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I would argue if you aren't doing some combination of: - Hosting a website - Operating email accounts - Infrastructure (mail, DNS, etc.) - Misc. Services (M

I would argue if you aren't doing some combination of: - Hosting a website - Operating email accounts - Infrastructure (mail, DNS, etc.) - Misc. Services (Minecraft server, TeamSpeak server, something) Then you're squatting. Like if you own turkeyonapig.com and it's literally just a web page with a picture of a turkey sitting on a pig? Not squatting. It's odd but it's clearly doing exactly what it's meant to be doing. If you own turkeyonapig.com and are doing nothing but advertising that fact, and that someone can buy it? Squatting. > Is the owner of nissan.com "squatting" on it because he wouldn't sell to the japanese car company? I mean, it depends. One would argue that people going to nissan.com are clearly looking for the Japanese car company, so it's in the public's interest that that domain be sold to them. On the other hand, if someone owns it and is using to run a Nissan fan website? Well I suppose that's trickier, but that would also probably be better suited to something like nissanfans.com. It's a tricky thing but not impossible to figure out.

dist-epoch 2y ago
> a web page with a picture of a turkey sitting on a pig? Not squatting GPT/Cursor will create that page for you in 5 min. I bet a NotSquattingAsAService startups will appear which will create the "not squatting" fake site for you for $2.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  I mean, that's an improvement in my mind over millions of insipid "BUY THIS DOMAIN!" web pages. At the least the internet would be more interesting? But also like, then you aren't advertising it for sale. So I'm wondering how many offers you're going to get to sell that domain, which is the point of squatting it.
  - dist-epoch 2y ago
    That's not how most squatting pages are sold. They are registered for sale in places like NameCheap and you can see it directly when you search for domains.
- reaperducer 2y ago
  NotSquattingAsAService startups will appear which will create the "not squatting" fake site for you for $2. That's an improvement. Adding $2 to $5 to the cost of a squatted domain will start to dissuade people who squat on tens of thousands of domains, if they have to suddenly have to pay $20,000 to $50,000 for the not squatting service.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >That's an improvement. Adding $2 to $5 to the cost of a squatted domain will start to dissuade people who squat on tens of thousands of domains There's no way static site hosting and a email service costs $2-$5 per year per domain, especially for bulk users. Even if we take that price at face value, a .com domain already costs around $10/year. A 20%-50% increase will only change behavior at the margins. It won't make chat.com magically become available, and at best will make some D tier domains available. Ironically the introduction of gTLDs probably had the same effect. Squatting harrisonburgrealty.com is suddenly going to be less profitable when there's harrisonburg.{realty,realestate,realtor,homes,house,place,properties,rent,apartments} available as well.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      To be clear, when I said make it cost more, I was thinking more like taxes. Similar to how we should be taxing vacant homes to raise the cost of keeping empty properties and lower the rents in turn.
echoangle 2y ago
And you think a domain squatter would be deterred by high pricing and not just point every single domain to a VPS with a „Hey guys buy my domains“ page? Or even just point them to any random IP, since DNS is one of the legitimate uses you named?
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  I mean that's basically what most do now. I'm saying the domain should direct to an actual website, irrespective of how useful or large it is. See my example of turkeyonapig.com.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
jocoda 2y ago
> It's a tricky thing but not impossible to figure out. Good to hear. So after that you'll be sorting out world peace - right?
- beeflet 2y ago
  I really don't think eliminating domain squatters is some impossible task. you could probably just tax sales of domain names to death (90% sales tax on any resold domain names) to disincentivize it vs registration upkeep costs. Squatters are a massive blight on the internet.
  - jocoda 2y ago
    The problem goes way beyond domain squatting. You have a limited resource, say nissan.com, and you have several valid claimants. Who gets to decide what's fair? First past the post? Heaviest pocket book? Biggest stick? Popular acclaim? ... Is not unique to domains, this is why the world is uts.
    - beeflet 2y ago
      I don't intend to solve this problem entirely, just to displace this business model of squatting domains, which is a massive waste of domain space. First past the post is "good enough" for me if the intrinsic value of the domain to you is greater than the domain registration fee of like 3-10 bucks a month. There shouldn't be a major reselling market, that would be like if the majority of space in the yellow pages was just advertisements that said "your business ad here!"
  - foxglacier 2y ago
    Make the transaction in a country that doesn't have such a tax?
    - beeflet 2y ago
      The tax would be done by the registrar or ICANN or whatever (although throwing more money at them might increase corruption of their bureaucracy, oh well). You could burn the money for all I care. If you get caught, the domain is blacklisted. Ownership transfer is public, so there is little incentive for buyers to go with this route.
gruez 2y ago
>I would argue if you aren't doing some combination of: [...] cloudflare offers free website hosting and email forwarding, so it's basically free for a squatter to check those boxes. >I mean, it depends. One would argue that people going to nissan.com are clearly looking for the Japanese car company, so it's in the public's interest that that domain be sold to them. So you basically want the Kelo v. City of New London decision to be applied to domains as well? You own "erictrump.com" but aren't the president-elect's son? Well tough luck because it's "in the public's interest" that president-elect's son gets it rather than you.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  > cloudflare offers free website hosting and email forwarding, so it's basically free for a squatter to check those boxes. Sure. But it still takes time, or as someone else suggested, a GPT query. Putting literally even the tiniest amount of work in front of squatting will reduce the amount of squatting. > So you basically want the Kelo v. City of New London decision to be applied to domains as well? You own "erictrump.com" but aren't the president-elect's son? Well tough luck because it's "in the public's interest" that president-elect's son gets it rather than you. I mean, it is. And putting the phrase in scare quotes isn't a counterpoint. One could argue in fact that one of the multitude of reasons for the rise of platforms is that it's so hard to find anything on the actual internet, and part of that in turn can be blamed squarely on squatting.
spookie 2y ago
Nissan is the guy's name. Come on. It doesn't matter if you're just a dude or a corporation, you play by the same rules. There isn't anything to solve here. These problems are solved between those those 2 parties and no one else. Good Lord. It's in the public's interest it remains this way. Another person here had it right, companies have been playing with fire with their URL shenanigans. From one time TLDs to abusing tracking parameters. Not to mention browsers in their insane quest to strip useful information out off their UIs, making you CLICK to see who owns the place. Clown world really.
SoftTalker 2y ago
You can boil it down to: are you offering it for sale? If yes, squatting. If not, early bird gets the worm. You should be able to own a domain name and not be required to do anything with it beyond paying the registrar to legitimize your ownership.

