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Comment by dfranke | Hacker News Reader

I think the accepted definition of a domain squatter is someone who registers domains with the intent of flipping them for a profit. This is more broad than "specifically and reasonably belongs to someone else" since you could merely be speculating that someone, at some point in the near future, might want to open a shop called "XYZ pizza", but still doesn't include pud.

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"domain squatter is someone who registers domains with the intent of flipping them for a profit"

Not true. See this:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property00/domain/legislation.h...

(The definition I gave is actually more broad.)

Legally that may be what domain squatting is. However, colloquially, domain squatting means registering domains that you don't use just so you can sell them again for profit. While there may be no legal recourse against such domain squatters, most people would still consider it domain squatting and ethically dubious.

i fail to see the ethical dubiousness, though. people who can afford to buy land they don't build on are (in most cases) not doing anything unethical. for lots of arbitrary reasons domains are a limited resource. that could change but as it is, domains are like NYC cab medallions. there could be a very legitimate argument that they shouldn't be so scarce, but they are, and owning one is a good, somewhat risky investment. i don't see the difference between owning any of these limited resources with the goal being future sale and profit.

Most types of investments are either beneficial somehow to the market or economy - investing in the stock market is said to promote liquidity - or at least neutral. Domain squatting benefits only ICANN, and on the other hand is actively harmful to people trying to do interesting things with domain names.

"colloquially, domain squatting means registering domains that you don't use just so you can sell them again for profit."

I agree that you are right with that statement. I don't agree that people are well informed about this enough to know that that the statement is wrong.

That belief is something that comes from the days of a few bad actors (panavision and mtv domains come to mind and some others) that made the practice which is now called cybersquatting what it is instead of what it should be based on. And by the way even the current definition was shaped by Intellectual property lawyers as a totally one sided law brought about to protect the interests of a certain class of owners. (As was UDRP process for that matter).

But yes that is the uninformed view of most people. Just like many ordinary people associate the word "hacker" with "bad" and not "good".

As has been pointed in another reply, people buy things all the time with the intent to profit from the sale of which they do not use. Since the beginning of time this has not been a bad thing. And why should it be? (Not to mention the fact that there are alternative TLD's it just happens to be that .com is the ubiquitous one.)

It is generally considered a bad thing to buy things that you don't intend to use, add no value, and sell them at a markup merely due to the fact that they are scarce (artificially, because you bought so many and are controlling the market).

It is considered to be good to buy things that you don't intend to use to resell them if you are adding some kind of value in the reselling; for instance, people who have a local retail store, who are adding the value of being close and convenient, rather than having to go all the way to the producer.

Domain squatters are adding no value. If you just buy a whole ton of domains speculatively, and then sell them off at high markup because so many domains are gone that it's impossible to find good ones, you are adding no value, you are only taking advantage of an artificial scarcity for your own profit.

We have plenty of other negative words for this kind of behavior in other domains. Ever heard of a scalper? There is really no significant difference between a domain squatter and a scalper; they are just people who induce artificial scarcity and use that to run a profit without actually adding any real value.

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