5 ms·

The domain system desperately needs reform. It's unconscionable that one can simply park domains wholesale and wait for the bids to roll in. It's a huge problem

The domain system desperately needs reform. It's unconscionable that one can simply park domains wholesale and wait for the bids to roll in. It's a huge problem that people wanting to create value are held to ransom by parasites, and there is little chance other than to pay through the nose.

larrys 15y ago
"It's unconscionable that one can simply park domains wholesale" "unconscionable"? It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one. "people wanting to create value are held to ransom by parasites" And what if the someone "wanting to create value" got to the name first and has their idea of a site is not as good as your idea of a site. The name would also not be available for you to use. This idea that if people weren't parking names they would be available when you wanted the name is simply not true. Someone else could have registered the name and used it to put up 3 picture of their cat. Then you'd have to approach and buy it from them. That said I can certainly understand the frustration that people feel in trying to obtain names for their startups (as I consult with these people).
- jasonkester 15y ago
  "unconscionable"? It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one. Notice that your response in no way addresses the grandparent's complaint. Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person. There are lots of things in this world that are technically legal to do, but make the world a worse place (domain squatting being a perfect example). There's also a type of individual that doesn't look beyond legality when determining right behavior. This is a good type of individual to be able to recognize, as it's a very good indicator of somebody with whom you never want to do business.
  - andyakb 15y ago
    Parking a domain makes somebody a bad person? How is this any different than a speculator buying undeveloped parcels of land and waiting for a developer to come along and buy them for more money? Are they bad people, too? It is annoying when you need to buy the domain you want from a reseller and have to pay more than if it wasnt registered, but saying it makes the reseller a bad person is going way, way too far.
    - chc 15y ago
      You're seriously asking what the difference is between a domain name and a piece of land? It would be easier to list the ways in which they're similar. Domain squatting makes the Web suck. It does. You can throw around all the analogies you want, but speculative investment does not have the same effect. The domain name system was not designed to be used that way. If there were a special squatter registration that cost an exorbitant amount per domain, then maybe I'd say it's fine because they would have to make an actual calculated purchase to justify the obscene prices. But as it is, they're abusing a vestigial weak spot in the Web's infrastructure.
      - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
        To my mind a domain and a business premises are extremely similar in these respects - case in point, my city is suffering at the moment as there are huge gaps in the high-street with no open shops. High-street rentals are still massively high. There's very little way for even the big chains to make a profit off such high-street locations. But the rent won't go down because the owners consider that even if they're vacant it doesn't matter as the value of the premises has risen 100% over the last decade or so - eventually they can cash out if they want to, or eventually a business will want to move in paying full rent (they think; I think they're trying to cure a lame horse by hacking at it's good legs with an axe ...). Both business real-estate and domains suffer the same problem here IMO; people want to acquire wealth without effort. Singling out domainers is unfair - but criticising the same sort of activity everywhere is something that won't pull a complaint from me ...
        chc 15y ago
  - larrys 15y ago
    "Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person." Bad person? Well then in that case since you are being so absolute about that you might want to resolve the dns for a domain that you own that isn't going anywhere. Even to a parking page. DNS server handling your query: localhost DNS server's address: 127.0.0.1#53 server can't find TWIDDLA.ORG: SERVFAIL DNS server handling your query: localhost DNS server's address: 127.0.0.1#53 server can't find www.TWIDDLA.ORG: SERVFAIL (query the server in the whois directly now): nslookup > server ASE-CONSULTING.COM Default server: ASE-CONSULTING.COM Address: 207.162.212.91#53 > www.twiddla.com Server: ASE-CONSULTING.COM Address: 207.162.212.91#53 www.twiddla.com canonical name = twiddla.com. Name: twiddla.com Address: 207.162.212.93 (ok it knows about the .com, what about the .org) > www.twiddla.org Server: ASE-CONSULTING.COM Address: 207.162.212.91#53 server can't find www.twiddla.org: NXDOMAIN Domain ID:D150745067-LROR Domain Name:TWIDDLA.ORG Created On:25-Jan-2008 10:00:15 UTC Last Updated On:22-Aug-2011 12:22:43 UTC Expiration Date:25-Jan-2017 10:00:15 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:Omnis Network LLC (R101-LROR) Status:OK Registrant ID:OMNIS-1210584221 I'm sure that's an oversight on your part? And you feel totally entitled to that domain name since you own twiddla.com and of course nobody could possibly want the .org could they?
