Yes, it's still a scam. The domain was not provided with the assumption that it would be taken away. Nobody starts an online business with the expectation that

Yes, it's still a scam. The domain was not provided with the assumption that it would be taken away. Nobody starts an online business with the expectation that they're only borrowing the domain and will need to pay what essentially a ransom. If you replace the car in my analogy with a house, it's even clearer. It's hard to change where you live for a ton of reasons. Demanding unexpected payment is a scam, because I wasn't anticipating paying under the agreement, and I'm left with little choice in the matter (lest I become homeless). If I start a profitable business with a domain that's taken from me, I'm either forced to pay this ransom or start my business from scratch. > It didn't have value to begin with But your use of it created value, with the expectation that you would be able to keep that value. The deception that the value is not actually yours to keep makes it a scam. It's especially scammy, since they seemingly only do this to domains valuable enough to extract meaningful value from: they're selectively targeting valuable properties to extort.