6 ms·

_for-sale DNS records

443 points by shaunpud 2mo ago

Tiberium 2mo ago
RFC: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc10023.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc10023.html
- ricardobeat 2mo ago
  Thank you, for a moment I wondered why a specification was being written by AI.
  - verandaguy 2mo ago
    This website has been trying to gain a veneer of legitimacy for months now. Half of its contents aren't even published by any real standards body, it's just AI-centric "best practices" for the current generation of hyperscaler models.
    - blackqueeriroh 2mo ago
      That’s not true at all. Do you know who Joost de Valk is? Because it’s wild for you to say that, truly. That man has probably been building websites for longer than you have been alive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost_de_Valk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost_de_Valk
      - bakugo 2mo ago
        He made... a Wordpress SEO plugin? Is that supposed to make him an authority on web standards? If anything, this just gives more credence to the idea that it's just the usual SEO-optimized slop. Actually, it gets better: He originally submitted the website to HN himself[0], and his post was flagged/removed, likely due to being AI generated and indistinguishable from a lot of the AI spam that clogs up /newest. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48323406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48323406
      - verandaguy 2mo ago
        He has apparently been involved in web technologies since… after i got involved with web technologies. I made my first website in 2003. Which naturally makes me an authority on the matter. I may have been in middle school but i guess sheer years of involvement are all that counts, right? EDIT: more to the point, briefly. Whatever his past successes (or failures), this is decidedly a website which tries to pass itself off as something it is not. If you want to collate information to have a centralized guide, you can do that, just don't name it deceptively. A specification is a very concrete thing, including in the world of web standards, and someone who's been involved with Wordpress of all things for over two decades should know better than to try and launder the term. His contributions to Wordpress do not inspire confidence. While WP SEO was no doubt popular (the numbers seem to back it up), SEO had always been a very handwavy thing, and the industry was always full of people willing to profit off that. To be clear, while I am not accusing de Valk of being such a profiteer, I am staunchly of the opinion that success in the SEO space is not a strong predictor of that person's expertise in any other area of web technology. To wit, on his past: he appears, per Wikipedia, to have been involved with a site at css3.info. A skim of his author page (/author/admin/) shows that this site had a similar goal, if narrower scope, to the site linked in the HN post we're currently discussing. It was a bad idea then, and it was a bad idea now, and I write this with the knowledge that at least one other contributor to css3[dot]info claims to have been a member of the W3C's CSS3 WG. And finally, on his Wikipedia page: this is an... unusual page. - While there's strong off-wiki evidence that he has a presence outside of Wordpress (notably, as a VC), his wiki page focuses almost exclusively on his SEO plugin and the company he built around it. - By biographical article standards, the article is strange. It focuses much more on a single product than the life of the person being documented, and the vast majority of the article is unequivocally positive. Neither of these are outright indicators of any malfeasance, but are both unusual. - The principal source for information outside of his career is a Business Insider interview with him which is, again, outstandingly flattering (though nominally informative). The article in effect follows his own description of his life without framing it as such. This is, at a minimum, sloppy writing for Wikipedia. My overall impression of him, having myself hosted and developed a handful of WP sites in the technology's heyday in the late 2000s/early 2010s: this guy is a marketer with an above-average-for-marketers technology background. I maintain that his website (both website[dot]specification and, to a lesser extent, css3[dot]info) are both at a minimum deeply misguided in their naming and description. My personal take is that, in `specification`'s case, this is a marketing attempt (effectively, an SEO hijacking attempt); it looks legitimate and approachable to web developers relying heavily on agents (and so too does it seem legitimate to agents), and frankly organizations like the W3C just don't have the same kind of presence as they did when HTML5 and CSS3 were new and very, very hot, so newer developers may not know to look for the W3C's drafts.
      - Retr0id 2mo ago
        > trying to gain a veneer of legitimacy > SEO For me, these terms are synonymous.
  - shaunpud 2mo ago
    I discovered this because someone was nice enough to create a website which lists these things, which are very relevant, and has an RSS feed. The post states defined RFC's, I wouldn't have seen it if I didn't subscribe, and it looks like others are interested too. So over seeing bullshit "AI blah" comments, just move on, no one cares mate.
riddlemethat 2mo ago
Wonderful. Another tool for domain campers. Just what standards bodies should be spending time on…
- dietr1ch 2mo ago
  This is what really sucks about domain names
- spicybright 2mo ago
  I don't get the point, if someone is selling a domain the only content on the site will be advertising that. And you can bet people will forget to delete or not update the record as needed, making it kind of useless.
  - rhplus 2mo ago
    A parked domain would potentially make more money hosting AI generated “content” to improve its SEO and passive ad revenue. That’s why invested interests have pushed for this side-channel “For sale” sign.
Tiberium 2mo ago
(Not quoting the article directly due to HN's auto AI filters) In "Common mistakes" this article first says not to add this record if you're not actually planning to sell the domain, then says that the record doesn't oblige anyone to do anything, that feels quite weird to me.
- zinekeller 2mo ago
  This probably means that meeting the minimum price does not guarantee that you would be able to buy it due to other (probably opaque) criteria. For example, the seller might not want to sell to you/your company in particular, but is open to other people/companies.
  - reaperducer 2mo ago
    Sounds good to me. I have a particularly valuable domain name that would be perfect for a museum that later opened with the same name. I'd love to sell or even give it to the museum, but all my offers have been ignored. I don't blame them, since everything on the Internet is a scam these days. But I won't just put it for sale to the highest bidder. Then it'll end up with a squatter. I'd rather sit on it.
- TZubiri 2mo ago
