Domain Names Worth Their Weight in Gold Again

prostoalex writes "So far in 2006 domain name on.com fetched $635,000, Macau.com was sold for $550,000, blue.com was sold for half a million, and Jasmin.com was bought for $310,000. With the exception of the last domain name, which is currently used for erotic video chat, the rest of the domains run some sort of domain parking ads. USA Today talks about revived interest to domain name trade, and companies like Marchex, a 'leader in vertical and local traffic', which happens to own a .com domain for every single zip code in the United States. There's also a report that in the few days that .eu domain names were made available, 1,454,218 European domains were registered."

Comments

Bah!!!

[BWJones]

To all those companies that are being so helpful in "parking" domain names for me and then charging outrageous prices to "register" them........ FSCK YOU!!!. Seriously though, how many of you have tried to go out and register even the most obscure of domain names for your website only to have companies like Marchex or GoDaddy say "Sure, we'll get that domain for you for the low, low price of $5000.00" (or more). This is the concept of the middle man taken to criminal levels. Can someone enlighten me as to what benefit(s) they provide? What services do they provide? Is there anything good at all about these companies or are they simply parasitic ticks feeding off the belly of the Internet?

And what does it say about the market audience when domain names with misspelled words (like Mortage.com) can go for $242,000?

Oh, I forgot.... at least one domain level parking company provides Microsoft with advertising because they "parked" all of their unused domains on IIS servers....which......appear at some level to be able to handle those traffic loads. :-)

Re:Bah!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's $1200. Go buy someonewhogivesashit.com.

Re:Bah!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your complaining sounds very communistic. Are you saying that these companies are to blame for idiots who actually make typo domains profitable? Almost everyone knows the referral links on them are stupid anyways. if the idiots are there to click why should the company willing to put out the links for profit be punished. youre a communist

Re:Bah!!!

[BWJones]

Here's $1200. Go buy someonewhogivesashit.com.

Well, if you really are willing to hand over the $1200, then that would be funny. It might be even funnier if you posted as someone other than an anonymous coward. As it is, it's a troll, but here, I'll rescue you and make it funny.... someonewhogivesashit.com is already registered to someone in the UK (go figure). :-)

Re:Bah!!!

[EEBaum]

He wasn't complaining about typo domains, but rather of good old-fashioned squatters. People who snatch up domains that perhaps have the same name as your business, with the sole purpose of selling them to you for an outrageous price.

Re:Bah!!!

[QuickFox]

I'm amazed that Google accepts and encourages the domain-squatting parasites. They are link farms! How are those inane squatter pages better than the link farms that Google frowns upon?

-- --
  Terrorists can destroy our trains and buildings, but they can't destroy our rights and freedom. Only we and our lawmakers can destroy that.

Re:Bah!!!

[suv4x4]

"... how are those [Gooogle] inane squatter pages better than the link farms that Google frowns upon?"

Their income goes back to Google.

That was to expected from a company that went public and reports to their shareholders. Lots of money and values don't go together.

Re:Bah!!!

[zakezuke]

Here's $1200. Go buy someonewhogivesashit.com.

Well, if you really are willing to hand over the $1200, then that would be funny. It might be even funnier if you posted as someone other than an anonymous coward. As it is, it's a troll, but here, I'll rescue you and make it funny.... someonewhogivesashit.com is already registered to someone in the UK (go figure). :-)

http://www.wheresmymoneybitch.com/ I don't know if it's forsale, but I would imagine since they don't have a website setup there they are likely hip to the idea of sale.

Re:Bah!!!

[Ethan Allison]

WheresMyMoneyBitch.com is an empty Index of / page.

Re:Bah!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes ... you've got to "love" them and the site hijackers. My domain (which I was quite surprised was still available when i registered it) was taken over by sedo.com (registered to a German company, for the sake of information) advertises this kind of thing. It looks for "inactive" domains, re-directs traffic to itself with a "Buy this domain!" (mine was being sold for 10,000 Euros).

Lovely.

Yes, this is a bit of a troll, but it's also a bit of a warning about this kind of thing.

Re:Bah!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

i laughed out loud at this. if only i had mod points.

Re:Bah!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

i laughed out loud at this.

Then perhaps your sense of humor needs development. :-P

if only i had mod points.

More like, if you only had a brain. Oh and stop trying to rescue your original AC post by posting again as AC and attempting to get someone else to mod it up.

Re:Bah!!!

