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Comment by rickdale | Hacker News Reader

In my opinion this is a huge problem on the internet. I am all for freedom to own domains, but it's coming to the point where more often or not the domain name I search for has no content up and is just conveniently being parked. For me, I guess the fact that the domain is parked tells me the owner is looking for a pay day from it, rather than to create their own content rich site. Big companies can force the little guy to submit to them and give them a domain, but little guys can't do anything to little or big guys to get a domain. It's a pretty messed up system.

I sold a domain once for $5,000(us) to the biggest equipment manufacturer in the world. I wanted more, their proposal was to buy it for $3,000(us). I was happy enough with the $5,000 after they told me they were going to sue and take it from me...

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The domain system desperately needs reform. It's unconscionable that one can simply park domains wholesale and wait for the bids to roll in. It's a huge problem that people wanting to create value are held to ransom by parasites, and there is little chance other than to pay through the nose.

"It's unconscionable that one can simply park domains wholesale"

"unconscionable"?

It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one.

"people wanting to create value are held to ransom by parasites"

And what if the someone "wanting to create value" got to the name first and has their idea of a site is not as good as your idea of a site. The name would also not be available for you to use.

This idea that if people weren't parking names they would be available when you wanted the name is simply not true. Someone else could have registered the name and used it to put up 3 picture of their cat. Then you'd have to approach and buy it from them.

That said I can certainly understand the frustration that people feel in trying to obtain names for their startups (as I consult with these people).

"unconscionable"?

It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one.

Notice that your response in no way addresses the grandparent's complaint. Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person.

There are lots of things in this world that are technically legal to do, but make the world a worse place (domain squatting being a perfect example). There's also a type of individual that doesn't look beyond legality when determining right behavior. This is a good type of individual to be able to recognize, as it's a very good indicator of somebody with whom you never want to do business.

Parking a domain makes somebody a bad person? How is this any different than a speculator buying undeveloped parcels of land and waiting for a developer to come along and buy them for more money? Are they bad people, too?

It is annoying when you need to buy the domain you want from a reseller and have to pay more than if it wasnt registered, but saying it makes the reseller a bad person is going way, way too far.

You're seriously asking what the difference is between a domain name and a piece of land? It would be easier to list the ways in which they're similar.

Domain squatting makes the Web suck. It does. You can throw around all the analogies you want, but speculative investment does not have the same effect. The domain name system was not designed to be used that way. If there were a special squatter registration that cost an exorbitant amount per domain, then maybe I'd say it's fine because they would have to make an actual calculated purchase to justify the obscene prices. But as it is, they're abusing a vestigial weak spot in the Web's infrastructure.

To my mind a domain and a business premises are extremely similar in these respects - case in point, my city is suffering at the moment as there are huge gaps in the high-street with no open shops. High-street rentals are still massively high. There's very little way for even the big chains to make a profit off such high-street locations. But the rent won't go down because the owners consider that even if they're vacant it doesn't matter as the value of the premises has risen 100% over the last decade or so - eventually they can cash out if they want to, or eventually a business will want to move in paying full rent (they think; I think they're trying to cure a lame horse by hacking at it's good legs with an axe ...).

Both business real-estate and domains suffer the same problem here IMO; people want to acquire wealth without effort. Singling out domainers is unfair - but criticising the same sort of activity everywhere is something that won't pull a complaint from me ...

OK, I'll accept for the sake of argument that domain names and buildings are very similar. The thing is, nobody can afford to buy thousands of storefronts that they don't plan to use except to extort people who aren't as cynical. Domainers are exploiting the cheapness of domain names, which is not a weakness that physical property generally shares with the Web. If domain names cost, say, $500 per year, I suspect you'd wind up with an economy much more closely resembling a functioning real estate market.

>nobody can afford to buy thousands of storefronts //

For sure. But plenty of people (hidden behind corporations) have bought up 10s of store-fronts.

If domain names cost $500 per year to keep from the registry then this would find an equivalence in a piece of real-estate being taxed at around 40x the annual rent per year.

"Both business real-estate and domains suffer the same problem here IMO; people want to acquire wealth without effort."

Buying real estate and buying domains takes effort.

