Let ICANN know if you support .com price hikes
internetcommerce.org
internetcommerce.org
Parking pages or any other use that intends to work around the restriction can be deemed illegitimate use.
The domain squatting problem is so bad, that even just solving the most egregious cases would be a big improvement.
How is the domain squatting problem so bad? You’ll need to expand on this further.
I’ve been more than happy to buy domains from these squatters, they’re usually willing to accept prices far lower than the value I can extract from said domains.
I’ve often benefited from the scalpers by being able to buy last minute tickets. Same goes for domain squatters.
You think squatting is bad? Ok. What if my low-effort personal website was “doctor.com” and someone emailed me an offer of $2M for it, should I be allowed to accept that?
I don’t think there’s a meaningful distinction to be made there.
>but harms the end consumer
It doesn’t though, without the second hand market someone would be using that domain for something silly and you wouldn’t get it anyway.
> Consumer first, companies second, random third parties last
But companies are the primary consumers in the domain name market. Internet end users benefit from squatting because the companies doing something with value are the only ones who end up actually using the good domains.
Please explain why you think this.
Also, what could be more silly than doing nothing with it, except wait for a sufficiently-funded buyer?
Because without the secondary market there’d be no incentive for anyone to give up a domain. At least now the domains actually end up with parties willing to pay a fair price for them.
I'm not saying we should get rid of the secondary market. I'm saying the secondary market should consist of entities who are making a good-faith effort to make use of the domains, not middlemen who actively suck value out of the system while contributing nothing.
Nothing less than the “strawman” of eliminating the secondary market is going to achieve anything at all.
But I seem to have gone off track. Any situation where the consumer gets screwed because a completely third party wants to line their pockets is a situation I don't want to see. Namesquatting, ticket scalping, that thing where a company buys up the whole used market on something and then re-sells it for a premium, etc. are all examples of that and I am yet to hear a good argument for them other than "I have the right to be a capitalist dick with no regard for others", which I do not consider a basic human right.
There are other reasons, but I'm a bit confused why this isn't something you find objectionable.
In theory, a free market should incentivize people to create value. But here's a case where people are literally removing value which was previously available, and getting paid to do it: if there ever was a perverse incentive, this is it.
From reading your comments, it seems like you think that anything that "freedom" = "anything the free market does". This is pretty fundamentally misguided, because if you don't have any rules to prevent people from amassing too much power, you just end up with rules set forth by whoever you've let take power. If you refuse to make rules, you're simply accepting the rules made by someone who doesn't refuse to make rules.
My personal domain doesn't even have an A record in the DNS, only an MX record because use it for all my email. By your definition that would be an "illegitimate use" and I should lose my domain...
Can we just agree that nobody is posting the full proposed set of rules on HN, and nobody is trying to take away your domain?
Every time this solution to domain squatting is proposed, someone counters with your objection as if it's a huge problem with the idea, but it just isn't. Surely you can imagine a set of rules that shuts down a large number of domain squatters but allows your use case.
Yes, this is a terrible idea.
> Surely you can imagine a set of rules that shuts down a large number of domain squatters but allows your use case.
Nope, how do you intend to perform these usage audits?
Yup. Still waiting to hear a more nuanced explanation of the supposed “problem” than this.
Not entirely yet, or it would have already entered the political debate. However, in many ways the proliferation (and success) of alternative TLDs indicates that there is an issue. You shouldn't have to use an Indian Ocean domain because .com is squatted to the wazoo.
We have lived through the land-grab era, sooner or later the redistribution era will come.
> Should everyone be able to get a short dictionary word .com domain?
Considering there are less than a million 4-ascii-letter combinations, obviously not. But there could be more stringent criteria for assignment and revocation, like limits per-company and per-individual, escalating costs in a way that hoarding becomes uneconomical, banning parking (which is absolutely doable, you just need an actual human judge), and so on.
It's the same problem as land. We have more and more people that need it, yet the supply is by definition finite. Hoarding it for yourself not only contributes nothing to the community, it actively prevents others from doing so.