[drDugan]

two words: artificial scarcity

Many people benefit from scarcity (real or artificial), and those who benefit keep the "system" working with .com as really the only viable game in town for a commercial domain. There are exceptions, but they are rare. Over the last 2 weeks I've been brainstorming on names fora new project and the domain name issue is insane. All reasonable combinations of 1 or 2 words in business oriented applications are taken in .com -- and 3/4 oof them have either no content or parked ads.

I think there should be arbitrary three and four-letter TLD's - just open it up.

Re:Bah!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The Do no evil motto just got one bit more rusty.

Re:Bah!!!

[NilObject]

Oddly enough, I think "mortage.com" could be a clever company name for a mortgage company:

"Mortage: When you need some G's."

Re:Bah!!!

[ejito]

Just because a domain is currently using a parked page doesn't mean their intent is to sell domains or leave the parking page up forever. If a site is on hiatus, then parking pages can serve as a source of revenue or at least a traffic redirection.

I have domains I currently use for email but don't have corresponding websites.

Re:Bah!!!

[shmlco]

Yeah. That's why there's usually a big link in the corner saying, "This domain for sale!"

Re:Bah!!!

[shmlco]

Personally, I think that the second a domain name expires it should return to the public domain, as meaningful names are a finite resource, and speculators shouldn't be able to hold new businesses ransom.

Also, the second you put up "this domain for sale" on your page, it's stripped and returned as well.

Re:Bah!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone enlighten me as to what benefit(s) they provide? What services do they provide? Is there anything good at all about these companies or are they simply parasitic ticks feeding off the belly of the Internet?

It's called the free market. Deal with it.

Re:Bah!!!

[pipingguy]

And what does it say about the market audience when domain names with misspelled words (like Mortage.com) can go for $242,000?

I fail to see how such a mispelling can be worth that much moneyt. Maybe my visitors are too smart, but still, typing piping desoin into a search engine is not going to get them where they want to be, and they'll quickly realize their error.

Re:Bah!!!

[StarvingSE]

This is hilarious. Wish I had mod points.

Re:Bah!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe a funeral service company.

Re:Bah!!!

[DrSkwid]

My domain ... ... mine was being sold for ...

Yours you say ?

In the UK every limited company is reserved a domain as per its name.

The rest should be a land grab, and that's what makes the world go round.

Re:Bah!!!

[jrockway]

Show me where you can buy their stock, and you might have a point. However, since they're not publicly traded, you don't haev a point.

Re:Bah!!!

[droptone]

That was to expected from a company that went public and reports to their shareholders. Lots of money and values don't go together.

Google goes public (April 29, 2004)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.google.com /domainpark/ --> Archive.org listing of google.com/domainpark/ first logged Jan 21, 2004
There is some correlation, but not as tight as you make it out to be.

So why won't anyone buy my domain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly "reallycheapgoodstuff123.com" is worth more than the $8 I paid for it.

Ok, the time is NOW

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been holding back on this one but ... OK, that's it.

shavedteenasiancamwhoremyspacediggxenisucks.com is now for sale.

Bidding starts at $500,000.

I wonder if,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

www.domainsworththeirweightingold.com is reserved.

Ta! It's available! A/S/L?

Score: 0 (Logged-in users start at Score: 1). Create an Account! To confirm you're not a script,
please type the word in this image: rejected

new tld ='s a lot of new registrations

[shawn443]

Anyway, didn't read shit because I didn't know if I was supposed to go to .com .net or dont.care

Capital Gains tax?

[Laven]

If you buy and hold a domain name for more than a year before selling it for thousands of dollars, do you pay the U.S. IRS long-term capital gains tax? =)

Re:Capital Gains tax?

[shawn443]

Of course you are sure there has been some US law kicked around that exempts internet purchase tax. http://www.ecommercecommission.org/ITFA.htm + I'm drunk

How much does a domain name weigh?

[Jimhotep]

How much does a record on hard drive weigh?

Think about it.

Re:How much does a domain name weigh?

[flyingsquid]

A name- the idea, rather than the magnetic disk used to store it- doesn't weigh anything. So figure your idea is worth anything- even 1. 1 divided by 0 lbs. = infinity dollars per pound. And of course, dollars per pound is worth more than gold, which is worth a finite number of dollars per pound.

Re:How much does a domain name weigh?

[moonty]

One divided by zero is not infinity.

Re:How much does a domain name weigh?

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but since it in actuality the value of 1/0 is undefined, then its value can be seen as something that doesn't exist, which has about the same worth as something with an infinite value to the average idiot.

