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Comment by will_brown | Hacker News Reader

>Contrast this with acquiring a business name through any Department of State/Division of Corporations.

What do you mean by this?

Generally if a corporate name is registered (example: ABC, INC.) most states will not allow another “ABC” to be registered (even if ending in another suffix like “Corp” or even if another type of entity like an LLC).

I had a client in a certain state who registered their entity name as MSG HOLDINGS and wouldn’t you know I got a call from General Counsel of Madison Square Garden one day making an offer to purchase my clients entity solely for the name.

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I mean if a name is available to use, you can just use it. There's no negotiation, no price barrier, nothing.

I think most of my frustration is toward the domain squatting/reselling industry.

>I mean if a name is available to use, you can just use it. There's no negotiation, no price barrier, nothing.

How is that different in domain names? If the name is available, you buy it and use it. And the "price barrier" for domain names was less than filing incorporation paperwork, in my state anyway.

>I think most of my frustration is toward the domain squatting/reselling industry.

At least with domain names you can negotiate with someone. If someone else registers a company name before you, good luck. Same situation, look up the registered members and try to talk them into giving it to you, I guess?

> How is that different in domain names? If the name is available, you buy it and use it.

Because in the absence of price caps the registrar can choose to increase the price on "valuable" domain names (for whatever arbitrary criteria it decides means a domain is "valuable").

All .org and .info domains will be priced the same. Not more valuable ones can be at a higher cost.

Not anymore, that's exactly what the article is about.

> ICANN has agreed to remove price restrictions on .org domain names, letting the domain’s manager, Public Interest Registry, charge as much as it wants for the domains. (It also agreed to let .info manager Afilias charge whatever it wants for .info.)

You are wrong. All .org domains will be priced the same as will .info domains. They can't decide a particular .org domain is worth more than another (that has already been registered and is being used). They can charge what they want but they can't differentiate between domains. And the quote you gave essentially says that.

This is different than a completely new tld whereby they might decide that a name is premium. The point is no legacy domain will be priced as premium. I guess in theory if it expires they might be able to do that but the 'can charge what they want' will not impact existing domain registrations. And in the case of a valuable domain if that were released it would be grabbed at auction and not available for the simple registration fee.

We're not talking about renewing already-registered domains.

He wasn't speaking about .org domains specifically:

>The whole domain market experience is utter crap. Commoditizing domain names has created such an unbalanced power dynamic between buyers and sellers where the sellers hold all the power. Gatekeeping at it's finest.

He's speaking in the present/past tense, so obviously he can't be referring to what may happen in the future with .org domain names.

So I'm comparing incorporating a business purchasing a domain name, today.

Isn't starting a company rather expensive in the USA compared to say in the UK

No.

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