And either way, even a bad countermeasure would be better than nothing, as it would show that squatting is not longer tolerated. It would set a precedent for stricter regulation later on, because as it stands right now, ICANN is actively ignoring the problem and happily collecting their 14¢ fees.
As for a better solution, first ban all advertisement of peer-to-peer sales of domain names (so only registrars may offer a domain for sale). That should improve the situation significantly.
And if they are a big company that owns hundreds of thousands of unrelated domains with no apparent email traffic, it would be pretty obvious that it's untrue.
So sure, a lot of small bad actors would get away with it. But it would could potentially take out the biggest bad actors.
I'm not saying a fix is or isn't needed, but there are all kinds of things we restrict despite ability to pay. For example, you can't buy a social security number without a person or a physical address without physical land to tie it to.
Your comment doesn't prove your conclusion.
If we were to apply this, as with any poorly thought-out rule, only legitimate users will be affected. Anyone proposing an "easy" solution to a complex problem should think twice before speaking.
That's not going to work.
Squatting domain names is the same deal.
There can be only one internet namespace if it's to operate correctly, and it can't be controlled by corporations or greedy individuals who think they should get things other people had, and paid for, before them.
If you want a freedom, you must give everyone the same freedom, even if they misuse it. That's the definition of a free society. An unfree society digs into peoples lives and makes value judgements about them and tries to control them to their views.
I mean, isn't that what's happening with property in real life? The ones that can afford to do so keep buying it up, and renting it out, and perpetuating the cycle of inequity?
Housing and spectrum are inherently limited so it makes sense to have ‘homesteading’ rules, especially when they are not even rented out
Sure, something like "eebe8X.com" is usable, but it's not very desirable.
Because one person is using it for it's legitimate intended purpose and one person is using it as a speculator (and blocking legitimate use without paying a toll).
Should someone be able to buy all existing insulin and then charge a toll to use it at a price closer to it's value to the consumer (multiples of the current price)?
If I owned “doctor.com” or “lawyer.com” and used that for my unrelated low effort personal website, would that be better for everyone than a domain squatter who’s willing to sell the domain to someone who’s actually going to do something useful with it? I don’t think so.
(There is nothing inherently wrong with squatting)
Not that it isn't worth a shot, but I have become highly cynical of the entire organisation.
Actually what would be even better is if browsers started supporting ENS or some similar competing name system
Handshake[1] is another such similar competing name system that specifically is aimed at taking down ICANN's monopoly - which they've abused time and time again.
> $7.85 of your registration or renewal payment goes to Verisign. The actual cost to Verisign to provide the expensive infrastructure and the management of the registry has been estimated at between $2.50 to $2.90 per domain name per year. Other registries have said they can offer the same services for cheaper.
I’m wondering why the ICANN wouldn’t simply go to another company that would provide them the same service at that same rate. Is Verisign innovating somehow?
Do also consider the cost of change. I don't know if it's worth it, and it might be worth it just for keeping the 'market' competitive, but this is another factor.
I'm not a fan of government-style lowest-bidder procurement for something as critical as .com. Among other things, I assume this involves operating the .com DNS servers, and it seems like the current operators are probably uniquely positioned to understand what makes that different from operating e.g. .party or .racing, what weird load patterns it sees, maybe even how much to pay the folks who know the hard parts to keep doing this, etc. Obviously it would be better for the world if Verisign were transparent about their operations and it could be moved, but for potentially $5/domain name/year, forcing the change doesn't seem valuable. (If it were $50, sure, it'd be worth thinking about.)
I don't think the argument for "We're paying Verisign too much to be a single point of failure, so let's pay someone else who's never done it less to be a different single point of failure" really holds up.
We're talking about something which has become a central piece of the modern internet largely by being perceived as a well governed non-profit organization.
Unreasonable price-hikes undermines that position and seems like a clear violation of the natural monopoly they have obtained through good will so far.
Maybe the internet just needs to learn a lesson or two, once again, about the problems with centralization.
>=7 - $10
6 - $100
5 - $1000
4 - $10,000
<=3 - $100,000If you don’t support centralized authority over the DNS root, you can vote with your computer for a new DNS root controlled by the commons [1].