dist-epoch 2y ago

> a web page with a picture of a turkey sitting on a pig? Not squatting GPT/Cursor will create that page for you in 5 min. I bet a NotSquattingAsAService startups will appear which will create the "not squatting" fake site for you for $2.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
I mean, that's an improvement in my mind over millions of insipid "BUY THIS DOMAIN!" web pages. At the least the internet would be more interesting? But also like, then you aren't advertising it for sale. So I'm wondering how many offers you're going to get to sell that domain, which is the point of squatting it.
- dist-epoch 2y ago
  That's not how most squatting pages are sold. They are registered for sale in places like NameCheap and you can see it directly when you search for domains.
reaperducer 2y ago
NotSquattingAsAService startups will appear which will create the "not squatting" fake site for you for $2. That's an improvement. Adding $2 to $5 to the cost of a squatted domain will start to dissuade people who squat on tens of thousands of domains, if they have to suddenly have to pay $20,000 to $50,000 for the not squatting service.
- gruez 2y ago
  >That's an improvement. Adding $2 to $5 to the cost of a squatted domain will start to dissuade people who squat on tens of thousands of domains There's no way static site hosting and a email service costs $2-$5 per year per domain, especially for bulk users. Even if we take that price at face value, a .com domain already costs around $10/year. A 20%-50% increase will only change behavior at the margins. It won't make chat.com magically become available, and at best will make some D tier domains available. Ironically the introduction of gTLDs probably had the same effect. Squatting harrisonburgrealty.com is suddenly going to be less profitable when there's harrisonburg.{realty,realestate,realtor,homes,house,place,properties,rent,apartments} available as well.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    To be clear, when I said make it cost more, I was thinking more like taxes. Similar to how we should be taxing vacant homes to raise the cost of keeping empty properties and lower the rents in turn.

echoangle 2y ago

And you think a domain squatter would be deterred by high pricing and not just point every single domain to a VPS with a „Hey guys buy my domains“ page? Or even just point them to any random IP, since DNS is one of the legitimate uses you named?