    - jasonkester 15y ago
      Thanks for the heads up. It was meant to redirect over to the .com. Fixing...
  - jacquesm 15y ago
    > Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person. Typically this is said by those that wished they had gotten in a bit earlier... As for getting domain names: it doesn't matter what product or project I come up with it takes me 15 minutes to come up with a reasonably good domain name. I really don't see the 'shortage' as being anywhere near as bad as it is. What you'd like to see is that you could take away domain names from their current registrants because you will be a 'better steward' of them. But who will stop that domain name being taken away from you? What do you propose will be a good standard for being developed? Should there be a time limit? Will you have to pay fair value for the domain? Should it go back to the registry and be re-registrable immediately and how will you make sure that only 'good persons' will get those domains? Really, you make a pretty heavy accusation and I fail to see what you could do to either improve the situation or how you would avoid being a 'bad person' yourself if you had a good domain name you registered in the past that you currently have no use for. I'm openly confirming here that I have upwards of 500 domains registered and have developed only a small fraction of those, but at the same time when I registered them I fully intended to use them in one way or another, the lack of time and hands to carry out all my wild ideas is what prompted me to put the larger chunk of them up for sale. I'm sure I'm a 'bad person' in your book ;)
    - chc 15y ago
      It seemed pretty clear to be that Jason was talking about squatters — that is, people who intentionally buy domain names just to exploit the low actual cost of a domain name for greedy purposes. If you buy a domain name and just have trouble getting around to using it, you're maybe a bit disorganized, but you're not intentionally screwing somebody over. But if you buy a domain name because you think it's likely somebody will be willing to pay a ridiculous price later and in the meantime you can park it and leech money from unsuspecting visitors, yeah, I find that morally questionable too. It's like the difference between an old person getting lost and wandering into somebody's kitchen and a thug busting in with a gun and demanding money. Technically they're both invading the kitchen, but there is an important qualitative difference both in their actions and the effects they have on people. (BTW, I accidentally downvoted you when I was trying to scroll. Sorry about that. Although I disagree with you, I do appreciate hearing your point of view.)
dot 15y ago
while I agree that it sucks, that would be really hard to change. if parking pages were to become illegal, it wouldn't take long for parking providers to turn in to "blog hosters" or whatever. I see empty storefronts in prime areas of SF all the time... I guess the owner's just looking for a big pay day. sucks, but i don't think there's anything you can do.
- larrys 15y ago
  "I see empty storefronts in prime areas of SF all the time... I guess the owner's just looking for a big pay day." Have you ever worked or owned commercial real estate? (I have). They are looking for many things including what they feel is the right stable tenant that can pay the rent, keep the property in good condition, and has a good chance of staying in business. Would you accept the first job offer from someone who offered you a job? If you were out of a job for 1 year would you take a job that you felt was beneath what your capabilities was? Commercial real estate owners evaluate the market and what they can get for the property and many other factors. You are being simplistic if you reduce this to "just looking for a big payday".
pathdependent 15y ago
Startup idea for someone? I know YC funded http://www.co2stats.com/ http://www.co2stats.com/ to "Green Certify" a website. "Fair trade" labels work for selling some higher-end products. I would probably lend my attention to advertisers and advertising networks that have some sort of "scum-free" label. I don't see any solution in terms of mandates. Ignoring the difficulty (near-impossibility?) of adding certain mandates to registration, it would probably introduce bigger problems than it solved. I do agree it's a problem though. Sometimes, it's actually pretty disgusting. I wanted to make a forum for people with an extremely rare type (300 US cases per year) of cancer that I had about a year back. The domain name that was the name of the disease was owned by a guy parking it. He wanted about 10k for it. The sad thing I don't think that is a crazy offer in the case of the domain name's present value from parking clicks. Medical terms are valuable... ...On the other hand, from a patient perspective, half those links were to websites peddling really bad and sometimes dangerous advice, in addition to the usual "Vitamin C will cure cancer" garage.
AJ007 15y ago
Any change in the legal structure of domain name ownership will challenge the ownership of all domain holders. That's really scary.

