He could have bought back his own name for $848,000

This involves US politician Ron Paul, but it's not a political thread and has nothing to do with his political views.

It's a story about domain squatting, the business of registering domain names in hopes of being able to sell them later. Usually, the domain name is that of a company or individual. It's a common practice, and is illegal in the US after many companies (e.g. Lufthansa) and people (e.g. Donald Trump) were forced to buy their own names back at ridiculous prices lest they become attached to porn sites or advertising link sites.

In this latest case, the person whose name was stolen (and used to sell T-shirts) was Ron Paul. The original registrar sold ronpaul.org and ronpaul.com on eBay for $25,000 in 2008. The buyer subsequently offered to sell them to Ron Paul the person for $848,000. That offer was refused, and was then knocked down to $250,000. That's when Mr. Paul sought arbitration.

Here's the arbitration ruling: http://domainnamewire.com/wp-content/paul-2.pdf. It's interesting reading.

The rules are pretty straightforward, and the con artist appears to have met every requirement for being forced to give up (or sell at a more reasonable price) the domain names. However, Mr. Paul lost the case. The ruling was that because the not-Ron Paul domain registrar included a disclaimer on his website (where Ron Paul T-shirts were being hawked) saying he wasn't R.P. and didn't know R.P., that he was therefore off the hook.

Now, I'm sure bapu wouldn't care if I registered bapu.com and leased it to a porn site, as long as I gave him free access. But normal people might take offense. Ian Anderson did when JethroTull.com was hijacked (he won). Imagine Steinberg registering Cakewalk.net. 

You can never tell what'll happen to yor good name on the interweb.  Back when I was makin ol Pete Gabriel so miserable with my remix of his Shock The Monkey, Newsweek did a story on us winners and they said I was a dang blues band from California!!!  I have always been myownself and myownself only.  No band would ever have me.  Go figure.

That there's my ol pal Haze Motes speakin through the pen of the incomparable Flannery O'Conner.

You know what sucks? MLB owns the rights to a sight named after me.

I'm still trying to figure out how credit reporting services can get away with selling information about me and my activities for a profit without compensating me.

You are the owner of your name everywhere, period.

You may be the owner of your own identity, but your "name" is a different issue altogether. Aside from the obvious conflict in exclusive ownership of common names (will the real John Brown please stand up), the US federal intellectual property statues are almost mute on the subject. As noted in this case, the common law (and in some cases the registered) trademark may not carry the day in specific circumstances. There is no protection of a name under copyright.

The various states and nations have a hodgepodge of statutes and decisions under various theories such as "invasion of privacy," "right of publicity," fraud etc. It is not easy to figure out if you have any right to stop someone from exploiting your name for gain in a given jurisdiction, and conversely not easy to avoid entanglements by using your own name in situations where it conflicts with someone else's claim of exploitation rights to that name. There is plenty of case law in which a person has been prevented from using his own birth name when someone else has trademarked or otherwise laid claim to the same name for purposes of exploitation.

But a name is just a word, so that makes sense, right? There is even case law that has found that a likeness, and even a voice that looks or sounds sufficiently like a protected persona may violate intellectual property rights of the person you look or sound like. For example if everyone says your singing sounds exactly like Tom Jones, and you make a commercial that might mislead listeners into thinking the song is being performed by Tom Jones, you may run into trouble. The "identity" you think you own may be more limited than you think.

John Smith 1, John Smith 2, ... etc. There are numerous ways to add a unique identifier to your name. A problem to be sure, especially when the ownership of Meta-tags is going on. Trying to get around re-directs can ruin traffic to a website. Every time a new resort opens in Vegas, cyber clowns attempt to buy the domain names for the resort and sell them back for enormous amounts of money. I see it as outright theft. When your name and the associated product you are selling connected to your name is involved, I look at it as identity theft, and the attempt to sell it back to you as extortion.

paulo


Would be cheaper to change your own name.  
 

Ya.  That's what I did.  I used to be Craig B.

paulo

craigb

paulo


Would be cheaper to change your own name.  
 

Ya.  That's what I did.  I used to be Craig B.

Well, that was £13.39 well spent.
 
Now I just have to figure out who I really am.

Major Major Major?

SteveStrummerUK


Interesting stuff.

On a similar line, didn't some guy back in the 90s have the forethought to register 21st Century Fox as a name in the hope he could sell it for a huge profit?

Yeah, that was me........well, it would have been if I'd thought of it before the other guy. Not to worry, I spent all my savings buying 22nd Century Fox instead, so I'll clean up next time....he, he.....
 
Oh, wait......................................D'oh !!