  Interesting, a binding bid might be more useful than this proposed no-op slop. TLDs like .online actually have a registrar-based dynamic pricing system based on internal rules, like domain size, presence in word lists, plurality, etc... And their distribution of available to taken names is quite good. It's different, which is already good, no one needs yet another TLD with the uncreative allocation system of copying the .com, we need variety, and I feel a binding DNS based offer system might make for a aftermarket-based continuation of the successful .online experiment. But if the offer is not binding, then it's just an advertisement, no consideration, no contract, unlikely to amount to anything materially different than a 'domain for sale' HTML pages. In fact, if the HTML page has a buy now button, it's effectively an offer that can be accepted just by clicking the buttons and inputting cc info, so it's even better than a non binding DNS record. Also, let's stop using TXT for everyone, why is everyone such a pussy about actually using record types? Do we really need every tool to be compliant out of the box? What's wrong with forcing vendors that want to be compliant to actually write like 20 lines of code and formally implementing support for the feature?
TZubiri 2mo ago
my slop detection instinct is so good that I can tell it's slop before even clicking the link. I precogged the neon colors of the website, the pill modals, the 'it's not X, it's Y', the emdashes...
- noman-land 2mo ago
  From now on it's the publishers who have to solve a captcha.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- progval 2mo ago
  It's indeed written by Claude, like most of the website: https://github.com/jdevalk/specification.website/commit/99b15bb2f6d5350bd3a57075a761cfb9f1ffac16 https://github.com/jdevalk/specification.website/commit/99b1...
  - TZubiri 2mo ago
    I feel that this period before the AI bust is mostly a veeeery long window for people to commit reputational suicide. The game is to see who survives the longest without submitting to committing blunders that reveal an intrinsic incorrectible untrustworthy personality and low quality of work standards. And each month that goes by, more people around us are joining the game, some people fall through social pressure, and some feel more comfortable to display their antisocial/low quality traits as those around us do. I personally feel comfortable holding on my anti AI purity comfortably even if 95% of people around me do it, I always suspected it anyways, let them keep on outing themsleves.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      You were holding a reputation? I learned to stay anonymous online.
      - TZubiri 2mo ago
comrade1234 2mo ago
Something I've wondered... if you publicly say that a domain is for sale and someone has a trademark for it would you automatically lose in arbitration? Around 1998 I registered a domain. Sony registered a trademark with the same name a few years after that. Someone on a Gmail account asked if he could buy it - I later found out he worked for Sony. I told him no - it's for a game I've been working on. I went on a vacation for a month and when I got back there was a fedex package filled with documents from Sony saying I'm violating their trademark and they'll take the domain. I got a lawyer and he told me that I shouldn't offer it for sale as that would show the arbitration board that I don't need the domain. But he also told me that in order to fight the trademark it would probably cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars. So I could keep the domain but not use it for commerce... In the end I ended up selling it to Sony but through my lawyer - I never stated it was for sale. But this was early on for domains and I wonder what the process is like now.
- collabs 2mo ago
  Are you allowed to share how much (roughly) you sold it for?
  - comrade1234 2mo ago
    Not too much... $30K plus all legal fees I had paid.
    - donatj 2mo ago
      $30k? I was in a similar situation and sold for $2k... I should have held out!
      - ssl-3 2mo ago
        I once got $6k out of a domain that I was using. It was a very good name and I think I had a solid case for keeping it, but I was not prepared to fight for it. Anyway, you got $2k. That's way better than paying for lawyers and losing it anyway, isn't it?
mentos 2mo ago
“This domain is somewhat worn.” -UO joke
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
layer8 2mo ago
It’s interesting that domains apparently are still such a big business, despite how browsers have been deemphasizing URLs and domain names, and given the prevalence of apps.
- madamelic 2mo ago
  Domain names are a mess in my opinion. Even though we have over a thousand TLDs only a very small handful are considered for commerce or even thought to be valid. I have a domain name with the TLD of "today". Many people think my email is [email]@[domain].today.com. It's not just the common person's fault but also software engineers / product managers who still have a very restrictive view of what a TLD is (under 3 three letters is the primary restriction I hit). Since I don't believe we'll ever convince people that domains longer than 3 letters / full words are TLDs, I think the solution is every human being gets 10 domain names at marketprice then every domain ownership above that gets graduated ownership costs; the first year is market, second year is $100, third year is $500, fourth year is $1,000, and so on until the 10th year where it levels out at $10k per year. The idea of it being if you want to hold onto a lot of domains you need to pay for it or make the domains economically viable. With what is essentially infinite space, we shouldn't be allowing domains to be like finite real world real estate to be speculated on.
  - layer8 2mo ago
    Habituation is difficult to overcome. If domain names had been freeform from the start, we wouldn’t have this particular issue. Domain names are still a finite space, given that a full domain name can be at most 253 characters, and each domain label at most 63 characters. “Requiring” a .com/.org/.net/.CC at the end isn’t really that much of a restriction. By the way, madamelic.com appears to be available.
    - madamelic 2mo ago
      That's a fair point. I knew I was going to popped for the comment about it being an infinite space, haha, because it definitely isn't but domain names don't necessarily have the physical constraints land does. There's no such thing, necessarily, as a domain name that is "in the boonies" or no way to create more domain space. > By the way, madamelic.com appears to be available. Hmmm! I may have to grab this one. The one I really want is madeline.com (it's owned by the family who made Madeline the book) but I am doubtful I will ever get that one without loads of money or ever, hah. I am hesitant to say the domain because of spammers but it is the [shortened version of that name].today.
thelastgallon 2mo ago
This is probably the only item that can sold without saying, "Used, Like New"
- icedchai 2mo ago
  It depends how much spam or other abuse occurred from it.
  - dessimus 2mo ago
    Just think how sullied whitehouse.com has become due to the current occupier of whitehouse.gov.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
Anoian 2mo ago
Yeah cause we really had to improve domain squatters lives. In my opinion domain squatting should be banned instead.
- wredcoll 2mo ago
  Like a lot of things, society would probably benefit if we had caps on how much a single entity could own.
  - al_borland 2mo ago
    Or maybe just a heavy tax on arbitrage.
- al_borland 2mo ago
  I'm wondering if this can be used to hunt down squatters and take domains from them, for example, if they have the domain marked as for sale in DNS, while also renewing the domain. If a renewal happens while someone has a domain listed for sale, they should give up all rights to that domain and it should go back on the open market for a sane price.