If you think it's easy give it a try and see how easy it is.

It's not. Most of the people buying domains that they think might sell won't sell them ever for any price.

The key word is want.

Those wealthy enough to be in real estate in my country have in many cases made more money sitting on their arses for a couple of years than I expect to make in my whole lifetime. You can literally sit on a piece of unwanted real estate if you have sufficient capital and wait to see if it accrues added "value". Sure you may have to pay some legal fees occasionally but all you really need do is be wealthy in the first place. You're buying a scarce resource that, provided you can take a long view and aren't forced to sell at a particular time, will almost certainly not decrease in value.

Now, domaining is the same. But here the scarcity is dubious as the registries can alter that whenever they want to print some more money for themselves. Buy-in is a lot less costly but predicting the upside appears to be concomitantly more difficult.

Most people domaining don't have sufficient capital to do it right or are to late to the market. But I don't see how this changes the underlying similarity. The same is true in real estate.

"Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person."

Bad person?

Well then in that case since you are being so absolute about that you might want to resolve the dns for a domain that you own that isn't going anywhere. Even to a parking page.

DNS server handling your query: localhost DNS server's address: 127.0.0.1#53

server can't find TWIDDLA.ORG: SERVFAIL

DNS server handling your query: localhost DNS server's address: 127.0.0.1#53

server can't find www.TWIDDLA.ORG: SERVFAIL

(query the server in the whois directly now):

nslookup

> server ASE-CONSULTING.COM

Default server: ASE-CONSULTING.COM

Address: 207.162.212.91#53

> www.twiddla.com

Server: ASE-CONSULTING.COM

Address: 207.162.212.91#53

www.twiddla.com canonical name = twiddla.com.

Name: twiddla.com

Address: 207.162.212.93

(ok it knows about the .com, what about the .org)

> www.twiddla.org

Server: ASE-CONSULTING.COM

Address: 207.162.212.91#53

server can't find www.twiddla.org: NXDOMAIN

Domain ID:D150745067-LROR

Domain Name:TWIDDLA.ORG

Created On:25-Jan-2008 10:00:15 UTC

Last Updated On:22-Aug-2011 12:22:43 UTC

Expiration Date:25-Jan-2017 10:00:15 UTC

Sponsoring Registrar:Omnis Network LLC (R101-LROR)

Status:OK

Registrant ID:OMNIS-1210584221

I'm sure that's an oversight on your part? And you feel totally entitled to that domain name since you own twiddla.com and of course nobody could possibly want the .org could they?

Thanks for the heads up. It was meant to redirect over to the .com. Fixing...

> Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person.

Typically this is said by those that wished they had gotten in a bit earlier...

As for getting domain names: it doesn't matter what product or project I come up with it takes me 15 minutes to come up with a reasonably good domain name. I really don't see the 'shortage' as being anywhere near as bad as it is.

What you'd like to see is that you could take away domain names from their current registrants because you will be a 'better steward' of them. But who will stop that domain name being taken away from you? What do you propose will be a good standard for being developed? Should there be a time limit? Will you have to pay fair value for the domain? Should it go back to the registry and be re-registrable immediately and how will you make sure that only 'good persons' will get those domains?

Really, you make a pretty heavy accusation and I fail to see what you could do to either improve the situation or how you would avoid being a 'bad person' yourself if you had a good domain name you registered in the past that you currently have no use for.

I'm openly confirming here that I have upwards of 500 domains registered and have developed only a small fraction of those, but at the same time when I registered them I fully intended to use them in one way or another, the lack of time and hands to carry out all my wild ideas is what prompted me to put the larger chunk of them up for sale.

I'm sure I'm a 'bad person' in your book ;)

It seemed pretty clear to be that Jason was talking about squatters — that is, people who intentionally buy domain names just to exploit the low actual cost of a domain name for greedy purposes. If you buy a domain name and just have trouble getting around to using it, you're maybe a bit disorganized, but you're not intentionally screwing somebody over. But if you buy a domain name because you think it's likely somebody will be willing to pay a ridiculous price later and in the meantime you can park it and leech money from unsuspecting visitors, yeah, I find that morally questionable too.

