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Comment by wizard_2 | Hacker News Reader

I feel like we need a chance in policy that makes this practice not worth the trouble. I see no value that he gives the internet. I may be bias though, I can't grab the .com variant of a non profit school I work for because someone like him owns it and wont accept offers for less then $600 bucks.

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I wonder if buying lots of domains in the hope of making it big is like buying lottery tickets in the hope of making it big. Does anybody know if this business model actually works?

Both (lottery tickets, domain names) have working business models. Google it.

Not knowledgeable enough about domain names but I am certain that buying lottery tickets is lose-lose proposition to anyone, by design.

I actually had a friend in school who did this (lottery tickets) as a side business. They had an investor that provided the capital, and when the jackpot reached a certain level, they would buy up a few percent of the total number space. Believe it or not, the expected value actually worked in their favor.

The hardest part was sifting through the dozens of boxes of tickets (which he stored in his dorm room) to find the winners.

You are wrong. Lotteries are systems, systems are hackable. I bothered to Google one example cause I know many people are ignorant and make assumption without research like you.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128264.900-lottery-w...

When I said lottery I was referring to a fair draw. You cannot beat the math.

I'm also interested in getting an explanation from someone in the business. Assuming that you are not selling something like sex.com but are confined to more modest domains, and that you pay about $10/year per domain. Out of a random group of 500 domains, you need to sell 1/year for $5000 just to break even. Sure, you might hit the jackpot once with someone who really wants that one obscure domain you hold but for most domains you will be lucky to even get one offer in 3 years.

some say that the future will be app-based and that domain-names and tlds will be a thing of the past, we'll see.

I know a lot of people who say they hate squatters, then they have an "awesome idea" for a project, they'll register 10 domains, the project is never finished and they put their page on sedo in the hope someone clicks on an ad or buys the domain and they won't let go because it's just $10 a year and maybe they'll someday finish their page.

I honestly don't get the hate for squatters, they registered the domain, they were quicker than others and why should they sell their domainname just because someone else wants it badly? that's not how business works.

if you really want or even need a domainname then offer $3k and you'll get it, otherwise look for alternatives, but stop whining

Domain camping is scummy because it rewards specialization in a skill that adds no discernable value whatsoever to society. It is the definition of leeching off of other people's work. That it's legal and "how business works" is irrelevant to whether it's worthwhile. In cases where they hop on accidentally expired domains (this is popular) are effectively legal forms of blackmail.

why should it be worthwhile and why should it add value to society? if registering were free i'd see your point or if not everybody were allowed to register

how would you play football? for every goal a team scores you have to score an own-goal or let the others score because it would be unfair otherwise?

Football is a competitive zero-sum game. Someone wins, someone loses.

The world isn't like that at all. Everyone having enough to eat is strictly better than some people starving and some people having twice as much to eat.

Football is not an end in itself. People play it because it's a fun social activity. You can easily play football in a vicious way which, while still entirely within the rules and increases your chance of winning, diminishes the enjoyment and social connection which brought people together for the game in the first place.

Similarly, economic activity is not an end in itself, and economic strategies should be critically examined for what they contribute and diminish in the communities where they're adopted.

Man buys 14,962 tickets to a football game in 24 hours. Plans on selling them later at a profit.

Man buys 14,962 acres of land in 24 hours and plans on selling it later at a profit.

I'm not sure when I am supposed to get mad.

Bank buys 14,962 shares of a company with a HFT system to sell them off 2.854 seconds later.

Yes, speculating in general is a zero-value-add activity except in that it sometimes makes markets more efficient/liquid. I would argue that domain squatters don't even make the domain market more liquid at all, because ICANN is an extremely-easily-accessible seller, and the squatters rarely provide the service of buying a domain from someone who has improved it/made it popular/etc.

But in general, I have little respect for most people who make their money via speculation due entirely to demand outstripping supply as in the case of event tickets and boom real estate markets. Basically, anytime someone is extracting money from the economy en masse without providing much/anything in return, is when you should be mad. Scalpers and people who buy a ton of land in a high-demand market just to sit on it rather than developing it definitely qualify, so yeah, I'd be mad at both.

It's not much, but domain squatters do provide 1 value.

By selling the domains closer to their true market value it means when a domain do get bought, it'll be because the domain will be part of a more profitable business.

Imagine if when thefacebook.com wanted to purchase "Facebook.com" domain because their business is expanding quickly and profitably. They ask the owner of "Facebook.com" for the domain.

One of the following two things might happen:

1. The owner is a domain squatter and sells it to thefacebook.com for $5000.

2. The owner is a 13 year old kid who bought the domain and put a couple of pictures of his cat's faces on it. as well a couple of adsense ads. Refuses to sell for anything less than 0.5 million dollars because he really likes the domain name.

Arguably in this case the domain squatter did provide some value to society. The thing with squatters is they are always willing to sell for the right price. Other types of domain owners are not so predictable. In particular, domains with established businesses are unlikely (I'm guessing) to sell for anything less than the value of the entire business, even though that business may be less profitable and less value-adding than a business proposed by a potential acquirer of the domain. If the domain was squatted instead, the less profitable business may not have bought it at all, leaving it for the more profitable business.

Whether this value is significant enough to be respected is another question, but I have no doubt that it does exist.

Heh interesting idea, but I'm pretty sure the kid could be convinced to sell for $5000, probably much less - there aren't many kids out there that would scoff at multiple years' worth of allowance and lawn mowing money just falling in their lap. I think a market composed of people actually using the resource can set fair market pricing without the involvement of speculators. Domain speculators/squatters literally only drive the price of doing real things up.

"...that's not how business works."

"It's how business works" isn't a justification. A business model being legal and profitable does not make it ethical.

My understanding is, the intention behind society's laws and social norms is for all legal and profitable business models to serve the common good in some small way. What good do squatters do the world, in any way, shape, or form, whatsoever? The effect they have on the world is for good projects to be harder for people to use, by taking up all the good domains. That makes this a bug in our society, that I, at least, would appreciate being addressed.

If you register 10 domains and your project doesn't happen, don't put it on Sedo, let the domain expire like your project did. If you put the domain up for sale, you're already committing to not use the domain to "someday" finish your project.

I've registered a healthy number of domains over the years for projects that didn't go anywhere, including most recently a brandable two-syllable domain that contained two search terms that described the business. I didn't park it, and if after it became obvious I didn't need it if anyone genuine had approached, I would have let them have it. I let it go when it expired, and it immediately got snapped up by a domainer who is now asking $K for it. I don't think your suggested approach solves the problem.

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