- slig 2mo ago
  Do you have any domains that you purchased with the intention to use and haven't been able to use them yet?
  - haapier 2mo ago
    news.ycombinator.today
  - account42 2mo ago
    Will you ever make use of them though? At some point we should just say that you had your chance and should let someone else use those names.
- bigbuppo 2mo ago
  And what is the definition of a domain squatter?
starkeeper 2mo ago
How long until these links are swimming with malware?
Bender 2mo ago
From the RFC The "_for-sale" leaf node name can be placed at any level of the DNS, except in the .arpa infrastructure TLD. There used to be a number of sites that would let users create {username}.some.subdomain.apex.tld. Perhaps this is not a thing any more I honestly don't know. If it is still a thing and someone registers the username "_for-sale" they could cause some confusion. Why allow any level of DNS? If you are selling a domain that should include the entire domain and thus the _for-sale should only be valid at the apex unless the goal is to cause legal problems for some big providers.
- wbl 2mo ago
  Initial underscore is a reserved namespace for this reason.
  - Bender 2mo ago
    Is that universally true on all sites that allow a user to create a sub-domain?
    - tredre3 2mo ago
      DNS allows any character you want, including underscores. Host names in URLs cannot contain underscores. Therefore any service that create subdomains for user would reject underscores, which is why they're considered de-facto reserved for special uses in DNS. I don't think the reserved nature is codified in any RFC.
      - Bender 2mo ago
        Testing [1] Works in Firefox, Helium and Curl but I do not have Chrome or Safari to test with. [1] - https://_test.nochan.net/ https://_test.nochan.net/
        chrismorgan 2mo ago
        This only works because it’s a wildcard certificate. Since 2019, TLS certificates must not be issued for names containing underscores <https://cabforum.org/2018/11/12/ballot-sc012-sunset-of-underscores-in-dnsnames/ https://cabforum.org/2018/11/12/ballot-sc012-sunset-of-under...>.
perino 2mo ago
This was first done by SIDN I believe, the company that orchestrates the .nl domains. They however, do not implement most of the spec. When searching their online whois[1], they'll tell you if a domain is for sale and link to the for sale page. They don't use any of the info you put in the DNS though. The URL comes from their internal system. You need to register it separately. They also don't use the price, txt or anything else you put in the DNS. All they use is the "fcod", to look up the url in their own system. They had a different syntax for this before, but this functionality has existed for some years. [1] https://www.sidn.nl/whois https://www.sidn.nl/whois
- mdavids 2mo ago
  Here's a third pary implementation that I came across that implements the full spec: https://forsaledns.net/ https://forsaledns.net/
shevy-java 2mo ago
Is that good or bad? That's a genuine question here.
grono 2mo ago
Sigh, I'm not a fan of domains becoming the new kind of real estate. Wonder how hard will it be in 20 years to get a good, unused name in a reasonable price.
- germinalphrase 2mo ago
  Have you tried getting a good, unused name today? Anything remotely close to a dictionary word, if unused, is squatted with a $xx,000 price tag. Do registrars get a cut of these sales prices because it seems ridiculous to allow squatting.
  - grono 2mo ago
    Well, at least there's still some room for that with some of the new TLDs. But at some point we will also exhaust all nice TLDs too... It will be even more difficult than it is now
  - axus 2mo ago
    Registrars get a lot more domains registered at 5-20 $/year this way. How would our lives improve if squatting were "not allowed"?
    - germinalphrase 2mo ago
      For anyone trying start a small business, it’s frustrating to go through dozens to hundreds of potential company names before you can find a reasonable URL that isn’t being squatted for 4-5 figures. What positive outcome comes from squatters sitting on unused domains?
  - tredre3 2mo ago
    Many registrars operate as brokers for domain sales indeed (i.e. godaddy, namecheap). Then you have tlds operators with their "premium" domains that go for 1000x the regular price. Premium usually being defined as the top 10k english words and every kind of l33t spelling of sexual words. Neither registrars nor tld operators care about squatting, even when they don't get a cut. Why would they? The squatter is paying them the same as you'd pay them.
kmoser 2mo ago
> Remove it when the domain is no longer for sale. The convention has no “not for sale” value; absence is the only way to say no. Since most domains that are for sale don't currently have such a record, it would be wrong to assume they are not for sale. Therefore, absence of such a record does not explicitly mean "not for sale." It's no different from a house: a "for sale" sign in the front yard means it's for sale, but lack of a sign doesn't mean it's not for sale; it could mean the owner doesn't wish to advertise that way, or at all.
- Marciplan 2mo ago
  ..so? It’s better than what we have now
imthenitto 2mo ago
[flagged]
temp0826 2mo ago
This would have been great for a 2-letter .st domain I had been wanting for years (which appeared to be parked and just redirecting towards ticketmaster or something, with no contact info available). I was bummed about it for a long time, as the .st nic had a sale on 2-letter domains which made me want to pull the trigger, but it got scooped up a day or two prior apparently. I lucked out this year and saw they let it lapse! (I did have a yearly calendar reminder telling me to run whois :)
xhkkffbf 2mo ago
But what about the costs? There are several domains I want. They're just sitting there and no one is doing anything with them. But when I ask to buy them, they ask for outrageous prices (at least in my opinion.) If someone else bought the domain, I would think, "I'm just being outbid." But they never change hands. I've tried telling the owners that I'm their only hope. They just sit there because they have some insane idea for how much it is worth.
gguncth 2mo ago
They should keep this up for a year and then seize all of these squatted domains and auction them off.
- bigbuppo 2mo ago
  Define "squatted domain"
anigbrowl 2mo ago
Between this and domain-owner secrecy the whole domain name system has become financialized over the last 30 years. We are not in any way better off.
eethrowaway 2mo ago
[dead]
Habgdnv 2mo ago
I noticed few commenters mention something like a rule: If you say your domain is for sale, they will take it from you because..... And was wondering, few years back, twitter was sold to mr Elon. I will just say it like this: Did they lose all their trademarks and rights to all domains, if someone register twitter.cc or twitter.it or similar, because twitter is for sale and they did not need the trademark for business anymore?
- jaccola 2mo ago
  The concern is if you own a domain that you don’t own the trademark for. Twitter owned both the domain and all trademarks so it’s a non issue. Basically in fairly limited circumstances you can have your domain taken off you if someone else holds a matching trademark. Saying you are selling it can go some way to demonstrating you are not holding it in good faith.
  - Habgdnv 2mo ago