It's like the difference between an old person getting lost and wandering into somebody's kitchen and a thug busting in with a gun and demanding money. Technically they're both invading the kitchen, but there is an important qualitative difference both in their actions and the effects they have on people.

(BTW, I accidentally downvoted you when I was trying to scroll. Sorry about that. Although I disagree with you, I do appreciate hearing your point of view.)

Unbelievable words being used.

"greedy"

"screwing somebody over"

"leech money from unsuspecting visitors"

"morally questionable"

"thug busting in with a gun and demanding money"

So let me get this straight.

You think there is a similarity in some way shape or form to an illegal act like a thug invading someone's kitchen and someone who legally registered a domain name (even with the intent to sell it) a totally legal capitalistic move (which is similar to buying real estate in order to resell it or buying something off craigslist and reselling it on ebay for higher money) and breaking the law?

The law is very clearly defined with regards to filing a UDRP or a federal cybersquatting lawsuit in order to recover a domain name. Outside of the specific areas that are covered (by those) there has never been any intent to prevent anyone from registering a domain name who intends to profit from selling those domain names. Any more than there has ever been a law to prevent anyone from buying anything in order to resell at a higher price (providing it doesn't break any laws.)

I can't help but feel that you're ignoring what people are saying here.

Nobody is claiming it's illegal†; we're saying it's bad. You can repeat that the law is on your side till the cows come home, but it won't make a difference because nobody is arguing that. I agree that it's legal, but that doesn't mean it isn't harmful to the Web at large. Some forms of predatory lending are legal (and even more were legal in the past), but they are nonetheless seen as a slimy business. Nobody other than a prosecutor cares if a loan shark can legally justify what he does — people dislike loan sharks because they take advantage of others and act in a way that is generally harmful to society, not because the law happens to be against them at some particular point in time.

And to be clear, I am not trying to attack you or Jacques personally here. I know that even if you weren't doing it, there are plenty of others who still would. Regardless, I feel very strongly that this industry hurts the Web as a whole. It functions in a way that's reminiscent of a protection racket, or the kind of corruption that's endemic in the Chinese government.

† Granted, in the "thug with a gun" analogy, that act was illegal, but the point was that a confused old lady trespassing is also illegal. It's not the binary state of legal or illegal that makes the big difference there, but the ill intent and the harm done. The people being robbed wouldn't feel better if the thug with a gun were working for a loan shark who happened to be operating under a legal technicality.

while I agree that it sucks, that would be really hard to change.

if parking pages were to become illegal, it wouldn't take long for parking providers to turn in to "blog hosters" or whatever.

I see empty storefronts in prime areas of SF all the time... I guess the owner's just looking for a big pay day.

sucks, but i don't think there's anything you can do.

"I see empty storefronts in prime areas of SF all the time... I guess the owner's just looking for a big pay day."

Have you ever worked or owned commercial real estate? (I have).

They are looking for many things including what they feel is the right stable tenant that can pay the rent, keep the property in good condition, and has a good chance of staying in business.

Would you accept the first job offer from someone who offered you a job? If you were out of a job for 1 year would you take a job that you felt was beneath what your capabilities was?

Commercial real estate owners evaluate the market and what they can get for the property and many other factors.

You are being simplistic if you reduce this to "just looking for a big payday".

Startup idea for someone?

I know YC funded http://www.co2stats.com/ to "Green Certify" a website. "Fair trade" labels work for selling some higher-end products. I would probably lend my attention to advertisers and advertising networks that have some sort of "scum-free" label.

I don't see any solution in terms of mandates. Ignoring the difficulty (near-impossibility?) of adding certain mandates to registration, it would probably introduce bigger problems than it solved.

I do agree it's a problem though. Sometimes, it's actually pretty disgusting. I wanted to make a forum for people with an extremely rare type (300 US cases per year) of cancer that I had about a year back. The domain name that was the name of the disease was owned by a guy parking it. He wanted about 10k for it. The sad thing I don't think that is a crazy offer in the case of the domain name's present value from parking clicks. Medical terms are valuable...

...On the other hand, from a patient perspective, half those links were to websites peddling really bad and sometimes dangerous advice, in addition to the usual "Vitamin C will cure cancer" garage.