larrys 15y ago

"It's unconscionable that one can simply park domains wholesale" "unconscionable"? It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one. "people wanting to create value are held to ransom by parasites" And what if the someone "wanting to create value" got to the name first and has their idea of a site is not as good as your idea of a site. The name would also not be available for you to use. This idea that if people weren't parking names they would be available when you wanted the name is simply not true. Someone else could have registered the name and used it to put up 3 picture of their cat. Then you'd have to approach and buy it from them. That said I can certainly understand the frustration that people feel in trying to obtain names for their startups (as I consult with these people).

jasonkester 15y ago
"unconscionable"? It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one. Notice that your response in no way addresses the grandparent's complaint. Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person. There are lots of things in this world that are technically legal to do, but make the world a worse place (domain squatting being a perfect example). There's also a type of individual that doesn't look beyond legality when determining right behavior. This is a good type of individual to be able to recognize, as it's a very good indicator of somebody with whom you never want to do business.
- andyakb 15y ago
  Parking a domain makes somebody a bad person? How is this any different than a speculator buying undeveloped parcels of land and waiting for a developer to come along and buy them for more money? Are they bad people, too? It is annoying when you need to buy the domain you want from a reseller and have to pay more than if it wasnt registered, but saying it makes the reseller a bad person is going way, way too far.
  - chc 15y ago
    You're seriously asking what the difference is between a domain name and a piece of land? It would be easier to list the ways in which they're similar. Domain squatting makes the Web suck. It does. You can throw around all the analogies you want, but speculative investment does not have the same effect. The domain name system was not designed to be used that way. If there were a special squatter registration that cost an exorbitant amount per domain, then maybe I'd say it's fine because they would have to make an actual calculated purchase to justify the obscene prices. But as it is, they're abusing a vestigial weak spot in the Web's infrastructure.
    - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
      To my mind a domain and a business premises are extremely similar in these respects - case in point, my city is suffering at the moment as there are huge gaps in the high-street with no open shops. High-street rentals are still massively high. There's very little way for even the big chains to make a profit off such high-street locations. But the rent won't go down because the owners consider that even if they're vacant it doesn't matter as the value of the premises has risen 100% over the last decade or so - eventually they can cash out if they want to, or eventually a business will want to move in paying full rent (they think; I think they're trying to cure a lame horse by hacking at it's good legs with an axe ...). Both business real-estate and domains suffer the same problem here IMO; people want to acquire wealth without effort. Singling out domainers is unfair - but criticising the same sort of activity everywhere is something that won't pull a complaint from me ...
      - chc 15y ago
- larrys 15y ago
  "Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person." Bad person? Well then in that case since you are being so absolute about that you might want to resolve the dns for a domain that you own that isn't going anywhere. Even to a parking page. DNS server handling your query: localhost DNS server's address: 127.0.0.1#53 server can't find TWIDDLA.ORG: SERVFAIL DNS server handling your query: localhost DNS server's address: 127.0.0.1#53 server can't find www.TWIDDLA.ORG: SERVFAIL (query the server in the whois directly now): nslookup > server ASE-CONSULTING.COM Default server: ASE-CONSULTING.COM Address: 207.162.212.91#53 > www.twiddla.com Server: ASE-CONSULTING.COM Address: 207.162.212.91#53 www.twiddla.com canonical name = twiddla.com. Name: twiddla.com Address: 207.162.212.93 (ok it knows about the .com, what about the .org) > www.twiddla.org Server: ASE-CONSULTING.COM Address: 207.162.212.91#53 server can't find www.twiddla.org: NXDOMAIN Domain ID:D150745067-LROR Domain Name:TWIDDLA.ORG Created On:25-Jan-2008 10:00:15 UTC Last Updated On:22-Aug-2011 12:22:43 UTC Expiration Date:25-Jan-2017 10:00:15 UTC Sponsoring Registrar:Omnis Network LLC (R101-LROR) Status:OK Registrant ID:OMNIS-1210584221 I'm sure that's an oversight on your part? And you feel totally entitled to that domain name since you own twiddla.com and of course nobody could possibly want the .org could they?
  - jasonkester 15y ago
    Thanks for the heads up. It was meant to redirect over to the .com. Fixing...
- jacquesm 15y ago
  > Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person. Typically this is said by those that wished they had gotten in a bit earlier... As for getting domain names: it doesn't matter what product or project I come up with it takes me 15 minutes to come up with a reasonably good domain name. I really don't see the 'shortage' as being anywhere near as bad as it is. What you'd like to see is that you could take away domain names from their current registrants because you will be a 'better steward' of them. But who will stop that domain name being taken away from you? What do you propose will be a good standard for being developed? Should there be a time limit? Will you have to pay fair value for the domain? Should it go back to the registry and be re-registrable immediately and how will you make sure that only 'good persons' will get those domains? Really, you make a pretty heavy accusation and I fail to see what you could do to either improve the situation or how you would avoid being a 'bad person' yourself if you had a good domain name you registered in the past that you currently have no use for. I'm openly confirming here that I have upwards of 500 domains registered and have developed only a small fraction of those, but at the same time when I registered them I fully intended to use them in one way or another, the lack of time and hands to carry out all my wild ideas is what prompted me to put the larger chunk of them up for sale. I'm sure I'm a 'bad person' in your book ;)
  - chc 15y ago
    It seemed pretty clear to be that Jason was talking about squatters — that is, people who intentionally buy domain names just to exploit the low actual cost of a domain name for greedy purposes. If you buy a domain name and just have trouble getting around to using it, you're maybe a bit disorganized, but you're not intentionally screwing somebody over. But if you buy a domain name because you think it's likely somebody will be willing to pay a ridiculous price later and in the meantime you can park it and leech money from unsuspecting visitors, yeah, I find that morally questionable too. It's like the difference between an old person getting lost and wandering into somebody's kitchen and a thug busting in with a gun and demanding money. Technically they're both invading the kitchen, but there is an important qualitative difference both in their actions and the effects they have on people. (BTW, I accidentally downvoted you when I was trying to scroll. Sorry about that. Although I disagree with you, I do appreciate hearing your point of view.)

