Hacker News Reader

Comment by plusbryan | Hacker News Reader

I'm annoyed by domain squatters as much as the next guy - but how is this different than owning any other property? Do you hate the land owner that sits on vacant land waiting for it to appreciate?

View on HN

I wouldn't have a problem with domain squatters if they paid taxes commensurate to the value of their domains, I think that is the difference between them and land owners.

They do pay taxes. When they sell the name they pay taxes on the profit they make on the sale.

The price of the property.

The price for a domain name have basically been too cheap.

That would be correct if a domain investor had hand-registered its entire portfolio, not if he buys and sell domains in the aftermarket.

although this probably wouldn't be true for dnacafe.com, if the reg fees were like 25 bucks a year instead of like 7 or whatever people with reseller accounts pay you'd see a lot less of people trying to own every single combination of two dictionary words. and the increased prices wouldn't be much of a burden on very many people/business.

Not true. Many people grabbed names way back when the reg fees were $70 (you had to get 2 years at $35 through Network Solutions). Back then it wasn't obvious that these names would be worth much. Or more people would have done that. That's not the case with this name of course. Of course you can grab more names at a lower price. But you still have to spend time deciding what names to grab.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com