Any change in the legal structure of domain name ownership will challenge the ownership of all domain holders. That's really scary.

In the area of trademarks I believe, you need to demonstrate that you are not just "parking" the name but also actually taking actions to sell and market the product/service. A similar regulation should be applied for websites to ensure they are using it for the proposed purpose.

There is precedent for this in WIPO court (around abusing domain parking), but unfortunately the shady businesses that profit off of parking domains are getting smarter by auto-generating "specialty based news services" based on the keywords in the URL instead of throwing up exclusively ads. Take for example, the World News Network which squats domains with pages like "http://policearrest.com/. (See an example WIPO proceeding here http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2005/d2005...)

World New Network had squatted a domain that we were interested in (a gobbledegook web 2.0 name, mind you), and they wanted 80k under the idea that this website was an important part of their news operation. If this was an English word it might make sense, but it was far from it so the whole game reeked of extortion (in the casual, not legal, sense).

I completely agree. Something to keep in mind is that the domain name system is almost unlike any other commodity -- in that only one of each exists, and it can never be replicated.

For example, no matter how rare a baseball card is, there is almost always a few others of its kind. Same with comic books, and so on. Now, no matter how rare an antique piece of furniture is (let's say it's a one-off, hand-made piece), you can still replicate it with enough attention to detail to nearly fully mimic the original.

But, with a domain name, there's only one. And, you can't mimic it. (You can get the .co, but that's a whole other story.) Consequently, domain owners have a lopsided amount of haggling power.

"But, with a domain name, there's only one."

How do you figure that?

You can get a name in a different gtld tld cctld etc.

It may not be as desirable as .com (because of course I'm assuming that is what you mean).

And why is there only "one". There is not only "one" name you can use for your business.

Especially if you are starting one. You are free to call yourself whatever you want.

As both you and I already hinted at, you can get a name in a different TLD (or even prepend "get", e.g. "getAPP.com"), but you're taking a hit for a variety of reasons (perception, confusion). My point was only that you won't ever replicate it, and for that reason domains are unique.

My personal favorite "fallback" is to use .io or prepend "get."

"get" is fine or "my" etc.

But I would absolutely stay away from any cctld's like .io. If your site becomes popular you will end up having to purchase the .com assuming you even can do that. (Once publicity of your .io site gets out the price of the .com will go up if it's even possible to buy).

Feel I know exactly what you mean.

One side of the problem is that "only one of each exists", the other is that many entities might 'need' (more or less) this very name, regardless whether we talk about local (eg. 3 bookstores in one small town) or worldwide.

I imagine with system (resources on the internet) getting bigger and bigger single, nice, short and memorable domains will gradually become less important. I imagine factors like location aware, user aware, use of bookmarks, search, links attached to social profiles, NFC, qr, AI algorithms, you name it, will each play a role here.

There could be moment in time when everybody will accept change of 'paradigm' and accept that addressing resources is not the way it used to be, or that it is 'many ways lead to the content' . We could even use bare numbers for lots of stuff.

Also, this reminds me that people used to share domains back in 90's with a nice intro and screen split to two parts - you would choose which company/site you wanted to go. Sure its not the solution by any means, but I liked those sites, always getting some positive feeling that this was possible (people agreeing on sth). I have not seen such a site for a long time, though.

> almost unlike any other commodity

Art and people (sports, movie starts) are two I thought of instantly. And the insane, somewhat arbitrary (although it's always whatever someone is willing to pay) pricing of those makes domain market look clean and efficient.

The comparison of domains to sports and movie stars (when it comes to being un-replicable and heavily influenced by taste) is very interesting. Maybe I'll start telling people that domains are like movie stars :)

An interesting question that then arises is what would be the equivalent of "character actor" in the domain world?

* .blogspot.com, * .wordpress.com, * .tumbler.com etc.

There are lots of tlds available now. If one cannot find hisname.com, he should go for .biz, .info, .net, .org, .in, .name, .me or any of the extensions that are available for anyone to register. I'm sure hisname will be available in one of these extensions.

Problem is, people feel entitled to own the .com name just because they have an idea that they think can change the world. If the idea can change the world, then the tld should not matter (or even the domain name should not matter).

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