    I had registered trademark, and when you register one they ask you what are you doing. I was selling clothes, shoes, fashion stuff. I wanted to get the domain with that name, and it was already taken by someone who sells industrial manufacturing machines. Heavy equipment. They also had registered trademark with the exact same name. The idea is that you as a customer won't be confused who is selling something when you enter a shop and see that name. I now get what you're saying, but then this can be turned against everyday people. Imagine you have a domain that is your personal blog, vacation photos, stuff like that. No ads, nothing to sell there. Then you receive a message "We from Microsoft/Sony/IBM/Amazon are willing to give you 10Mil for this domain, because we have plans for it, if you won't use it for something bigger ofc" And then show your reply in court saying "He want to sell it". Even if you run a successful business, they can troll you and say "We offer 1bil - you and your family will not have to work for the rest of your life", and then say "His business is fake, he is selling the domain". I don't know if this is possible but if it is, then the whole system is wrong I guess.
    - jaccola 2mo ago
thrawa8387336 2mo ago
Nobody asked for this
1970-01-01 2mo ago
Can't wait for some kid to slip this into Google.com via AI chatbot and then massage the chatbot to complete the sale for $1.
asdfman123 2mo ago
They need Georgism for DNS names. You set your own price for your domain. But you have to pay 2-5% of that price annually to keep it. That way, squatters are incentived to sell it to someone who's going to use it.
- jefftk 2mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harberger_Tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harberger_Tax
- Fordec 2mo ago
  Sounds like a great way to have larger competitors with more capital bid for your site to take down your domain that your users were using. Rather than Land Value Tax a better analogy might be a Vacant Property Tax which only targets squatting.
  - asdfman123 2mo ago
    The problem with that is the squatters would just turn it into a low quality blog or something along those lines.
    - kevincox 2mo ago
      My personal website is a "low quality blog" but I definitely feel that it shouldn't be up for grabs because I don't want to pay thousands of dollars a year.
      - edelbitter 2mo ago
        A "vacant plot" in this context might be example.ccTLD not being associated with a sufficiently large share of Example Ltd taxable income declared in CC, or some 3rd country maintaining suitable double-taxation treaties with CC. (While in the same interval not having their registry lock in forfeiture of voluntary ownership transfers, in order to qualify for some appropriately scoped "currently no commercial intent / obviously not a squatter" exemption.) That way you would be forced to keep it personal.. or suffer reduced sale price, as the new owner would need to backpay the minimums you were exempt from, or take on some risk merely leasing from you until the lock eventually expires - as you remain the true owner and all the payments and paperwork must cross your desk.
flenserboy 2mo ago
this is how we get under-the-radar marketplaces for llms
nullsanity 2mo ago
[dead]
Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago
Making things easier, and more profitable, for domain squatters is exactly the wrong direction to be going in! I hate how the internet has turned to squeezing every last penny out of its users. This is pathetic and raw.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  It started when ICANN made a lot more TLDs to funnel TLD rental fees ($250k/year/TLD) to ICANN.
- mdavids 1mo ago
  That's not the whole story. Read our blog for the motivation behind it: https://www.sidnlabs.nl/en/news-and-blogs/a-digital-for-sale-sign-for-nl-domain-names https://www.sidnlabs.nl/en/news-and-blogs/a-digital-for-sale...
sandeepkd 2mo ago
I am bit puzzled, read through the RFC itself (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc10023/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc10023/) but could not find who is going to use it and why?
derefr 2mo ago
> If you are willing to sell, the interested buyer has no way to learn that short of a cold email to a WHOIS contact that privacy redaction has probably removed. Has everybody forgotten about well-known email alias addresses? Inquiries about the hostname itself would be (among other things) exactly what `hostmaster@domain` was intended as a point-of-contact for. No need for a working WHOIS service, let alone a non-privacy-redacted WHOIS record.
- jiveturkey 2mo ago
  I've recently bought many domains (1000+ over the last year). A few of them (the more valuable ones) all had TXT records for `@` (the root) that had for-sale info. This new record is just a TXT record anyway, proving the point that the interested buyer can quite easily learn of a domain for sale with existing mechanisms. Also, for domains that are just "parked", not in current use, obviously the parking page can just have a for-sale banner. This is exceedingly common. > Enquiries that would have been welcome never arrive, and the ones that do arrive are indistinguishable from spam. Laughable misrepresentation.
adityaathalye 2mo ago
_for-sale baby-shoes never-used
nikolay 2mo ago
Nice! I just implemented it for my portfolio [0], and I'm waiting for the DNS zones to update! Thank you! [0]: https://namegarage.com https://namegarage.com
- system2 2mo ago
  Were you able to sell any domains before? Especially with those prices, considering their quality? Or is this just a placeholder site made with ai with made-up numbers?
  - nikolay 2mo ago
    Yes, of course. You think I'm subsidizing the renewals without a return on my investment? My prices are low compared to the 3 popular appraising services. I won't consider GoDaddy, as I've always been able to sell my domains well over their appraisals, but I use their pricing as a signal in my blended price as well. I didn't come up with any of these prices - it's all an algo based on credible appraising services: GoDaddy, Atom, Appraise.net, Dynadot. EstiBot is a joke - sometimes it values domains I've sold thousands of times at an appraisal value for less than the renewal cost.
- mdavids 2mo ago
  [dead]
jruohonen 2mo ago
And the actual standard initiative was posted already a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49133970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49133970
sbfeibish 2mo ago
I kept my domain name through WIPO domain arbitration. This was over 2 decades ago. Having a trademark owner challenge your right to own a domain name is just how things work. A trademark owner has to defend the trademark, otherwise the trademark can be lost.
mdavids 2mo ago
Hi, author of RFC 10023 here. I appreciate the interesting discussion! If you’d like to get a better understanding of the concept, have a look here: https://rfc10023.nl https://rfc10023.nl The biggest use case today, at SIDN (the registry for the .nl ccTLD), is described here: https://github.com/SIDN/ForSale-RFC10023/blob/main/examples/use-cases.md https://github.com/SIDN/ForSale-RFC10023/blob/main/examples/...
softwarerero 2mo ago
Actually I like this RFC and the world was missing a list of _for-sale domains, so here it is https://forsaledns.net/ https://forsaledns.net/. I just gave my domains a _for-sale record. I asked AI for what they should cost and put that value and for domains I don't want to sell I added a 0 at the end.

