, according to Libertarian principles. Further he’s wrong about IP, which is also not defendable.

[excel]

At this point it doesn’t matter, he’s taken the incorrect position. Ronpaul.com seems to have homesteaded their website to a higher degree than Ron Paul has, according to Libertarian principles. Further he’s wrong about IP, which is also not defendable.

I don’t understand this point. ronpaul.com is not a place, and it’s not connected in any meaningful way to the server that houses the data that makes up the content that you access through the use of the dns beyond actually having a reference to that IP address.

The true owner of the “ronpaul.com → IP-address” row that exists in some database somewhere must at this point be whoever owns that database, which is the agency with whom ron paul has filed his complaint, but further than that, it also belongs to every DNS provider who have ronpaul.com pointing to the specific IP address of the server of the ronpaul.com site.

The only property rights ron paul is able to infringe on in such a case would be that of the DNS providers, not of the ronpaul.com server owners, and he is not attempting to do that. (Ie, the clause he’s using to have them change the row in the database is one set out by the database owners themselves for these kinds of scenarios.)

The traffic-sign analogy is extremely apt in this situation. The ronpaul.com website server is a farm. The owners of the farm have paid the owners of a series of traffic signs to point to the farm. ron paul wants the signs to point to some other place.

The question is whether the farm-owner or the traffic sign company owns the sign. In this case, the traffic sign company still owns the sign.

[Seraiah]

@Clayton

You said that you and others clearly see Ron Paul’s hypocrisy. That statement was not qualified or conjuncted with another logical possibility.

@Seraiah

What should the followers of this man feel about this? They’d think he’s a fraud and a hypocrite. They’d feel betrayed. At the very least they’d say he’s a man that either doesn’t understand or doesn’t follow his own principals.

Not only did I say it, but I repeated it three times and then you mocked me for doing it!

Do you understand the concept of Ceteris Paribus? Go to this wikipedia entry and read the philosophy section. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceteris_paribus

So what if I didn’t address every possible scenario that could explain Ron Pauls actions at the outset?

Prima Facie Ron Paul is doing something that is hypocritical, Ceteris Paribus. He may also be ignorant of what he’s doing, that doesn’t strengthen Ron Pauls case, especially when he’s been a standard bearer for Libertarianism for more than 30 years.

I think a good exercise for you would be to read what I say and then arrange it in such a way that it makes logical sense to you. Not because I never make mistakes, but because we could spend months criticizing eachothers semantics and never get to any conclusion other than the English language is imprecise.

[ClaytonB]

At this point it doesn’t matter, he’s taken the incorrect position.

This is neither here nor there - Seraiah’s assertion was that Ron Paul is a hypocrite (or ignorant), both of which are independent of the correctness/incorrectness of one’s beliefs or actions.

Clayton -

[ClaytonB]

Not because I never make mistakes, but because we could spend months criticizing eachothers semantics and never get to any conclusion other than the English language is imprecise.

It is as precise as you choose to make it. The snippet you quoted does not say or imply “Ron Paul is either a hypocrite or ignorant”, you said a hypothetical person (not Ron Paul) who committed murder or cannibalism or whatever - after saying murder or cannibalism is wrong - would be viewed by people as a fraud and they would think he either doesn’t understand or follow his own principles. I’ll entertain your attempt to rewrite history far enough to point out that “doesn’t understand” is cognitive, whereas “ignorance” is epistemic. But, in any case, none of those three paragraphs were actually talking about Ron Paul, they were all addressing the hypothetical characters you created in three different strawman scenarios that could not possibly have less to do with ronpaul.com.

Which brings us back to my last post, which you did not address. Either Ron Paul is (a) a hypocrite, or (b) he is ignorant. The conditions for one of these clauses to be true are:

a) Show when/where Ron Paul has expressed opposition to IP/trademark law (and is now using it)

b) Explain what Ron Paul is ignorant of

I’m not holding my breath for any sort of “precise” answer…

Clayton -

[h.k]

@excel

At this point it doesn’t matter, he’s taken the incorrect position. Ronpaul.com seems to have homesteaded their website to a higher degree than Ron Paul has, according to Libertarian principles. Further he’s wrong about IP, which is also not defendable.

I don’t understand this point. ronpaul.com is not a place, and it’s not connected in any meaningful way to the server that houses the data that makes up the content that you access through the use of the dns beyond actually having a reference to that IP address.

The true owner of the “ronpaul.com → IP-address” row that exists in some database somewhere must at this point be whoever owns that database, which is the agency with whom ron paul has filed his complaint, but further than that, it also belongs to every DNS provider who have ronpaul.com pointing to the specific IP address of the server of the ronpaul.com site.

The only property rights ron paul is able to infringe on in such a case would be that of the DNS providers, not of the ronpaul.com server owners, and he is not attempting to do that. (Ie, the clause he’s using to have them change the row in the database is one set out by the database owners themselves for these kinds of scenarios.)

The traffic-sign analogy is extremely apt in this situation. The ronpaul.com website server is a farm. The owners of the farm have paid the owners of a series of traffic signs to point to the farm. ron paul wants the signs to point to some other place.

The question is whether the farm-owner or the traffic sign company owns the sign. In this case, the traffic sign company still owns the sign.

Forgive my laziness, but could you clarify exactly what he wants to do? It STILL sounds like a partial IP case at best.

Yes he wants to change just one row in the DNS server database, if I understood you correctly, but this will mean he now owns ronpaul.com, corrrect? I see no reason why he should own it more than the current owners of ronpaul.com

I understand the illegitimacy of our current domain name system, your post was somewhat not clear though. Having to choose between two parties, the current owners of ronpaul.com seem to have a more legitimate claim.

The most fundamental argument was not addressed, at best no one should be able to have any domain names then. Ron Paul is not entitled to anything from a traffic sign company.