That might work if the domain name system actually operated like a free market, but it doesn't. The domain name system is a complex, centrally administered monopoly, and disputes involving it necessarily have to be resolved within that system, even by people who disapprove of that system.
There was a free market alternative: Pay the $250,000 Ron Paul's supporters were asking for a site they had spent years working on.
More importantly, the DNS system itself isn't a free market system, it is a monopoly governed by artificial and imposed legal rules and oversight. Given that the domain name system operates outside the free market, it is reasonable for people to seek remedies through the channels that actually administer it.
Which Ron Paul abused in bad faith (see the ruling) to attempt to take someone else's private property by force. Now, who doesn't understand libertarianism very well?
One example come to mind immediately:
A notorious controversy is that after spending most of her life claiming that social security, medicare and other government programs were irredeemably evil, she signed up for both social security and medicare shortly after she became eligible to use them. Many people would conclude that she was only morally against wealth transfers when they flowed away from her.
But he didn't cross his stated principles.
Yes it did. He tried to use government to force to transfer ownership of private property to himself. It's a betrayal of everything he claims to stand for (and it's not the first time he's betrayed the principles he claims to hold). It's also pretty stupid to turn on your supporters in such a hypocritical way. The Libertarain solution would have been to start a kickstarter (or other) campaign to raise the money to buy the domain if he wasn't willing to pay the money out of pocket or out of an election campaign fund.
Actually, "finder keepers" is pretty much one of the core principles of libertarianism (and the free market) and one of the major reasons why other groups despise libertarian ethics. To libertarians, it shouldn't matter whether property is unique or not. According to the stated principles of all major branches of libertarianism, it is unethical to take someone's property by force unless it was acquired through violence or fraud. It is the most important and fundamental belief that all of libertarian philosophy is based on.
Furthermore, the people in question are Ron Paul's supporters, who believe they should be compensated for the work they've done in building the web site which Ron Paul now wants to control. The short-sightedness and hypocrisy boggle the mind.
All politicians are liars. Yes, *ALL* of them.
Of course, you don't elected without telling some lies.
They're just sociopaths who've learned to leverage their charisma to exert control.
Most of them aren't actually sociopaths, though politics is a career that will attract more than it's fair share of sociopaths. Interestingly, the other profession that attract more than it's fair share of sociopaths is corporate management.
Clinton probably would have bought the domain and the mailing list. She's smart enough to know that starting legal proceedings against your own supporters is a generally a bad idea. The reasons this is news, is it's one of the most libertarian American politicians trying (and failing) to use the heavy boot of government to get around the free market.
It's the betrayal of Ron Paul's professed core principles over the fairly trivial matter of a domain name that is the real news.
You can buy the game for less than the cost of new (or again whats the point) for a digitally identical product (no worrying about does it actually work) and do it instantly from your living room.
If they did that, the publishers would revolt. Think about it, Microsoft would be selling digital copies of the game for less than retail and probably not obliged to give any of the money back to the publisher. Of course, I suppose they could split the money three ways, but if you're getting less than a third of the retail price of the game in exchange for trading it, is it still worth it? An allternative way I see this working is if Microsoft allows you to "return" digitally downloaded games for a small refund in Microsoft dollars (M$) which can only be spent on other Xbox digital purchases. The carrot is the ability to get money for returned games, the stick is you can only spend the money on the Xbox. Lock-in achieved.
They are a symptom of the underlying problem; government doesn't know how to make tax law.
Do you suppose they might be making a fuss about the loopholes so that people get upset enough that they will be allowed to close them? Remember, Grover Norquist opposes closing tax loopholes unless the base rate of taxes is lowered to compensate for the increased revenue and he owns the balls of the entire Republican party.
Except, according to the shell company game that Apple is playing, revenues generated in the U.S. are actually generated in "no country" at all. In fact, the U.S. branch of Apple probably has gigantic expenses that it owes to another branch of the company that operates in international waters (or the Cayman Islands, or Ireland) for the use of the trademark "Apple". It's a shame, if that other part of the company operating out of international waters weren't so darn greedy, the American branch of Apple might be able to turn a profit*.
* This may be a slight exageration, but it's an example of one of the tricks that Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other companies use to hide local revenues from local jurisdictions.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- Albert Einstein
