Ask HN: How could we solve the problem of domain squatters? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How could we solve the problem of domain squatters?

19 pointsfrigg40 comments

Because domain names are cheap (which is good since most people can afford them) some people often register hundreds and thousands of domains and just keep there in the hope they will earn a lot from selling them. Of course most don't get sold and nobody uses them.

Should ICANN intervene here? It doesn't SEEM fair and I think there should be some restrictions to prevent this.

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This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I don't really see this as a "problem" just as I don't see my inability to afford my dream home or car as unfair. Unless someone can convince me otherwise, I'm not aware of the domain market being "fixed" in any unscrupulous way. Squatters take risks to buy up many domains (most of which will never sell) and hope to profit off a few. The prices of the domains will be whatever the market bears. Perhaps the only real problem I can think of is that the market is very opaque, in a way that prevents liquidity. It's such an arduous process to find out what a squatted domain actually costs, that most people don't even bother. So a solution might be a better and more global domain name market.

  People asking questions, lost in confusion
  Well, I tell them there's no problem, only solutions
    - John Lennon

The other solutions proposed here work at the wrong level. The approach taken by I2P[1] does away with the concept of globally squattable names[2], leaving public keys as the global identifiers and letting individuals define local nicknames or delegate to trusted lists.

[1] https://geti2p.net/en/docs/naming

[2] Even http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/squarezooko is susceptible to squatting by those who can invest (or rent) computing power.

PS: I had a chance recently to talk with a "DNSquatter": the doorman at a building I frequent. Poor guy bought tens of thousands of domain names, years ago, with money he had available for investment, and asked me for advice on how to cash out his investment. It seems to me that he's the victim of a chumpatron[3], rather than the scammer himself; although his actions do help keep the scam alive. I advised him to consider the money lost.

[3] http://www.loper-os.org/?p=1446

Agreed, and my approach so far for naming is this:

https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/09/20/web-o...

One of the advantages of it is that it can be used to mimic the DNS/SSL model or any other PKI just by imposing the right priority calculation rules, so you at least don't lose any capabilities with it.

Maybe it's not a problem. Squatters have to pay ongoing registration fees to maintain their stock so that puts a cap on registering of every possible domain. You could even see them as providing a service by keeping desirable domains available for people who really really want them instead of first-come-first-served which is quite a ridiculous way of allocating resources.

Who appointed the domain squatters to provide this service? Ah, it was first-come-first-served.

The registration fees are very low and they're a yearly fee which doesn't make that a big burden.

>"keeping desirable domains available"

Eh, they're more like keeping the domains and selling them to the highest bidder. You're defining the "really really want" here as the entity with the biggest pocket. Domains cost so little for a reason, so everyone can afford them but obviously some people abuse this and it's why we need more oversight. IMO of course.

> Domains cost so little for a reason, so everyone can afford them

This is exactly right. Squatters are taking away from the people what the original designers of the system intended. If they had intended that only those with lots of money had short-length domain names, then they would have made them expensive from the start -- or made the price a function of the character-length.

The first thing I thought of was some rule saying that you have to be 'using' the domain within, say, 2 years or it gets pulled from you.

But then the problem is, do we want someone policing what the definition of 'using' a domain is? Hell no.

I think that unfortunately the way it's going is that you basically use a different TLD, but even now it's beneficial to have the .com if you can (especially among non-developer audiences who aren't used to .ly, .io, etc etc). 'Just go to whatever.io' to your grandma isn't as obvious as 'Just go to whatever.com'.

With the advent of so many new TLDs, I'm of the opinion that this isn't even that big of a problem anymore. Your 1st pick is being squatted? Just pick another TLD.

To an extent this is true, but if domains get too cheap, the problem could resurface.

The effect of the new TLDs will be that domain names will stop being relevant. They are not that relevant even now, most people use Google rather than typing in a domain name, but ".com" is still present in people's memories. When more companies start using non-com domain names, the problem will just go away. It will create another mess, but that's a different problem.

> When more companies start using non-com domain names, the problem will just go away.

Ehh, I mean, will this ever actually happen? While .co and .io domains are popular in startups, consumers, especially non-technical ones, I think will prevent a move away from .com from happening.

There are a lot of new TLDs and I think companies will eventually start using those.

As long as [Your name] results in your website on Google - the average user doesn't care if it ends in .ninja, .pizza, .io, or .com because they are never entering that information. They type in some amount of "Google" and search [Your Company Name] into Google. That's the average user.

