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People who lawfully own a domain -- even if in a speculative fashion -- are not domain squatters. If you had a hot new product called CyberTrk and someone ran

People who lawfully own a domain -- even if in a speculative fashion -- are not domain squatters. If you had a hot new product called CyberTrk and someone ran and registered cybertrk.com, that is arguably squatting and can be legally enforced as such. If you have what you think is a great new online notepad and notes.com is sitting registered but dormant, the inelegant but reasonable way to respond to your situation is "tough shit". Keep looking. 99% of the time that people rant about "squatting" they're talking about the latter case. Yet they are not entitled to a domain because of some imagined better use for it. Sorry for the rant, but misclaims about "Squatting" lead to an iffy area where people have a profound misunderstanding about property rights. I have zero "parked" domains, but contemplating the issue long ago made me less outraged when I lazily searched for the most blatantly obvious domains.

pjc50 7y ago
Internet domains are not property, and to the extent they are, they are all the property of ICANN. The delegation system is somewhere between leasing and feudalism. You can tell it's not property because the one thing that's guaranteed to result in losing a domain is failing to pay the fees. The idea that first registration entitles someone to (a) waste a finite resource forever and (b) sell it at arbitrary prices later was fought out in the early 00s, and the real WIPO trademark system won. A number of people who had squatted the names of famous companies in hope of extorting a payout were disappointed.
- endorphone 7y ago
  "You can tell it's not property because the one thing that's guaranteed to result in losing a domain is failing to pay the fees." Don't pay your property taxes and you lose your property. Courts have argued that domains are property countless times, and they are treated absolutely as such. They are in the sense of contract law, with rights and grants, but obviously are a virtual good, of sorts. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=016ee90b-496e-4a68-858a-956181932060 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=016ee90b-496e... "The idea that first registration entitles someone to (a) waste a finite resource forever and (b) sell it at arbitrary prices later was fought out in the early 00s, and the real WIPO trademark system won." I specifically excluded trademark infringement, so why are you arguing that case? But yes, someone can "waste a finite resource forever" (by paying the same fee that a "useful" use of it would). Those are the rules of the game.
  - Silhouette 7y ago
    Those are the rules of the game. That may be true according to the current authorities running the show, but clearly those rules are far beyond their useful lifetime now. For practical purposes, domains often function as a primary form of identification, for websites, email and other functions. Both the domain registrant and anyone trying to reach them have a reasonable expectation that the identity in question will not silently and suddenly be changed, a huge amount of everyday activity now depends on that expectation, and the consequences of violating it can be severe. We are well past the point where such critical infrastructure should not be in the hands of private businesses or individuals without sufficient regulation to safeguard the common good.
  - marcus_holmes 7y ago
    > Those are the rules of the game. I don't think anyone disagrees that those are the rules we have. I think everyone who actually creates websites thinks those rules are not working as intended and should be changed. I refuse to believe that having speculators pay for thousands and thousands of empty domains is "working as intended".
    - rhizome 7y ago
      There's no shortage of possible company and product names without a failure of imagination.
      - marcus_holmes 7y ago
        well, yeah, I get that. I spent 3 months trying to come up with something decent for the last one, and it did drive a lot of imaginative thinking about the brand, which was actually useful. I'm more thinking of the waste and expense. Clogging up infrastructure with utterly useless "holding pages". People spending vast amounts in registration fees in the hope of getting that big win. And that big win being at the expense of a company that genuinely needs the name but is forced to spend massively more than it needs to in order to get it. If this was what was intended, then whoever designed it was evil.
  - 7y ago
- ben509 7y ago
  > You can tell it's not property because the one thing that's guaranteed to result in losing a domain is failing to pay the fees. There's a sibling comment that points out that courts recognize it as property, and certainly trademarks are a similar "property" that requires active enforcement. But while the law is a good authority because they've gone through many disputes and have had to work out good arguments, I don't think it's the final authority; laws can change after all. That a domain requires upkeep doesn't make it not property. Even in the absence of taxes, your house or any of your stuff requires some degree of upkeep. But a domain is certainly not chattel, and intangible property always does seem like... not property. (Though, even with tangible property, it feels fuzzy, and that's part of why fences are used to reify borders.) To my mind, a bigger issue with calling it property is that there's not necessarily a single registry system. My thought experiment is to ask what we'd do without registrars. We'd all simply advertise our domains to the DNS servers, with all the obvious conflicts that registration is meant to avoid. And we'd have to resolve those conflicts by having the DNS providers agree that a particular advertisment was correct. I think that gets a bit closer to the heart of what "owning a domain name" means. Owning an agreement with these entities to manage those disputes looks very similar to any other kind of security or bond. It also has qualities of an asset: you can trade it, it's not very liquid, you can derive an income from it by developing things on it, etc. That's why I lean on the side of the "domains are property" camp.