Re:How much does a domain name weigh?

[StarkRG]

As Douglas Adams said: "Any finite number divided by an infinate number is as close to zero as you can ever get."

Thus a finite number divided by zero is as close to infinity as you can get.

(obviously this is the line of thought that eventually became bistromathics)

Re:How much does a domain name weigh?

[baadger]

Well let's see... Gold is at about $600 an ounce atm (Source: on the news a day or so ago) and the average sale price from the summary is about $500,000 so I guess the answer is...

(500,000/600) ounces = 23.62 Kg

Of course we haven't taken into account the millions and millions of domains sold for $8...so bah sod it you do the math.

Re:How much does a domain name weigh?

[RandomPrecision]

That doesn't make any sense. Why are you dividing anything? It doesn't weigh anything. That's 0 - not 1/0.

Bah!!!-Imagination Squatting.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll give you the stock slashdot answer. Don't do business with them. Domain squatters don't own imagination and I'm certain you all can come up with some creative names they've never thought of. Hell, use unicode if you have to.

Re:Bah!!!-Imagination Squatting.

[Jason1729]

Yeah use unicode, then you can guarantee no hits...you'll save big on bandwidth costs.

Adding a hyphen or getting a non .com will boost traffic to the squatter and make their activities more profitable off your work.

Thanks Slashdot!

[bort27]

With the exception of the last domain name, which is currently used for erotic video chat, the rest of the domains run some sort of domain parking ads.

And now, thanks to Slashdot, they've got tons of extra traffic plus a one-way link from a PR9.

bort.

Re:Thanks Slashdot!

[ruszka]

ROFL definitely nice plug for the last one.

Re:Thanks Slashdot!

[iwsnet]

A lot of these parked sites are making more money because of advertising than they would if they actually had content on them. There's no incentive to sell these domains unless for a huge amount because of the cash flow they generate and little expenses involved.

Obligatory (?) Arrested Development reference

[dema]

I'm no scar! I'm no scar!

... dot com

Weight a minute

[Tx]

Domain Names Worth Their Weight in Gold Again

So how much exactly does a domain name weight? I'm thinking those that paid half a million dollars got ripped off badly.

Re:Weight a minute

[slughead]

Well, one of the domains I own (stampoutliteracy.com) has been compared to a mountain of "bullcrap." It's currently for sale for the low, low price of $8.3 million.

Any takers? We're talking a whole mountain here...

Rules for Domain Names

[vlad30]

.com is for companies companies should be registered therefore only your company is allowed your.com this is actually the case with .com.au to the point that you can't sell the domain without the company, additionally business names have rules (for instance can't have a business that sounds like someone else's or purports to be something it is not like a corporation)

Why can't .com administrators apply the same rules instead of going for a money grab

Re:Rules for Domain Names

[LordLucless]

You do realise that the period character exists for a reason other than as a separator in domain names? Although, credit where credit's due, you did use a comma. In the wrong place.

Shit...

[StevenHenderson]

...and to think I just wasted money on a house.

Re:Shit...

[Zadaz]

A waste of money, but the opposite. They're spending lots of money on something that will generate a small income. You have spent a lot of money on something that will drain your small income.

Re:Shit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of something called home equity?

I have one thing to say to that

[Anonymous Coward]

* * Beatles Beatles

Domain names worth their weight in gold!?

[gijoel]

And how much is a couple of gold electrons (yes I know there is no such thing.) worth?

Re:Domain names worth their weight in gold!?

[Squigley]

well, while there's "no such thing" as a "gold electron", a gold atom must have electrons.

According to here: http://education.jlab.org/qa/electron_config.html a neutrally charged gold atom has 79 electrons.

I haven't bothered to go an do the research to work out what the difference in the number of electrons is when the atom is positively or negatively charged.

I also leave it to you to work out the atomic weight of a gram of gold (or use the appropriate troy measurement), and then work out how many electrons you'd have, and what they'd be worth at the current price of gold.

Oh, and keep in mind, that once the electron leaves the gold atom, it's not a gold electron anymore, since electrons are all the same.

Re:Domain names worth their weight in gold!?

[ZombieWomble]

May god have mercy on me for actually working this out:

Borrowing some figures from another post, I get a value of $1357.15 per kilo.

The mass of a single electron is 9.1x10^-31. Putting these two values together gives a value of $1.23x10^-27 per electron. Not something you want to plan your retirement around.

