VIDEO: Ron Paul files suit for RonPaul.com (Fox News)

[sailingaway]

Only the trademark holder gets to decide what sites are associated with the trademark.

We have seen lots of people come here and address their posts to Ron. Apparently this site confuses them.

I haven't. I think I've seen one and the nature of the site was that they were immediately not only set straight but laughed at. NO media has that I am aware of, and in fact media has frequently mentioned this site and daily paul as supporter discussion sites, whereas media has numerous times confused ronpaul.com as Ron's site.

 

[fr33]

A case could be made against this site but it would probably be weaker than ronpaul(dot)com. Lucky thing is Ron is just looking for a homepage to post his work.

I don't like the ICANN on principle but the domain owner agreed to their rules when they had the domain transferred to them. They are not supporters. They are profiteers, which is fine but, don't call yourself supporters if your main goal is to make money off Ron Paul's name rather than help Ron Paul get his message out.

 

[CaptLouAlbano]

A case could be made against this site but it would probably be weaker than ronpaul(dot)com. Lucky thing is Ron is just looking for a homepage to post his work.

I don't like the ICANN on principle but the domain owner agreed to their rules when they had the domain transferred to them. They are not supporters. They are profiteers, which is fine but, don't call yourself supporters if your main goal is to make money off Ron Paul's name rather than help Ron Paul get his message out.

Is the owner of the Daily Paul a supporter or a profiteer? They have some pretty decent ad fees on their site, and since the site is filled with ads, it appears no one there is scraping together change to put gas in their car.

http://www.dailypaul.com/advertise

According to their ad page at https://www.buyads.com/website/daily-paul, they have 2 million page views per month. Now looking at the three CPM ads they offer they are bringing in $10 per 1000 views for those ad spots. Do the math and that is $20,000 per month from just those three ads.

 

[CPUd]

Is the owner of the Daily Paul a supporter or a profiteer? They have some pretty decent ad fees on their site, and since the site is filled with ads, it appears no one there is scraping together change to put gas in their car.

http://www.dailypaul.com/advertise

According to their ad page at https://www.buyads.com/website/daily-paul, they have 2 million page views per month. Now looking at the three CPM ads they offer they are bringing in $10 per 1000 views for those ad spots. Do the math and that is $20,000 per month from just those three ads.

http://www.dailypaul.com/270457/the-daily-paul-needs-your-help-fundraiser

It takes quite a bit to run that site, I blame it on Drupal

 

[fr33]

Is the owner of the Daily Paul a supporter or a profiteer? They have some pretty decent ad fees on their site, and since the site is filled with ads, it appears no one there is scraping together change to put gas in their car.

http://www.dailypaul.com/advertise

According to their ad page at https://www.buyads.com/website/daily-paul, they have 2 million page views per month. Now looking at the three CPM ads they offer they are bringing in $10 per 1000 views for those ad spots. Do the math and that is $20,000 per month from just those three ads.

vs

 

[CaptLouAlbano]

vs

So what? It is his website and he can choose to solicit for email addresses if he wishes. It is not mandatory to enter the site and there is a clear disclaimer at the bottom. Nothing wrong there.

And that doesn't address the question. If DP is making $20K per month off those three ad spots, plus the other ads, plus the donations does that make the owner a supporter or profiteer?

 

[sailingaway]

So what? It is his website and he can choose to solicit for email addresses if he wishes. It is not mandatory to enter the site and there is a clear disclaimer at the bottom. Nothing wrong there.

And that doesn't address the question. If DP is making $20K per month off those three ad spots, plus the other ads, plus the donations does that make the owner a supporter or profiteer?

maybe it doesn't turn only on those questions.

I don't see confusion there, as to who owns it which is part of the basis of the ICANN claim.

Also, people's views as to who is a supporter are personal. You can have your own view. Some saw this guy as a supporter until he seemed to hold Ron up for an unreasonable price and started to smear Ron with at best misleading stuff on the internet. Your mileage may vary.

 

[fr33]

vs

 

[fr33]

So what? It is his website and he can choose to solicit for email addresses if he wishes. It is not mandatory to enter the site and there is a clear disclaimer at the bottom. Nothing wrong there.

And that doesn't address the question. If DP is making $20K per month off those three ad spots, plus the other ads, plus the donations does that make the owner a supporter or profiteer?

I've given two examples that clearly show one site is trying to fool people and the other isn't. The media never said dailypaul was his site but they did on multiple occasions for ronpaul(dot)com

 

[CaptLouAlbano]

Also, people's views as to who is a supporter are personal. You can have your own view. Some saw this guy as a supporter until he seemed to hold Ron up for an unreasonable price and started to smear Ron with at best misleading stuff on the internet. Your mileage may vary.