loeg 7y ago
I don't think you have the same understanding of what domain squatting means as most people. Speculative ownership of unused or parked domains is basically exactly what I would consider domain squatting.
- endorphone 7y ago
  And you'd be wrong. I'm not trying to be spicy -- the literal definition of domain squatting is intentional trademark infringement or confusion. Someone else sitting on your grand plan doesn't make it domain squatting because someone else has their own grand plan they want to sit on. Squatting by definition is illegally occupying property that you don't own, which would be a trademarked term. e.g. If someone builds a hut at the back of your property, they're squatting. If someone else looks at your property and decides they want to make it a lucrative Taco Bell location, it'd be pretty rich for them to call you a squatter and claim right to it, yet that's exactly what's happening in that incorrect usage. This is hardly a hill I want to die on, but on HN -- of all places -- I'd expect we'd have a somewhat proper use of terminology.
  - loeg 7y ago
    You're talking about law and legal terms of art, but the conversation is about English. There is often specific legal meaning to terms of art that does not align with the lay definition. I think you are making the case that this is another example of that. I'm not even sure that it is — the US legal term defined by ACPA is "cybersquatting," not "domain squatting. The latter appears nowhere in the text of the bill, whereas the former appears something like 66 times.
    - endorphone 7y ago
      No, I'm talking about the literal definition everywhere. Not in some abstract textbook. "the US legal term defined by ACPA is "cybersquatting," not "domain squatting." Okay? What is the point of this? The key is the term squatting -- illegally occupying property that is not your own. Calling completely legal, completely compliant ownership of something squatting because you personally don't like it is...well...it's nonsense. It's the dumbing down of terminology.
propter_hoc 7y ago
Thanks for the reply, but this is quite a tangent to my point. I am not arguing that it is not legal to hold a domain indefinitely for investment purposes; I'm saying that since so many domains are being held this way, startups are being forced to sketchier ccTLDs. It also paradoxically means that .com domains are not quite what they used to be: as more cool new companies have a .ai or .co, the public has stopped thinking that "only .com matters". Like I said, the holders of the .coms are just poisoning the well for the TLD. To address your point directly, I do personally disagree with you that "squatting for speculation" or "parking" as you prefer is harmless. Since ICANN (or Verisign, I guess) controls the TLD, I do think they should disincentivize this holding behavior with some kind of property tax. It's as if vast tracts of Manhattan were just empty fields - not really in anyone's best interest, in the long run, not even the property investors, who are at risk of property developers going to more-hospitable jurisdictions.
- rhizome 7y ago
  Why does the sketchiness of some ccTLDs pass without comment? Shouldn't that be dealt with before casting the solution on other TLD/registrars/etc. like so much splash damage?
- perl4ever 7y ago
  Georgism for the Internet! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
- endorphone 7y ago
  I referred purely to the incorrect use of the term squatting. They aren't squatting. Further, nowhere did I say that it was "harmless", or pass any value judgment at all on it. I just said that it's not squatting (cyber, domain, or any other prefix). Those people pay the same domain fees as anyone else. "I do think they should disincentivize this holding behavior with some kind of property tax" They are paying the same domain fees as everyone else. However let's imagine that they change it to charging some sort of "how lucrative is the domain name" property tax, like Google hilariously tried to do with some of their failed TLDs: We're currently talking about parked domains that cost an absolutely negligible amount...I imagine a lucrative fee would be a bit more disliked by these imaginary startups ready to fill all the good domains. Sidenote - there was a rush to .io, .ly and other TLDs -- against all reasonable caution -- because people thought they were cool and new, not because they were their last resort
Hnrobert42 7y ago
Why does it matter how far in advance or how speculatively someone took the domain? If they are indeed different, I would argue that learning of an emerging product and preemptively buying the domain is not cybersquatting but more like IP theft. Regardless, the point remains that the .com TLD is saturated with parked domains, meaning folks must go to more poorly managed TLDs for reasonably priced domains. Personally, that’s not the way the world should work. A parked domain does not offer value to the world the same way that undeveloped/underdeveloped land does. Indeed, a small store holding its own against gentrified land often provides more value to the community that if it were consumed by public domain. And even with physical property, it is possible to seize underutilized land in the name of public good. TL;DR: I get that you #define cybersquatting in a way that excludes speculative parking. Not only do I disagree with your definition, but I don’t see how speculative parking or whatever you call it is reasonable.
- zifnab06 7y ago
  I have a few domains I don’t host public-facing websites on - they’re used for either email, or internal things at home, or just hosting txt records. There’s no sane way to validate a domain isn’t in use.
  - detaro 7y ago
    I'd argue that a "buy this domain! offers start at $1500" parking page and no e-mail or other DNS records set up, over years, is a pretty good indicator you're not actually using a domain.
    - Can_Not 7y ago
      Also the fact that you exceed some personal limit (or limit per legally registered company), let's say 25. For example, the general case we're all talking about, a company with 10,000 domains on sale for minimum bid of $2,500 would exceed 25 and would have to pay the penalty on all but the first 25.
- unishark 7y ago