dot 15y ago

while I agree that it sucks, that would be really hard to change. if parking pages were to become illegal, it wouldn't take long for parking providers to turn in to "blog hosters" or whatever. I see empty storefronts in prime areas of SF all the time... I guess the owner's just looking for a big pay day. sucks, but i don't think there's anything you can do.

larrys 15y ago
"I see empty storefronts in prime areas of SF all the time... I guess the owner's just looking for a big pay day." Have you ever worked or owned commercial real estate? (I have). They are looking for many things including what they feel is the right stable tenant that can pay the rent, keep the property in good condition, and has a good chance of staying in business. Would you accept the first job offer from someone who offered you a job? If you were out of a job for 1 year would you take a job that you felt was beneath what your capabilities was? Commercial real estate owners evaluate the market and what they can get for the property and many other factors. You are being simplistic if you reduce this to "just looking for a big payday".

pathdependent 15y ago

Startup idea for someone? I know YC funded http://www.co2stats.com/ http://www.co2stats.com/ to "Green Certify" a website. "Fair trade" labels work for selling some higher-end products. I would probably lend my attention to advertisers and advertising networks that have some sort of "scum-free" label. I don't see any solution in terms of mandates. Ignoring the difficulty (near-impossibility?) of adding certain mandates to registration, it would probably introduce bigger problems than it solved. I do agree it's a problem though. Sometimes, it's actually pretty disgusting. I wanted to make a forum for people with an extremely rare type (300 US cases per year) of cancer that I had about a year back. The domain name that was the name of the disease was owned by a guy parking it. He wanted about 10k for it. The sad thing I don't think that is a crazy offer in the case of the domain name's present value from parking clicks. Medical terms are valuable... ...On the other hand, from a patient perspective, half those links were to websites peddling really bad and sometimes dangerous advice, in addition to the usual "Vitamin C will cure cancer" garage.

AJ007 15y ago

Any change in the legal structure of domain name ownership will challenge the ownership of all domain holders. That's really scary.