Of course I feel I must point out that this neglects binding energy and such, but hey, it's late, I already feel like enough of a nerd for working this much out.

Re:Domain names worth their weight in gold!?

[gijoel]

I sir, salute your nerdiness.

Re:Domain names worth their weight in gold!?

[Bastard of Subhumani]

I haven't bothered to go an do the research to work out what the difference in the number of electrons is when the atom is positively or negatively charged.

I don't need any fancy intarwebs to know that its less or more, in that order.

I also leave it to you to work out the atomic weight of a gram of gold

No nuch thing as the atomic weight of an amount of a substance.

keep in mind, that once the electron leaves the gold atom, it's not a gold electron anymore

Yes it is. That's why it has intrinsic value and speaker wire costing 900 bucks a foot sounds better.

You don't know what you're talking about. Now shut the fuck up.

Re:Domain names worth their weight in gold!?

[Squigley]

>> I haven't bothered to go an do the research to work out what the difference in the number of electrons is when the atom is positively or negatively charged.

>I don't need any fancy intarwebs to know that its less or more, in that order.

No shit Sherlock. I could have told you that much. What I said, was that I didn't know by how much the number of electrons differed. I expect that it's only 1, either way, but it could be more, because of the multiple energy orbits.

I am not an authority on this, so I didn't want to express wild guesses and speculation, which people may fail to indentify, and use my ramblings as an authoratative source.

>> I also leave it to you to work out the atomic weight of a gram of gold

>No nuch thing as the atomic weight of an amount of a substance.

Fair enough, perhaps I got my terminology confused. I'm not a physicist, I'm a computer programmer, working for a geological survey group. That's why I chose to leave working out the result to someone who knows more about these things, rather than making wild guesses about things I don't know much about.

What I was trying to get across there, was working out the atomic density of a gram of gold, then multiplying the average number of electrons (because it will differ depending on atomic polarity) by the density.

Perhaps that's not possible, I don't know. I didn't, and don't, claim to know.

I also take it that you meant "such", by "nuch", but I am not having a go at you for choosing not to use the preview function, or a spell checker.

>> keep in mind, that once the electron leaves the gold atom, it's not a gold electron anymore

>Yes it is. That's why it has intrinsic value and speaker wire costing 900 bucks a foot sounds better.

I take this is as a pathetic attempt at humour. I am not laughing. I am also not taking it upon myself to abuse or verbally assualt you for it, but civilly, I request that you try a bit harder next time.

>You don't know what you're talking about. Now shut the fuck up.

I didn't claim, at any time, to know what I was talking about.

I summarised a web page, which I referenced, and I avoided any guessing, or speculating, restraining myself to pointing out a general principle that I was getting at, and leaving specifics out of it.

Perhaps you should have read my post a couple of times, before you replied to it.

I don't know what gives you the right to tell me to "shut the fuck up". I didn't force you to read my post, and while I'm not in the US, I do support your "right to free speech", and while my country does not have a specific right to free speech, it does not lack one, or have a right limiting free speech.

Please try to compromise a bit more in future, and understand people from different countries/cultures.

(unless you are a troll, and this response from me was your intention, in which case, you can kiss my arse).

Any spelling errors in this post, are because it's 2.36am, and I've had a few alcoholic beverages in the last few hours.

Re:Domain names worth their weight in gold!?

[Bastard of Subhumani]

am not an authority on this

I already suggested the solution to that: shut the fuck up.

Fair enough, perhaps I got my terminology confused. I'm not a physicist,

Shut the fuck up about physics then. And chemistry.

I'm a computer programmer

I am like totally impressed. Now shut the fuck up.

I take this is as a pathetic attempt at humour. I am not laughing.

I don't care if you laugh: you're afucktard. I'd rather you just shut the fuck up.

I didn't claim, at any time, to know what I was talking about.

Well shut the fuck up, then.

I don't know what gives you the right to tell me to "shut the fuck up". I didn't force you to read my post, and while I'm not in the US, I do support your "right to free speech",

I'm not in the US either. Fucktard.

compromise a bit more in future, and understand people from different countries/cultures.

Make me, or shut totally the fuck up.

you can kiss my arse

Get over yourself, gaylord.

.eu too

[ubersonic]

Yesterdays news was showing how someone got shopping.eu

According to the report an independent institute valued the name at 300000 €

Re:.eu too

[MrCopilot]

Nice .eu Home Page(s) How much do yours weigh?

Gold! Gold!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

What about gold?

Cue the post by dada21 ...