443 points by shaunpud 2mo ago

Tiberium 2mo ago

RFC: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc10023.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc10023.html

ricardobeat 2mo ago
Thank you, for a moment I wondered why a specification was being written by AI.
- verandaguy 2mo ago
  This website has been trying to gain a veneer of legitimacy for months now. Half of its contents aren't even published by any real standards body, it's just AI-centric "best practices" for the current generation of hyperscaler models.
  - blackqueeriroh 2mo ago
    That’s not true at all. Do you know who Joost de Valk is? Because it’s wild for you to say that, truly. That man has probably been building websites for longer than you have been alive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost_de_Valk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joost_de_Valk
    - bakugo 2mo ago
      He made... a Wordpress SEO plugin? Is that supposed to make him an authority on web standards? If anything, this just gives more credence to the idea that it's just the usual SEO-optimized slop. Actually, it gets better: He originally submitted the website to HN himself[0], and his post was flagged/removed, likely due to being AI generated and indistinguishable from a lot of the AI spam that clogs up /newest. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48323406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48323406
    - verandaguy 2mo ago
      He has apparently been involved in web technologies since… after i got involved with web technologies. I made my first website in 2003. Which naturally makes me an authority on the matter. I may have been in middle school but i guess sheer years of involvement are all that counts, right? EDIT: more to the point, briefly. Whatever his past successes (or failures), this is decidedly a website which tries to pass itself off as something it is not. If you want to collate information to have a centralized guide, you can do that, just don't name it deceptively. A specification is a very concrete thing, including in the world of web standards, and someone who's been involved with Wordpress of all things for over two decades should know better than to try and launder the term. His contributions to Wordpress do not inspire confidence. While WP SEO was no doubt popular (the numbers seem to back it up), SEO had always been a very handwavy thing, and the industry was always full of people willing to profit off that. To be clear, while I am not accusing de Valk of being such a profiteer, I am staunchly of the opinion that success in the SEO space is not a strong predictor of that person's expertise in any other area of web technology. To wit, on his past: he appears, per Wikipedia, to have been involved with a site at css3.info. A skim of his author page (/author/admin/) shows that this site had a similar goal, if narrower scope, to the site linked in the HN post we're currently discussing. It was a bad idea then, and it was a bad idea now, and I write this with the knowledge that at least one other contributor to css3[dot]info claims to have been a member of the W3C's CSS3 WG. And finally, on his Wikipedia page: this is an... unusual page. - While there's strong off-wiki evidence that he has a presence outside of Wordpress (notably, as a VC), his wiki page focuses almost exclusively on his SEO plugin and the company he built around it. - By biographical article standards, the article is strange. It focuses much more on a single product than the life of the person being documented, and the vast majority of the article is unequivocally positive. Neither of these are outright indicators of any malfeasance, but are both unusual. - The principal source for information outside of his career is a Business Insider interview with him which is, again, outstandingly flattering (though nominally informative). The article in effect follows his own description of his life without framing it as such. This is, at a minimum, sloppy writing for Wikipedia. My overall impression of him, having myself hosted and developed a handful of WP sites in the technology's heyday in the late 2000s/early 2010s: this guy is a marketer with an above-average-for-marketers technology background. I maintain that his website (both website[dot]specification and, to a lesser extent, css3[dot]info) are both at a minimum deeply misguided in their naming and description. My personal take is that, in `specification`'s case, this is a marketing attempt (effectively, an SEO hijacking attempt); it looks legitimate and approachable to web developers relying heavily on agents (and so too does it seem legitimate to agents), and frankly organizations like the W3C just don't have the same kind of presence as they did when HTML5 and CSS3 were new and very, very hot, so newer developers may not know to look for the W3C's drafts.
    - Retr0id 2mo ago
      > trying to gain a veneer of legitimacy > SEO For me, these terms are synonymous.
- shaunpud 2mo ago
  I discovered this because someone was nice enough to create a website which lists these things, which are very relevant, and has an RSS feed. The post states defined RFC's, I wouldn't have seen it if I didn't subscribe, and it looks like others are interested too. So over seeing bullshit "AI blah" comments, just move on, no one cares mate.

riddlemethat 2mo ago

Wonderful. Another tool for domain campers. Just what standards bodies should be spending time on…

dietr1ch 2mo ago
This is what really sucks about domain names
spicybright 2mo ago
I don't get the point, if someone is selling a domain the only content on the site will be advertising that. And you can bet people will forget to delete or not update the record as needed, making it kind of useless.
- rhplus 2mo ago
  A parked domain would potentially make more money hosting AI generated “content” to improve its SEO and passive ad revenue. That’s why invested interests have pushed for this side-channel “For sale” sign.

Tiberium 2mo ago

(Not quoting the article directly due to HN's auto AI filters) In "Common mistakes" this article first says not to add this record if you're not actually planning to sell the domain, then says that the record doesn't oblige anyone to do anything, that feels quite weird to me.

zinekeller 2mo ago
This probably means that meeting the minimum price does not guarantee that you would be able to buy it due to other (probably opaque) criteria. For example, the seller might not want to sell to you/your company in particular, but is open to other people/companies.
- reaperducer 2mo ago
  Sounds good to me. I have a particularly valuable domain name that would be perfect for a museum that later opened with the same name. I'd love to sell or even give it to the museum, but all my offers have been ignored. I don't blame them, since everything on the Internet is a scam these days. But I won't just put it for sale to the highest bidder. Then it'll end up with a squatter. I'd rather sit on it.
TZubiri 2mo ago
Interesting, a binding bid might be more useful than this proposed no-op slop. TLDs like .online actually have a registrar-based dynamic pricing system based on internal rules, like domain size, presence in word lists, plurality, etc... And their distribution of available to taken names is quite good. It's different, which is already good, no one needs yet another TLD with the uncreative allocation system of copying the .com, we need variety, and I feel a binding DNS based offer system might make for a aftermarket-based continuation of the successful .online experiment. But if the offer is not binding, then it's just an advertisement, no consideration, no contract, unlikely to amount to anything materially different than a 'domain for sale' HTML pages. In fact, if the HTML page has a buy now button, it's effectively an offer that can be accepted just by clicking the buttons and inputting cc info, so it's even better than a non binding DNS record. Also, let's stop using TXT for everyone, why is everyone such a pussy about actually using record types? Do we really need every tool to be compliant out of the box? What's wrong with forcing vendors that want to be compliant to actually write like 20 lines of code and formally implementing support for the feature?