pjc50 7y ago

Internet domains are not property, and to the extent they are, they are all the property of ICANN. The delegation system is somewhere between leasing and feudalism. You can tell it's not property because the one thing that's guaranteed to result in losing a domain is failing to pay the fees. The idea that first registration entitles someone to (a) waste a finite resource forever and (b) sell it at arbitrary prices later was fought out in the early 00s, and the real WIPO trademark system won. A number of people who had squatted the names of famous companies in hope of extorting a payout were disappointed.

endorphone 7y ago
"You can tell it's not property because the one thing that's guaranteed to result in losing a domain is failing to pay the fees." Don't pay your property taxes and you lose your property. Courts have argued that domains are property countless times, and they are treated absolutely as such. They are in the sense of contract law, with rights and grants, but obviously are a virtual good, of sorts. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=016ee90b-496e-4a68-858a-956181932060 https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=016ee90b-496e... "The idea that first registration entitles someone to (a) waste a finite resource forever and (b) sell it at arbitrary prices later was fought out in the early 00s, and the real WIPO trademark system won." I specifically excluded trademark infringement, so why are you arguing that case? But yes, someone can "waste a finite resource forever" (by paying the same fee that a "useful" use of it would). Those are the rules of the game.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  Those are the rules of the game. That may be true according to the current authorities running the show, but clearly those rules are far beyond their useful lifetime now. For practical purposes, domains often function as a primary form of identification, for websites, email and other functions. Both the domain registrant and anyone trying to reach them have a reasonable expectation that the identity in question will not silently and suddenly be changed, a huge amount of everyday activity now depends on that expectation, and the consequences of violating it can be severe. We are well past the point where such critical infrastructure should not be in the hands of private businesses or individuals without sufficient regulation to safeguard the common good.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  > Those are the rules of the game. I don't think anyone disagrees that those are the rules we have. I think everyone who actually creates websites thinks those rules are not working as intended and should be changed. I refuse to believe that having speculators pay for thousands and thousands of empty domains is "working as intended".
  - rhizome 7y ago
    There's no shortage of possible company and product names without a failure of imagination.
    - marcus_holmes 7y ago
      well, yeah, I get that. I spent 3 months trying to come up with something decent for the last one, and it did drive a lot of imaginative thinking about the brand, which was actually useful. I'm more thinking of the waste and expense. Clogging up infrastructure with utterly useless "holding pages". People spending vast amounts in registration fees in the hope of getting that big win. And that big win being at the expense of a company that genuinely needs the name but is forced to spend massively more than it needs to in order to get it. If this was what was intended, then whoever designed it was evil.
- 7y ago
ben509 7y ago
> You can tell it's not property because the one thing that's guaranteed to result in losing a domain is failing to pay the fees. There's a sibling comment that points out that courts recognize it as property, and certainly trademarks are a similar "property" that requires active enforcement. But while the law is a good authority because they've gone through many disputes and have had to work out good arguments, I don't think it's the final authority; laws can change after all. That a domain requires upkeep doesn't make it not property. Even in the absence of taxes, your house or any of your stuff requires some degree of upkeep. But a domain is certainly not chattel, and intangible property always does seem like... not property. (Though, even with tangible property, it feels fuzzy, and that's part of why fences are used to reify borders.) To my mind, a bigger issue with calling it property is that there's not necessarily a single registry system. My thought experiment is to ask what we'd do without registrars. We'd all simply advertise our domains to the DNS servers, with all the obvious conflicts that registration is meant to avoid. And we'd have to resolve those conflicts by having the DNS providers agree that a particular advertisment was correct. I think that gets a bit closer to the heart of what "owning a domain name" means. Owning an agreement with these entities to manage those disputes looks very similar to any other kind of security or bond. It also has qualities of an asset: you can trade it, it's not very liquid, you can derive an income from it by developing things on it, etc. That's why I lean on the side of the "domains are property" camp.

loeg 7y ago

I don't think you have the same understanding of what domain squatting means as most people. Speculative ownership of unused or parked domains is basically exactly what I would consider domain squatting.