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
I mean that's basically what most do now. I'm saying the domain should direct to an actual website, irrespective of how useful or large it is. See my example of turkeyonapig.com.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

jocoda 2y ago

> It's a tricky thing but not impossible to figure out. Good to hear. So after that you'll be sorting out world peace - right?

beeflet 2y ago
I really don't think eliminating domain squatters is some impossible task. you could probably just tax sales of domain names to death (90% sales tax on any resold domain names) to disincentivize it vs registration upkeep costs. Squatters are a massive blight on the internet.
- jocoda 2y ago
  The problem goes way beyond domain squatting. You have a limited resource, say nissan.com, and you have several valid claimants. Who gets to decide what's fair? First past the post? Heaviest pocket book? Biggest stick? Popular acclaim? ... Is not unique to domains, this is why the world is uts.
  - beeflet 2y ago
    I don't intend to solve this problem entirely, just to displace this business model of squatting domains, which is a massive waste of domain space. First past the post is "good enough" for me if the intrinsic value of the domain to you is greater than the domain registration fee of like 3-10 bucks a month. There shouldn't be a major reselling market, that would be like if the majority of space in the yellow pages was just advertisements that said "your business ad here!"
- foxglacier 2y ago
  Make the transaction in a country that doesn't have such a tax?
  - beeflet 2y ago
    The tax would be done by the registrar or ICANN or whatever (although throwing more money at them might increase corruption of their bureaucracy, oh well). You could burn the money for all I care. If you get caught, the domain is blacklisted. Ownership transfer is public, so there is little incentive for buyers to go with this route.

gruez 2y ago

>I would argue if you aren't doing some combination of: [...] cloudflare offers free website hosting and email forwarding, so it's basically free for a squatter to check those boxes. >I mean, it depends. One would argue that people going to nissan.com are clearly looking for the Japanese car company, so it's in the public's interest that that domain be sold to them. So you basically want the Kelo v. City of New London decision to be applied to domains as well? You own "erictrump.com" but aren't the president-elect's son? Well tough luck because it's "in the public's interest" that president-elect's son gets it rather than you.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> cloudflare offers free website hosting and email forwarding, so it's basically free for a squatter to check those boxes. Sure. But it still takes time, or as someone else suggested, a GPT query. Putting literally even the tiniest amount of work in front of squatting will reduce the amount of squatting. > So you basically want the Kelo v. City of New London decision to be applied to domains as well? You own "erictrump.com" but aren't the president-elect's son? Well tough luck because it's "in the public's interest" that president-elect's son gets it rather than you. I mean, it is. And putting the phrase in scare quotes isn't a counterpoint. One could argue in fact that one of the multitude of reasons for the rise of platforms is that it's so hard to find anything on the actual internet, and part of that in turn can be blamed squarely on squatting.

spookie 2y ago

Nissan is the guy's name. Come on. It doesn't matter if you're just a dude or a corporation, you play by the same rules. There isn't anything to solve here. These problems are solved between those those 2 parties and no one else. Good Lord. It's in the public's interest it remains this way. Another person here had it right, companies have been playing with fire with their URL shenanigans. From one time TLDs to abusing tracking parameters. Not to mention browsers in their insane quest to strip useful information out off their UIs, making you CLICK to see who owns the place. Clown world really.

SoftTalker 2y ago

You can boil it down to: are you offering it for sale? If yes, squatting. If not, early bird gets the worm. You should be able to own a domain name and not be required to do anything with it beyond paying the registrar to legitimize your ownership.