TZubiri 2mo ago

my slop detection instinct is so good that I can tell it's slop before even clicking the link. I precogged the neon colors of the website, the pill modals, the 'it's not X, it's Y', the emdashes...

noman-land 2mo ago
From now on it's the publishers who have to solve a captcha.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
progval 2mo ago
It's indeed written by Claude, like most of the website: https://github.com/jdevalk/specification.website/commit/99b15bb2f6d5350bd3a57075a761cfb9f1ffac16 https://github.com/jdevalk/specification.website/commit/99b1...
- TZubiri 2mo ago
  I feel that this period before the AI bust is mostly a veeeery long window for people to commit reputational suicide. The game is to see who survives the longest without submitting to committing blunders that reveal an intrinsic incorrectible untrustworthy personality and low quality of work standards. And each month that goes by, more people around us are joining the game, some people fall through social pressure, and some feel more comfortable to display their antisocial/low quality traits as those around us do. I personally feel comfortable holding on my anti AI purity comfortably even if 95% of people around me do it, I always suspected it anyways, let them keep on outing themsleves.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    You were holding a reputation? I learned to stay anonymous online.
    - TZubiri 2mo ago

comrade1234 2mo ago

Something I've wondered... if you publicly say that a domain is for sale and someone has a trademark for it would you automatically lose in arbitration? Around 1998 I registered a domain. Sony registered a trademark with the same name a few years after that. Someone on a Gmail account asked if he could buy it - I later found out he worked for Sony. I told him no - it's for a game I've been working on. I went on a vacation for a month and when I got back there was a fedex package filled with documents from Sony saying I'm violating their trademark and they'll take the domain. I got a lawyer and he told me that I shouldn't offer it for sale as that would show the arbitration board that I don't need the domain. But he also told me that in order to fight the trademark it would probably cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars. So I could keep the domain but not use it for commerce... In the end I ended up selling it to Sony but through my lawyer - I never stated it was for sale. But this was early on for domains and I wonder what the process is like now.

collabs 2mo ago
Are you allowed to share how much (roughly) you sold it for?
- comrade1234 2mo ago
  Not too much... $30K plus all legal fees I had paid.
  - donatj 2mo ago
    $30k? I was in a similar situation and sold for $2k... I should have held out!
    - ssl-3 2mo ago
      I once got $6k out of a domain that I was using. It was a very good name and I think I had a solid case for keeping it, but I was not prepared to fight for it. Anyway, you got $2k. That's way better than paying for lawyers and losing it anyway, isn't it?

mentos 2mo ago

“This domain is somewhat worn.” -UO joke

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

layer8 2mo ago

It’s interesting that domains apparently are still such a big business, despite how browsers have been deemphasizing URLs and domain names, and given the prevalence of apps.

madamelic 2mo ago
Domain names are a mess in my opinion. Even though we have over a thousand TLDs only a very small handful are considered for commerce or even thought to be valid. I have a domain name with the TLD of "today". Many people think my email is [email]@[domain].today.com. It's not just the common person's fault but also software engineers / product managers who still have a very restrictive view of what a TLD is (under 3 three letters is the primary restriction I hit). Since I don't believe we'll ever convince people that domains longer than 3 letters / full words are TLDs, I think the solution is every human being gets 10 domain names at marketprice then every domain ownership above that gets graduated ownership costs; the first year is market, second year is $100, third year is $500, fourth year is $1,000, and so on until the 10th year where it levels out at $10k per year. The idea of it being if you want to hold onto a lot of domains you need to pay for it or make the domains economically viable. With what is essentially infinite space, we shouldn't be allowing domains to be like finite real world real estate to be speculated on.
- layer8 2mo ago
  Habituation is difficult to overcome. If domain names had been freeform from the start, we wouldn’t have this particular issue. Domain names are still a finite space, given that a full domain name can be at most 253 characters, and each domain label at most 63 characters. “Requiring” a .com/.org/.net/.CC at the end isn’t really that much of a restriction. By the way, madamelic.com appears to be available.
  - madamelic 2mo ago
    That's a fair point. I knew I was going to popped for the comment about it being an infinite space, haha, because it definitely isn't but domain names don't necessarily have the physical constraints land does. There's no such thing, necessarily, as a domain name that is "in the boonies" or no way to create more domain space. > By the way, madamelic.com appears to be available. Hmmm! I may have to grab this one. The one I really want is madeline.com (it's owned by the family who made Madeline the book) but I am doubtful I will ever get that one without loads of money or ever, hah. I am hesitant to say the domain because of spammers but it is the [shortened version of that name].today.

thelastgallon 2mo ago

This is probably the only item that can sold without saying, "Used, Like New"

icedchai 2mo ago
It depends how much spam or other abuse occurred from it.
- dessimus 2mo ago
  Just think how sullied whitehouse.com has become due to the current occupier of whitehouse.gov.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

Anoian 2mo ago

Yeah cause we really had to improve domain squatters lives. In my opinion domain squatting should be banned instead.

wredcoll 2mo ago
Like a lot of things, society would probably benefit if we had caps on how much a single entity could own.
- al_borland 2mo ago
  Or maybe just a heavy tax on arbitrage.
al_borland 2mo ago
I'm wondering if this can be used to hunt down squatters and take domains from them, for example, if they have the domain marked as for sale in DNS, while also renewing the domain. If a renewal happens while someone has a domain listed for sale, they should give up all rights to that domain and it should go back on the open market for a sane price.
slig 2mo ago
Do you have any domains that you purchased with the intention to use and haven't been able to use them yet?
- haapier 2mo ago
  news.ycombinator.today
- account42 2mo ago
  Will you ever make use of them though? At some point we should just say that you had your chance and should let someone else use those names.
bigbuppo 2mo ago
And what is the definition of a domain squatter?

starkeeper 2mo ago

How long until these links are swimming with malware?

