5 ms·

"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 i

"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
      OK, I'll accept for the sake of argument that domain names and buildings are very similar. The thing is, nobody can afford to buy thousands of storefronts that they don't plan to use except to extort people who aren't as cynical. Domainers are exploiting the cheapness of domain names, which is not a weakness that physical property generally shares with the Web. If domain names cost, say, $500 per year, I suspect you'd wind up with an economy much more closely resembling a functioning real estate market.
      - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
        >nobody can afford to buy thousands of storefronts // For sure. But plenty of people (hidden behind corporations) have bought up 10s of store-fronts. If domain names cost $500 per year to keep from the registry then this would find an equivalence in a piece of real-estate being taxed at around 40x the annual rent per year.
    - larrys 15y ago
      "Both business real-estate and domains suffer the same problem here IMO; people want to acquire wealth without effort." Buying real estate and buying domains takes effort. If you think it's easy give it a try and see how easy it is. It's not. Most of the people buying domains that they think might sell won't sell them ever for any price.
      - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
        The key word is want. Those wealthy enough to be in real estate in my country have in many cases made more money sitting on their arses for a couple of years than I expect to make in my whole lifetime. You can literally sit on a piece of unwanted real estate if you have sufficient capital and wait to see if it accrues added "value". Sure you may have to pay some legal fees occasionally but all you really need do is be wealthy in the first place. You're buying a scarce resource that, provided you can take a long view and aren't forced to sell at a particular time, will almost certainly not decrease in value. Now, domaining is the same. But here the scarcity is dubious as the registries can alter that whenever they want to print some more money for themselves. Buy-in is a lot less costly but predicting the upside appears to be concomitantly more difficult. Most people domaining don't have sufficient capital to do it right or are to late to the market. But I don't see how this changes the underlying similarity. The same is true in real estate.
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.)

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
    OK, I'll accept for the sake of argument that domain names and buildings are very similar. The thing is, nobody can afford to buy thousands of storefronts that they don't plan to use except to extort people who aren't as cynical. Domainers are exploiting the cheapness of domain names, which is not a weakness that physical property generally shares with the Web. If domain names cost, say, $500 per year, I suspect you'd wind up with an economy much more closely resembling a functioning real estate market.
    - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
      >nobody can afford to buy thousands of storefronts // For sure. But plenty of people (hidden behind corporations) have bought up 10s of store-fronts. If domain names cost $500 per year to keep from the registry then this would find an equivalence in a piece of real-estate being taxed at around 40x the annual rent per year.
  - larrys 15y ago
    "Both business real-estate and domains suffer the same problem here IMO; people want to acquire wealth without effort." Buying real estate and buying domains takes effort. If you think it's easy give it a try and see how easy it is. It's not. Most of the people buying domains that they think might sell won't sell them ever for any price.
    - pbhjpbhj 15y ago
      The key word is want. Those wealthy enough to be in real estate in my country have in many cases made more money sitting on their arses for a couple of years than I expect to make in my whole lifetime. You can literally sit on a piece of unwanted real estate if you have sufficient capital and wait to see if it accrues added "value". Sure you may have to pay some legal fees occasionally but all you really need do is be wealthy in the first place. You're buying a scarce resource that, provided you can take a long view and aren't forced to sell at a particular time, will almost certainly not decrease in value. Now, domaining is the same. But here the scarcity is dubious as the registries can alter that whenever they want to print some more money for themselves. Buy-in is a lot less costly but predicting the upside appears to be concomitantly more difficult. Most people domaining don't have sufficient capital to do it right or are to late to the market. But I don't see how this changes the underlying similarity. The same is true in real estate.

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.)