endorphone 7y ago
And you'd be wrong. I'm not trying to be spicy -- the literal definition of domain squatting is intentional trademark infringement or confusion. Someone else sitting on your grand plan doesn't make it domain squatting because someone else has their own grand plan they want to sit on. Squatting by definition is illegally occupying property that you don't own, which would be a trademarked term. e.g. If someone builds a hut at the back of your property, they're squatting. If someone else looks at your property and decides they want to make it a lucrative Taco Bell location, it'd be pretty rich for them to call you a squatter and claim right to it, yet that's exactly what's happening in that incorrect usage. This is hardly a hill I want to die on, but on HN -- of all places -- I'd expect we'd have a somewhat proper use of terminology.
- loeg 7y ago
  You're talking about law and legal terms of art, but the conversation is about English. There is often specific legal meaning to terms of art that does not align with the lay definition. I think you are making the case that this is another example of that. I'm not even sure that it is — the US legal term defined by ACPA is "cybersquatting," not "domain squatting. The latter appears nowhere in the text of the bill, whereas the former appears something like 66 times.
  - endorphone 7y ago
    No, I'm talking about the literal definition everywhere. Not in some abstract textbook. "the US legal term defined by ACPA is "cybersquatting," not "domain squatting." Okay? What is the point of this? The key is the term squatting -- illegally occupying property that is not your own. Calling completely legal, completely compliant ownership of something squatting because you personally don't like it is...well...it's nonsense. It's the dumbing down of terminology.

propter_hoc 7y ago

Thanks for the reply, but this is quite a tangent to my point. I am not arguing that it is not legal to hold a domain indefinitely for investment purposes; I'm saying that since so many domains are being held this way, startups are being forced to sketchier ccTLDs. It also paradoxically means that .com domains are not quite what they used to be: as more cool new companies have a .ai or .co, the public has stopped thinking that "only .com matters". Like I said, the holders of the .coms are just poisoning the well for the TLD. To address your point directly, I do personally disagree with you that "squatting for speculation" or "parking" as you prefer is harmless. Since ICANN (or Verisign, I guess) controls the TLD, I do think they should disincentivize this holding behavior with some kind of property tax. It's as if vast tracts of Manhattan were just empty fields - not really in anyone's best interest, in the long run, not even the property investors, who are at risk of property developers going to more-hospitable jurisdictions.

rhizome 7y ago
Why does the sketchiness of some ccTLDs pass without comment? Shouldn't that be dealt with before casting the solution on other TLD/registrars/etc. like so much splash damage?
perl4ever 7y ago
Georgism for the Internet! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
endorphone 7y ago
I referred purely to the incorrect use of the term squatting. They aren't squatting. Further, nowhere did I say that it was "harmless", or pass any value judgment at all on it. I just said that it's not squatting (cyber, domain, or any other prefix). Those people pay the same domain fees as anyone else. "I do think they should disincentivize this holding behavior with some kind of property tax" They are paying the same domain fees as everyone else. However let's imagine that they change it to charging some sort of "how lucrative is the domain name" property tax, like Google hilariously tried to do with some of their failed TLDs: We're currently talking about parked domains that cost an absolutely negligible amount...I imagine a lucrative fee would be a bit more disliked by these imaginary startups ready to fill all the good domains. Sidenote - there was a rush to .io, .ly and other TLDs -- against all reasonable caution -- because people thought they were cool and new, not because they were their last resort

Hnrobert42 7y ago

Why does it matter how far in advance or how speculatively someone took the domain? If they are indeed different, I would argue that learning of an emerging product and preemptively buying the domain is not cybersquatting but more like IP theft. Regardless, the point remains that the .com TLD is saturated with parked domains, meaning folks must go to more poorly managed TLDs for reasonably priced domains. Personally, that’s not the way the world should work. A parked domain does not offer value to the world the same way that undeveloped/underdeveloped land does. Indeed, a small store holding its own against gentrified land often provides more value to the community that if it were consumed by public domain. And even with physical property, it is possible to seize underutilized land in the name of public good. TL;DR: I get that you #define cybersquatting in a way that excludes speculative parking. Not only do I disagree with your definition, but I don’t see how speculative parking or whatever you call it is reasonable.

zifnab06 7y ago
I have a few domains I don’t host public-facing websites on - they’re used for either email, or internal things at home, or just hosting txt records. There’s no sane way to validate a domain isn’t in use.
- detaro 7y ago
  I'd argue that a "buy this domain! offers start at $1500" parking page and no e-mail or other DNS records set up, over years, is a pretty good indicator you're not actually using a domain.
  - Can_Not 7y ago
    Also the fact that you exceed some personal limit (or limit per legally registered company), let's say 25. For example, the general case we're all talking about, a company with 10,000 domains on sale for minimum bid of $2,500 would exceed 25 and would have to pay the penalty on all but the first 25.
unishark 7y ago