Rules for Free Markets.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why can't .com administrators apply the same rules instead of going for a money grab"

Don't you hate it when land developers buy up all the land and refuse to sell it to you at the price you think they should?

Re:Rules for Free Markets.

[NMerriam]

Land developers have to pay taxes and maintenance costs on that land every year they hold it, so when they receive a fair offer they're going to sell. There is no similar disincentive to massive domain speculation, they can afford to just sit on 10,000 domains in the hopes that a millionaire will decide THAT is the word.com he simply has to buy this week.

Re:Rules for Free Markets.

[LordLucless]

Despite analogies that have been drawn, domain-space isn't the same as real estate. Domain names were originally created as a system of nomenclature and categorization - that's why they have .com, .org, .net, etc.

And, incidentally, there are similar controls on real estate. They're known as zonings.

Australian domain name managers have the right idea. .coms go to commercials. .orgs go to non-profits. If you go to a .org.au site, then you know that site is a registered charity or non-profit organisation. If you go to a .com site, you know that site is managed by a registered business. The way it's currently run in the US, you might as well just drop the TLDs and just sell stuff directly from the root. The only reason someone gets a .org or a .net is because the names already taken on .com. TLDs have lost any meaning in the US administrated system, and are completely useless.

NOT SAFE FOR WORK

[minus_273]

That last link Jasmine.com is definitely not safe for work. Slashdot linking to porn on the front page without a warning. Nice going. Oh, wait, no one even reads the F'n articles.

Re:NOT SAFE FOR WORK

[Holi]

Wait it did say that it was a porn chat site. DUH

Re:NOT SAFE FOR WORK

[StevenHenderson]

Looks like someone got all excited when they say a pr0n link...the next sentence says "With the exception of the last domain name, which is currently used for erotic video chat".

Literacy is fun.

Re:NOT SAFE FOR WORK

[phukraut]

"With the exception of the last domain name, which is currently used for erotic video chat" some of us don't read the summary either.

Re:NOT SAFE FOR WORK

[1u3hr]

That last link Jasmine.com is definitely not safe for work.

You've just demonstrated the value of "typo" domains.

Re:NOT SAFE FOR WORK

[houghi]

I am not sure what is scarier, you not reading the next line, or other people get this disinfornation to a +5 level.

Probably done by people who thing disinformation is some kind of information.

Re:NOT SAFE FOR WORK

[caudron]

Slashdot linking to porn on the front page without a warning. Nice going.

From the /. blurb:

With the exception of the last domain name, which is currently used for erotic video chat,

It sounded like a warning to me. Perhaps they should use the blink tag next time? ;-)

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/linux.html

I used to laugh...

[wbren]

I used to laugh at people that said we are experiencing the Dot-Com Bubble all over again, but after reading stories like this... Should those people be dismissed so quickly?

.eu domains

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the vast majority of domains sell for much smaller figures. The once popular linuxorbit.com went last week for a snip at $3,400. There must have been some traffic still flowing to that domain, so it's unsurprising that there's a business in the purchase of as many of these as possible.

I wonder how much a linux .eu, such as www.linuxlinks.eu is already worth though, as .eu domains will never seriously compete with .com's in the re-sale market.

*Every* zip code?

[drsmack1]

What about the three that I own? Do they own those too? :)

Re:*Every* zip code?

[saintlupus]

I just checked out the one for the zip where I live (http://14208.com/). Wow, looks like my neighbors are all broke. Hmm, that's not too encouraging.

--saint

And meanwhile, Microsoft gives away domain names

[melted]

And meanwhile, Microsoft gives away domain names (and some web space, too) for free: http://www.officelive.com/

Re:I don't think anyone noticed either

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the articles, did not see the porn, but am not surprised by it. I wonder if you guys will ever get to the point were you are like, eh porn, so what. I have no taste for it. I wouldn't even click on the link...you know something along those lines.

I know you all love me posting here too, with my refreshing comments. Yeah right. I wish I had a parking domain, but alas I missed the boat. Not much else to say about this particular article.

important questions here...

[Doppler00]

First, why did the price of registering domain names get so cheap? I mean, how much are these companies paying now to register domain names? $1 each? Less? Where does this money go? Does it go to the people who have to maintain these DNS servers with bogus parking domains? If we think about how spam got out of hand, you could imagine that someday 90% of all domain names are "spam".

Why did we have to make registration so cheap to begin with? I don't see what's wrong with charging $50 for a a year for a domain name. If someone needed it that bad they should pay up. Now with the ultra low cost anyone can buy up a bunch of domain names and sell them back for an excessive fee.