Bender 2mo ago

From the RFC The "_for-sale" leaf node name can be placed at any level of the DNS, except in the .arpa infrastructure TLD. There used to be a number of sites that would let users create {username}.some.subdomain.apex.tld. Perhaps this is not a thing any more I honestly don't know. If it is still a thing and someone registers the username "_for-sale" they could cause some confusion. Why allow any level of DNS? If you are selling a domain that should include the entire domain and thus the _for-sale should only be valid at the apex unless the goal is to cause legal problems for some big providers.

wbl 2mo ago
Initial underscore is a reserved namespace for this reason.
- Bender 2mo ago
  Is that universally true on all sites that allow a user to create a sub-domain?
  - tredre3 2mo ago
    DNS allows any character you want, including underscores. Host names in URLs cannot contain underscores. Therefore any service that create subdomains for user would reject underscores, which is why they're considered de-facto reserved for special uses in DNS. I don't think the reserved nature is codified in any RFC.
    - Bender 2mo ago
      Testing [1] Works in Firefox, Helium and Curl but I do not have Chrome or Safari to test with. [1] - https://_test.nochan.net/ https://_test.nochan.net/
      - chrismorgan 2mo ago
        This only works because it’s a wildcard certificate. Since 2019, TLS certificates must not be issued for names containing underscores <https://cabforum.org/2018/11/12/ballot-sc012-sunset-of-underscores-in-dnsnames/ https://cabforum.org/2018/11/12/ballot-sc012-sunset-of-under...>.

perino 2mo ago

This was first done by SIDN I believe, the company that orchestrates the .nl domains. They however, do not implement most of the spec. When searching their online whois[1], they'll tell you if a domain is for sale and link to the for sale page. They don't use any of the info you put in the DNS though. The URL comes from their internal system. You need to register it separately. They also don't use the price, txt or anything else you put in the DNS. All they use is the "fcod", to look up the url in their own system. They had a different syntax for this before, but this functionality has existed for some years. [1] https://www.sidn.nl/whois https://www.sidn.nl/whois

mdavids 2mo ago
Here's a third pary implementation that I came across that implements the full spec: https://forsaledns.net/ https://forsaledns.net/

shevy-java 2mo ago

Is that good or bad? That's a genuine question here.

grono 2mo ago

Sigh, I'm not a fan of domains becoming the new kind of real estate. Wonder how hard will it be in 20 years to get a good, unused name in a reasonable price.

germinalphrase 2mo ago
Have you tried getting a good, unused name today? Anything remotely close to a dictionary word, if unused, is squatted with a $xx,000 price tag. Do registrars get a cut of these sales prices because it seems ridiculous to allow squatting.
- grono 2mo ago
  Well, at least there's still some room for that with some of the new TLDs. But at some point we will also exhaust all nice TLDs too... It will be even more difficult than it is now
- axus 2mo ago
  Registrars get a lot more domains registered at 5-20 $/year this way. How would our lives improve if squatting were "not allowed"?
  - germinalphrase 2mo ago
    For anyone trying start a small business, it’s frustrating to go through dozens to hundreds of potential company names before you can find a reasonable URL that isn’t being squatted for 4-5 figures. What positive outcome comes from squatters sitting on unused domains?
- tredre3 2mo ago
  Many registrars operate as brokers for domain sales indeed (i.e. godaddy, namecheap). Then you have tlds operators with their "premium" domains that go for 1000x the regular price. Premium usually being defined as the top 10k english words and every kind of l33t spelling of sexual words. Neither registrars nor tld operators care about squatting, even when they don't get a cut. Why would they? The squatter is paying them the same as you'd pay them.

kmoser 2mo ago

> Remove it when the domain is no longer for sale. The convention has no “not for sale” value; absence is the only way to say no. Since most domains that are for sale don't currently have such a record, it would be wrong to assume they are not for sale. Therefore, absence of such a record does not explicitly mean "not for sale." It's no different from a house: a "for sale" sign in the front yard means it's for sale, but lack of a sign doesn't mean it's not for sale; it could mean the owner doesn't wish to advertise that way, or at all.

Marciplan 2mo ago
..so? It’s better than what we have now

imthenitto 2mo ago

[flagged]

temp0826 2mo ago

This would have been great for a 2-letter .st domain I had been wanting for years (which appeared to be parked and just redirecting towards ticketmaster or something, with no contact info available). I was bummed about it for a long time, as the .st nic had a sale on 2-letter domains which made me want to pull the trigger, but it got scooped up a day or two prior apparently. I lucked out this year and saw they let it lapse! (I did have a yearly calendar reminder telling me to run whois :)

xhkkffbf 2mo ago

But what about the costs? There are several domains I want. They're just sitting there and no one is doing anything with them. But when I ask to buy them, they ask for outrageous prices (at least in my opinion.) If someone else bought the domain, I would think, "I'm just being outbid." But they never change hands. I've tried telling the owners that I'm their only hope. They just sit there because they have some insane idea for how much it is worth.

gguncth 2mo ago

They should keep this up for a year and then seize all of these squatted domains and auction them off.

bigbuppo 2mo ago
Define "squatted domain"

anigbrowl 2mo ago

Between this and domain-owner secrecy the whole domain name system has become financialized over the last 30 years. We are not in any way better off.

eethrowaway 2mo ago

[dead]

Habgdnv 2mo ago

I noticed few commenters mention something like a rule: If you say your domain is for sale, they will take it from you because..... And was wondering, few years back, twitter was sold to mr Elon. I will just say it like this: Did they lose all their trademarks and rights to all domains, if someone register twitter.cc or twitter.it or similar, because twitter is for sale and they did not need the trademark for business anymore?