Unreasonable price is subjective. Do the DP math. 20K in ads per month, a fundraiser for another 40K, subscriptions, Amazon affiliate links, other ads. I can't crunch all the numbers but we could be talking about $400K in yearly revenue. If the ronpaul.com guy is doing $100K per year, who's to say that 2.5 years earnings is unreasonable - in fact that would be quite low.

Remember you cannot value this solely on the value of the .com. It is the business, and whether or not Ron wants that is inconsequential to what the owner might want to get for walking away from it all. As I said earlier today, ronpaulforums is valued by one service at only $7100. Would Josh sell the whole kit and caboodle for $7100? I doubt it.

 

[CaptLouAlbano]

I've given two examples that clearly show one site is trying to fool people and the other isn't. The media never said dailypaul was his site but they did on multiple occasions for ronpaul(dot)com

People are fooled if they cannot read what is clearly before them. He is compliant and that is all that matters.

 

[sailingaway]

People are fooled if they cannot read what is clearly before them. He is compliant and that is all that matters.

actually, the rules quoted earlier for cybersquatting discuss confusion and they take all facts into consideration, the way it looks the contents, the size of any disclaimer, whether people were actually confused etc in IP cases and I would assume they would do the same in the ICANN claim. But that would be for the arbitration to decide and I hope it doesn't get that far.

 

[KingRobbStark]

Very disappointed in Ron Paul (even though I know its not specifically RP, but he should start taking responsibility for those acting in his name), not because he wan'ts control of the site, but because he's going to the institution he wants to abolish for being unconstitutional i.e. unlawful.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

lol Ron Paul's sure off to a great start at ruining his legacy.

There you go blaming Ron Paul for what the media is doing.

 

[CaptLouAlbano]

actually, the rules quoted earlier for cybersquatting discuss confusion and they take all facts into consideration, the way it looks the contents, the size of any disclaimer, whether people were actually confused etc in IP cases and I would assume they would do the same in the ICANN claim. But that would be for the arbitration to decide and I hope it doesn't get that far.

The way I understand cybersquatting, and I am no expert on it, is that it is more so for registered trademarks (which Ron does not have being a politician), and where the person "squatting" has no intention of building a site, but just sits on the domain name. Kind of like if one of us bought pepsi.com before Pepsico was able to register it, and then demanded $1 million for the name.

I think where Ron loses on this is that 1) he does not have a trademark claim, and 2) the site owner is not acting in bad faith since he put up a legitimate news and info site focused around the subject of the domain. If I could wager on this, I would bet the arbitration rules in favor of the site owner, but we shall see.

 

[CaptLouAlbano]

Very disappointed in Ron Paul (even though I know its not specifically RP, but he should start taking responsibility for those acting in his name), not because he wan'ts control of the site, but because he's going to the institution he wants to abolish for being unconstitutional i.e. unlawful.

His signature is on the affidavit.

I realize people want to believe that Ron is innocent in all this and it is his handlers that are forcing this issue, but he is fully aware of what is going on and signed the paperwork on this.

 

[sailingaway]

His signature is on the affidavit.

Yeah, but he would have been relying on people who know about this stuff that he trusts, most likely. He sure doesn't know about it.

 

[CPUd]

Unreasonable price is subjective. Do the DP math. 20K in ads per month, a fundraiser for another 40K, subscriptions, Amazon affiliate links, other ads. I can't crunch all the numbers but we could be talking about $400K in yearly revenue. If the ronpaul.com guy is doing $100K per year, who's to say that 2.5 years earnings is unreasonable - in fact that would be quite low.

Remember you cannot value this solely on the value of the .com. It is the business, and whether or not Ron wants that is inconsequential to what the owner might want to get for walking away from it all. As I said earlier today, ronpaulforums is valued by one service at only $7100. Would Josh sell the whole kit and caboodle for $7100? I doubt it.

For whatever they are grossing, DP doesn't net much. I read somewhere over there that they have paid staff maintaining the site. It does get a relatively large amount of traffic, and hosting alone would be expensive. But it goes a long way that their site owner is somewhat transparent about how the site operates.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

I've never known libertarians to complain about people making too much money. I hope they are getting filthy rich off the site, but in reality revenue is probably something like 5k/month, which puts Cowlesy's 5x estimate right in the ballpark.

You haven't? You obviously haven't been around here long enough because people do it all the time here.

 

[fr33]

People are fooled if they cannot read what is clearly before them. He is compliant and that is all that matters.

Nope. He posted blog posts using the name Ron Paul as if that person were posting them. After this fiasco started he changed the format to ronpaul.com as the account instead of Ron Paul. He was clearly trying to fool people.