Users who are advanced enough to even understand URL's will likely remember [X site is .org and Y site is .tokyo] or they'll bookmark the site if they find themselves forgetting often.

Even as a highly technically proficient user - I find myself using a keyword to search google for a domain name of a company if I am interested in finding their website.

Two approaches come to mind: (1) Require strict identity for domain registration, and then limit the number per person to something like 3, except where a special permit is held. (2) Make it illegal, where a heavy fine would be imposed for squatting. Naturally there would need to be a grace period post-registration before a domain were considered in squat-mode. Six months could be suitable.

Furthermore, there could be an added regulation that no two domains could serve essentially the same data for more than a certain transition period, such as three months. Not only are such duplicates bad for spiders, but there is no essential reason why they need to exist. With redirects and load balancers, a site could easily be switched over from one domain to another in a relatively short time.

One of the fundamental rules of this world is that if something can be abused, it will be abused. And unlike infractions that are obvious and hurt a person's social reputation, domain registration is so hidden that a person can squat left and right without social repercussions. Hence, the only solution is regulation -- either technical, or legal.

> limit the number per person to something like 3, except where a special permit is held.

Organizations are people too, or corporations end up getting special permits? Either one leads to trouble and groups that buy up to maximums since they want to use all their entitlements.

> no two domains could serve essentially the same data for more than a certain transition period

So now we all need different VPN gateway and email system homepages? Who is to say domains exists for HTTP? They are unique names for many protocols.

The main problem is the ability to sell them for value. Make that hard. For example, make parties prove it is a legal inheritance or court victory that requires a transfer otherwise push it into the pool where others can try to buy it faster and deny the old registrar involvement until it falls out of the next valid ownership chain.

Email logins are an interesting exception, at least for those whose domains exist purely for vanity. For non-email logins, sub-domains could be used instead.

I agree that targeting the selling aspect is another approach to consider, although I imagine there are some big hurdles there as well.

I've consider this before and thought of a similar solution. Like you I think there would need to be strict identification and rules that a person whose name holds a domain owns it irrelevant of other previous agreements (to stop people holding domains for others). This way if a domain became valuable the person that requested someone to hold the domain carries moral risk and would limit their ability to hold domains.

Then I would put exponentially increasing pricing on multiple domains per individual. Make it affordable to hold a small number of domains, but to hold many means it is very expensive and likely additional domains must return increasingly high value to justify holding.

Excellent point about gradual increases in price for additional concurrent domains. That's an elegant solution requiring very little human interaction or machine intelligence.

I'm a little bit confused though by your first suggestion.

On the first point, I'm trying to create an environment where a business cant hire many people to hold a small number of domains. So if you made a rule that holding a domain both grants ownership and negates any other deals about transfer of ownership, this would mean that if someone could only ask me to hold a domain via a trust relationship. That might be fine for a few family members and friends but it would never scale to large amounts.

Thinking a bit more on it you'd likely have to split individual vs corporate domain ownership to protect business interest. Charge corporate a x100 multiple for holding domains to avoid someone setting up huge amounts of shelf companies, but companies can also own a small number of domains but at a price where squatting is hard.

Okay. I see what you meant now. For the most part, domains would be non-transferable, hence directly linked to an entity's identity. In other words, buying a domain would be acquiring a licence to use said domain.

100x sounds a bit harsh. I think that would hurt small businesses (LLCs). Perhaps something more reasonable, like 20x would be sufficient.

The easiest solution is to raise the price so it's no longer a viable business to squat domains. Right now you can buy 1,000 domains for $10k a year, and you just need to a handful of those to be worth something to the right person, and you break even.

Raise the price of a .com to $100 per year. This remains a minimal cost to any profitable business, and it's cheap enough for new startups to buy a domain for a year or two while attempting a new business.

If you can't afford it, well, you have countless other domain extensions you can choose from at a cheaper rate.

I'd much rather pay $100 per year for a .com that I want, instead of having a domain squatter asking $2k, and then having to settle for my fourth or fifth choice that's actually available to register.

I'd argue that the median price paid to a squatter is less than the present value of $100/year for the life of the domain ownership minus the present value of $10/year for the life of the domain ownership. So your proposal, while shutting out squatters, would cost typical legitimate domain owners more money.

A "squatter", by definition, is "someone who settles on property without right or title". So who is the legal registered owner of a domain name property squatting from?

