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Comment by trox | Hacker News Reader

I'm shocked by how many commenters here sympathasize with the domain squatting/parking business. Sure it may be a fun side-project or profitable long-term investment. But trying to make money from people who actually create value is not really the future of the web I want to see.

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Just for perspective. Real-estate investing:

* Buying up a limited resource with the intent to sell it to someone else later

* Often is good land that could be used by someone else to create value instead

* Lots sit unused for years waiting for a buyer

* Land in "just the right spot" for me is being "squatted" by someone trying to flip it

Do you have the same opinion about that business, and if not, for what reasons?

I'd say that is even worse

This is even worse because shelter is a human right.

A very valid comparison, they indeed share lots of characteristics. I also feel that adaption in real estate would have societal benefits.

The difference to real estate business lies in the fact that it is much more diverse and way harder to manage.

Domains are managed by one organization, ICANN (with respective tld management), which facilitates a policy change. We also see changes in digital space progress much faster.

There are approx. 600'000 new domain names registered over Verisign in Q3 2020 alone [1]. In the future, the significance of the problem will only grow.

[1] https://blog.verisign.com/domain-names/verisign-q3-2020-doma...

One solution is taxation. If you just sit on real estate or a domain name withoutdoing anything usefull, it should cost you. If squatting stays a problem, raise the tax. You can lower tax for your first domain, just as you would for a primary home.

I'd question what doing something useful means long long before advocating for something like this. I have a few domains that might some day be in demand, and on the surface they do very little (if anything at all) when accessed directly from a browser on port 80/443. However, they are each doing significant, private things elsewhere, and the domain names are a convenient entry and branding point for those who need to know.

I typically suggest something like your first 25 domains are exempt, registered businesses also get some reasonable amount. Past that there should be a relatively hefty squatting fee. Maybe additional exemptions can be applied for.

Who is going to monitor this? How do you enforce this globally? What about defensive registrations? I know some companies register thousands of typos, spend millions protecting their brand. Is it on a per TLD basis? It would have to be since different TLDs have their own rules, especially ccTLDs which are governed by their own countries. How do you prevent the oversight organization from being captured by vested interests or IP lobby?

There are so many details which cause problems with these 'simple' solutions which once you start digging, you end up having to compromise a lot and end up with an equally, if not more, shitty solution.

* Provide liquidity to owners who want to sell.

* Take a risk proportional to the value of the asset.

* Pay taxes proportional to the value of the asset.

That's a little different from waiting for a domain to revert to the registrar and then paying $8/year for it.

> trying to make money from people who actually create value is not really the future of the web I want to see.

Isn't this a fundamental principle of business? How are they also not creating value, if value is more or less defined as money earned?

The web is literally dominated by like 5 companies, and every smaller company's stupid 'mission' is to build some platform for everyone else to 'create value' and change the world with their SaaS. Maybe I'm just cynical, and I understand that you disagree with sort of scummy extortion tactics, but the wording you chose seems to me to already be what the web is.

> How are they also not creating value, if value is more or less defined as money earned?

Bandits make money by robbing people. Are they "creating value", as money is being earned?

Some means of earning money never help anyone but the people doing it, and hurt everyone else.

> But trying to make money from people who actually create value is not really the future of the web I want to see.

That is all business, but especially tech. FAANG all extract money from content/value creators that they have captured.

Not everyone is going to get a $500k/year job and stock options with big tech, and fewer will get millions in funding to start their own startups…but a domain for under $10 that might be used and/or flipped for a little profit? That seems much more ethical than most big tech.

The solution IMO is a decentralized domain registry. Maybe we can even have a way for multiple people to own the same "domain" and pin the one they find most useful.

DNS is decentralized. And having multiple owners of the same domain would be a phishing nightmare. Not to mention, how does the user determine which one to use?

DNS is not decentralized in the manner you'd probably like to think. It has a centralized root authority. You could have a list of ICANN defaults if you are worried about anything changing

multiple people owning the same domain is perhaps one of the worst ideas I've ever heard regarding the DNS. From a user perspective awful. Security perspective? Horrific. Marketing/branding perspective? Useless.

Just... why? How could this even be a good idea?

Because otherwise the only solution is increased fees and the continuance of domain squatters. Why is having a company include a domain and PIN ID such a bad idea? If you want to use only the ICANN approved domains, then there could be a subscription service that you apply that uses only the ICANN approved PINs.

Extensions are basically the PINs you're talking about. Your idea is basically making everything in existence currently a subdomain and a new super TLD which would be the PIN. Which would break nearly all existing infrastructure, render trillions of dollars of marketing and consumer understanding useless and for what? To let you get a better domain name? Because... you can't afford the one you want? The idea is simply stupid from every angle possible.

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