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Comment by electroly | Hacker News Reader

"Sniped" makes it sound like they did something wrong, but they didn't. I reject the idea at the end that there were ethical lines crossed. You need to buy your domain when you name the project, not when you release it. If you don't have the domain then you don't have the name. Buying the domain is naming it. Take the lesson for next time.

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How is it not unethical to grab a domain you don't need and had no intention of buying until you learned someone else was interested in it? Especially since it usually involves extorting money from the would-be buyer.

I fully agree you need to buy the domain as soon as you name your project, and that's where this person went wrong, but that doesn't make domain sniping any more ethical.

Completely agree. GP might be mixing up legal with ethical, which is quite common. The grabber's actions were performed intentionally, in bad faith.

There is no evidence that the person who bought the domain name in bad faith. The blog post is suggesting that someone is literally scraping GitHub and buying the domain name of every single public repo.

The MUCH more likely scenario is that someone simply thought of the same name and bought it.

> The blog post is suggesting that someone is literally scraping GitHub and buying the domain name of every single public repo.

I think you are severely underestimating how often this sort of behaviour happens.

Watching folks build something, seeing them prep to launch it, then buying the domain in response to that (in the hope that they'll pay more for it)?

Totally legal (and IMO should be!), but anyone doing that is absolutely crossing an ethical line.

Totally legal

Even if it steps on a trademark?

You have to admit though that scraping Github for project names and buying the domains is a sleazy way of making money

We have only the OP's word that this is actually what happened, and there's no way they could know that. The author also admits to having leaked their Discord key and accidentally leaving the GitHub repository public; their technical competence is in question here. It almost reads like a creative writing assignment. How would anyone have known he was about to register the domain?

I'm sure this did happen but given the followup post (https://kill-saas.com/posts/from-0-to-5) it seems like the author is mostly playing up the experience as a way to advertise his product. Mentioning the vibe coding, the Discord key, and leaving the GitHub repository public feels a little like this might be clickbait.

Yeah I'm not with OP either. The write-up is clearly marketing for their site. However buying domains that others might need is not very nice.

Definitely sleazy. Not sure if it's a good way to make money. People can just get a different domain name, like OP did. And a small project that's not paying for a closed github repo, is unlikely to shell out extra for their domain name.

For well-funded corporate projects it makes more sense; those cost more to rename, and paying extra for the domain name they want is nothing to them.

I had that bad experience recently. I've been putting a lot of work into thinking the details of a new project. A year! Then, I decided to buy the domain, finally, this January. I knew it was free. Only to discover that someone had bought the domain 20 days ago. That felt sore. I had to come up with a new name.

That's life. Lesson learned.

You knew it was free because you did a lookup with the registrar's search tool? Scummy domain registrars are known to buy up domains that their users search for if they don't buy it immediately. Always use the ICANN whois tool and nothing else.

Nope. It is sniping and it's a dick move. You have the name whenever you decide that's what you're calling the project. Registering a domain name for it is only a matter of hosting.

And yes, interferring with someone else hosting their project is wrong. If you don't want a domain for yourself, don't buy it. Messing with people makes you a dick and trying to buy something only to re-sell it makes you a parasite.

Domain squatting, shoud this have been the intention here, is obviously also wrong and often used for illegal activity.

There's just no world where this person doesn't have a right to complain because clearly they are the victim of someone else being a dick.

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