jaccola 2mo ago
The concern is if you own a domain that you don’t own the trademark for. Twitter owned both the domain and all trademarks so it’s a non issue. Basically in fairly limited circumstances you can have your domain taken off you if someone else holds a matching trademark. Saying you are selling it can go some way to demonstrating you are not holding it in good faith.
- Habgdnv 2mo ago
  I had registered trademark, and when you register one they ask you what are you doing. I was selling clothes, shoes, fashion stuff. I wanted to get the domain with that name, and it was already taken by someone who sells industrial manufacturing machines. Heavy equipment. They also had registered trademark with the exact same name. The idea is that you as a customer won't be confused who is selling something when you enter a shop and see that name. I now get what you're saying, but then this can be turned against everyday people. Imagine you have a domain that is your personal blog, vacation photos, stuff like that. No ads, nothing to sell there. Then you receive a message "We from Microsoft/Sony/IBM/Amazon are willing to give you 10Mil for this domain, because we have plans for it, if you won't use it for something bigger ofc" And then show your reply in court saying "He want to sell it". Even if you run a successful business, they can troll you and say "We offer 1bil - you and your family will not have to work for the rest of your life", and then say "His business is fake, he is selling the domain". I don't know if this is possible but if it is, then the whole system is wrong I guess.
  - jaccola 2mo ago

thrawa8387336 2mo ago

Nobody asked for this

1970-01-01 2mo ago

Can't wait for some kid to slip this into Google.com via AI chatbot and then massage the chatbot to complete the sale for $1.

asdfman123 2mo ago

They need Georgism for DNS names. You set your own price for your domain. But you have to pay 2-5% of that price annually to keep it. That way, squatters are incentived to sell it to someone who's going to use it.

jefftk 2mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harberger_Tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harberger_Tax
Fordec 2mo ago
Sounds like a great way to have larger competitors with more capital bid for your site to take down your domain that your users were using. Rather than Land Value Tax a better analogy might be a Vacant Property Tax which only targets squatting.
- asdfman123 2mo ago
  The problem with that is the squatters would just turn it into a low quality blog or something along those lines.
  - kevincox 2mo ago
    My personal website is a "low quality blog" but I definitely feel that it shouldn't be up for grabs because I don't want to pay thousands of dollars a year.
    - edelbitter 2mo ago
      A "vacant plot" in this context might be example.ccTLD not being associated with a sufficiently large share of Example Ltd taxable income declared in CC, or some 3rd country maintaining suitable double-taxation treaties with CC. (While in the same interval not having their registry lock in forfeiture of voluntary ownership transfers, in order to qualify for some appropriately scoped "currently no commercial intent / obviously not a squatter" exemption.) That way you would be forced to keep it personal.. or suffer reduced sale price, as the new owner would need to backpay the minimums you were exempt from, or take on some risk merely leasing from you until the lock eventually expires - as you remain the true owner and all the payments and paperwork must cross your desk.

flenserboy 2mo ago

this is how we get under-the-radar marketplaces for llms

nullsanity 2mo ago

[dead]

Hilliard_Ohiooo 2mo ago

Making things easier, and more profitable, for domain squatters is exactly the wrong direction to be going in! I hate how the internet has turned to squeezing every last penny out of its users. This is pathetic and raw.

inigyou 2mo ago
It started when ICANN made a lot more TLDs to funnel TLD rental fees ($250k/year/TLD) to ICANN.
mdavids 1mo ago
That's not the whole story. Read our blog for the motivation behind it: https://www.sidnlabs.nl/en/news-and-blogs/a-digital-for-sale-sign-for-nl-domain-names https://www.sidnlabs.nl/en/news-and-blogs/a-digital-for-sale...

sandeepkd 2mo ago

I am bit puzzled, read through the RFC itself (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc10023/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc10023/) but could not find who is going to use it and why?

derefr 2mo ago

> If you are willing to sell, the interested buyer has no way to learn that short of a cold email to a WHOIS contact that privacy redaction has probably removed. Has everybody forgotten about well-known email alias addresses? Inquiries about the hostname itself would be (among other things) exactly what `hostmaster@domain` was intended as a point-of-contact for. No need for a working WHOIS service, let alone a non-privacy-redacted WHOIS record.

jiveturkey 2mo ago
I've recently bought many domains (1000+ over the last year). A few of them (the more valuable ones) all had TXT records for `@` (the root) that had for-sale info. This new record is just a TXT record anyway, proving the point that the interested buyer can quite easily learn of a domain for sale with existing mechanisms. Also, for domains that are just "parked", not in current use, obviously the parking page can just have a for-sale banner. This is exceedingly common. > Enquiries that would have been welcome never arrive, and the ones that do arrive are indistinguishable from spam. Laughable misrepresentation.

adityaathalye 2mo ago

_for-sale baby-shoes never-used

nikolay 2mo ago

Nice! I just implemented it for my portfolio [0], and I'm waiting for the DNS zones to update! Thank you! [0]: https://namegarage.com https://namegarage.com

system2 2mo ago
Were you able to sell any domains before? Especially with those prices, considering their quality? Or is this just a placeholder site made with ai with made-up numbers?
- nikolay 2mo ago
  Yes, of course. You think I'm subsidizing the renewals without a return on my investment? My prices are low compared to the 3 popular appraising services. I won't consider GoDaddy, as I've always been able to sell my domains well over their appraisals, but I use their pricing as a signal in my blended price as well. I didn't come up with any of these prices - it's all an algo based on credible appraising services: GoDaddy, Atom, Appraise.net, Dynadot. EstiBot is a joke - sometimes it values domains I've sold thousands of times at an appraisal value for less than the renewal cost.
mdavids 2mo ago
[dead]

jruohonen 2mo ago

And the actual standard initiative was posted already a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49133970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49133970

sbfeibish 2mo ago

I kept my domain name through WIPO domain arbitration. This was over 2 decades ago. Having a trademark owner challenge your right to own a domain name is just how things work. A trademark owner has to defend the trademark, otherwise the trademark can be lost.

mdavids 2mo ago

Hi, author of RFC 10023 here. I appreciate the interesting discussion! If you’d like to get a better understanding of the concept, have a look here: https://rfc10023.nl https://rfc10023.nl The biggest use case today, at SIDN (the registry for the .nl ccTLD), is described here: https://github.com/SIDN/ForSale-RFC10023/blob/main/examples/use-cases.md https://github.com/SIDN/ForSale-RFC10023/blob/main/examples/...

softwarerero 2mo ago

Actually I like this RFC and the world was missing a list of _for-sale domains, so here it is https://forsaledns.net/ https://forsaledns.net/. I just gave my domains a _for-sale record. I asked AI for what they should cost and put that value and for domains I don't want to sell I added a 0 at the end.