Domain names are like the username you used to post the question. Your 'first mover advantage' secured the name. The next person can't claim your 'squatting' on that user name, or all the other usernames that you 'own', because now they want it.

You can't squat trademarks. You can use trademark claims to get domain names from people who aren't using them legitimately, including trying to sell them.

We could make domain name registration work the same as trademark registration, or people just need to get used to registering trademarks and then using the trademark claim process.

Disclaimer: I haven't tried this. I'm afraid trademark claims might only be honored for big companies, not for the little guys.

This isn't hugely effective.

Trademarks are industry/product/service specific. So just because someone else owns "Example's Flower Shop" doesn't mean you cannot use "Example's Bakery" since there is no reasonable expectation that a consumer could confuse the two (i.e. your bakery doesn't benefit from their Flower Shop's brand). So if you owned Example.com as the baking company, it is unlikely that the flower shop could take it from you even if they own a legitimate trademark.

Another note is that trademarks protect TRADE. If you own a registered trademark's domain but use the domain to host your collection of cat photos it is unlikely the company could take that from you (although they can force you to give it up by costing you thousands of dollars in lawyer fees for their frivolous suits, which companies have definitely done in the past).

All I am saying is, it isn't cut and dry. Trademarks aren't a magic bullet.

PS - But like all things, the party with the most money/influence almost always wins regardless of right/wrong, lawful/lawless. They can cost you tens of thousands of dollars even if you're completely right and on the right side of the law.

The ideas is to use it against outright squatters, not against other businesses that have the same name. You're right that it doesn't help with personal sites.

The "Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy"[1] seems pretty clear-cut against squatters. See section 4a and 4b. "Bad faith" includes "primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name." Basically a definition of squatting.

[1] https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/policy-2012-02-25-en

Domain names can only be rented from the domain authority. They can never be sold, just released back to the authority when finished with.

Assuming you are proposing this as a technical/legal solution, I can't imagine how this would be possible to enforce.

That's not that different from how it is right now. You never really "buy" a domain from someone, you just give them money to convince them to release the domain

Capitalism at its finest. Is it fair that people buy up parcels of acres of real estate for practically nothing in hopes that it will one day become developed and be able to sell it for millions? One could also argue the same about art. Is it fair that people buy art for a few hundred bucks and sell it for XX?

To my understanding, the purpose of capitalism is to enable those who work the hardest to in turn have the most resources brought their way. In other words, more work equals more pay. If you want to bring true idealism into the picture, then is capitalism not intended so that a person is compensated for the value that they create for society?

The problem with squatting is that it doesn't create value. It may create scarcity, but that's not inherent value. For example, diamonds are scarce in the market, but they don't have an inherent value anywhere near their price. When you work producing software, you are bringing something of value into existence that didn't exist before. When you work long day on the railroad, you are organising matter in a way that helps society to function. When you squat on real estate, you are sitting on something waiting for society to create value in the surrounding areas. Society is creating the value that the land eventually sells for -- not the person squatting. When the squatter sells that property, they are deriving the ends from other people's work. This is akin to counterfeiting money: Sure it has value in the market, but the person counterfeiting didn't create that value.

in the old fashioned world of physical domain squatting - i.e. land speculation - ramping up land taxes (as some percentage of the current valuation of the land) is one way to discourage this kind of thing.

perhaps not the best way, but certainly a way to go about it.

ICANN is profiting from squatters far more than from your average domain owner. It's not in their best interests to intervene.

Squatting is a real problem, though. The cost of holding a domain until someone pays you stupid money for it is just far too low.

perhaps the problem can be avoided with an alternative approach. maybe a decentralized design that determines a name by algorithm rather than decree, walk the users social graph, let people rename the world in a way that is fixed to their perspective regardless of device.

Basically this;

https://roamingaroundatrandom.wordpress.com/2014/09/20/web-o...

What if all names were auctioned instead of sold at fixed prices?

If the auctions aren't periodic, what's the point?

Assess property taxes on domain names.

I see what you did there, but you really should have elaborated on the why so that others would understand. To state it myself, a domain would increase in value as that domain became more desirable -- regardless of whether before or after registration. This way, a desirable domain would be difficult to squat by someone not actually using the domain for real business purposes. As I suggested earlier, a shorter name could cost more since it has inherent desirability. The tricky thing is finding a good algorithm for calculating desirability, particularly over time. This approach, of course, is not the best for non-profit and personal domains.

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