So... when will legislation be inacted to prevent domain parking? It's obvious that parking a domain can bring no benefit to the economy or society, it's just an unecessary middleman tactic. Also, registering a domain name and a copyright are two seperate things. If you own the copyright you should definately be able to sue these domain parkers for infringement.

It's just absolutely ridiculus that we got into a situation where every imaginable word, phrase, or typo is now registered.

Re:important questions here...

[davidesh]

in the beginning it wasn't very cheap to buy lots of domains... guess you never looked into buying them ages ago?

Re:important questions here...

[AusIV]

But not everyone who runs a web site really "needs" their domain, that doesn't mean their not using it. I have a couple of domains registered myself, one of which I use almost solely for e-mail. For quite some time it was parked on a godaddy.com page. I didn't care, I still got to use it for e-mail. Now I put it to slightly better use, but I never would have gotten it if I'd had to pay $50 a year. Maybe an intial payment of $50 a year and a smaller renewal fee thereafter. My point is that the internet isn't just for commercial sites that can afford to pay a lot for expensive domains. And it's hard to find a decent web host that will give you a nice looking address without having a full domain.

It's also difficult to legislate who can buy a domain and who can't. If there's legislation against domain parking, whose to define domain parking? Take Microsoft's origami project. They bought the domain and presumably had it parked for a while before publicizing it.

And you talk about suing over copyright infringement. Suppose some hobbyist named Bill McDonald had bought McDonalds.com before McDonald's decided to get on the internet scene. Should they be able to sue Bill for copyright infringement? I should hope not.

I agree that there is a growing problem of people buying domains just to sell them at an obscene price later, but I haven't seen any solutions that don't screw someone over who doesn't deserve to be screwed.

Re:important questions here...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean trademark, not copyright.

Re:important questions here...

[paeanblack]

And you talk about suing over copyright infringement. Suppose some hobbyist named Bill McDonald had bought McDonalds.com before McDonald's decided to get on the internet scene. Should they be able to sue Bill for copyright infringement? I should hope not.

As far as mcdonalds.com goes, it should probably go to McDonalds Inc. instead of Bill if we examine this simply from an efficiency perspective. Almost every reader visiting the page is expecting the company, not the hobbyist. DNS is, after all, designed to make things easy on the reader.

A more interesting example would be delta.com. Airplanes? Faucets? Power Tools? Most traffic is going to Delta Airlines, but there are still plenty of people in the world whose first reaction to "Delta" is thinking of some other company.

Re:important questions here...

[jez9999]

I'm sorry, but as far as I'm concerned, if you can't be bothered to pay a measly $50/yr for a domain you don't deserve to have it. Hand it over to someone who will make more active use of it, or PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE of owning it. People like you are the reason all these domain squatters exist.

I'd personally raise the price of a .com to $100/year minimum. Who is it the registrars have to pay, ICANN? Why can't they forcibly raise the price? Fewer domain registrations I suppose, but a lot more money per-domain.

Re:important questions here...

[AusIV]

Game-Point.net: "There is no website configured at this address."
Isn't that your site?

You say people like me are the reason all these domain squatters exist. How exactly do you figure that? People like me buy a domain I actually want because I can get it at a good price, and use it for my own purposes, even if they are minimal. Someone like me is not going to be supporting a domain squatter by buying a domain for $50,000 and thus encouraging their practice.

You suggest raising the price of a .com to $100/year. That would be a huge hassle to me, having every e-mail address I use on my domains, and I suspect by looking at the parked domain that seems to be your site, it would affect you. Fortunately ICANN seems to respect the individual web hosts, and sets prices reasonably. Eventually we'll see what they decide to do about squatters, hopefully it won't screw over people like myself.

Re:important questions here...

[roystgnr]

So... when will legislation be inacted to prevent domain parking?

As soon as the legislators realize that domain parking is analogous to sitting on any other sort of property, and that the natural way to fix it is property taxes.

As long as this is perceived to be a "some nerd had to give his website a stupid name because some other nerd was hogging the good names" problem, it'll never attract legislative attention. Make it clear that there's an untapped source of tax revenue here and you'll see the problem fixed in a jiffy.

One warning, though: the fix may be as bad as the disease... How much are your domain names worth to the highest bidder, and can you afford to pay taxes on that without selling them?

Re:important questions here...

[user24]

keep your voice down dammit. jeez... ;-)

'A leader in vertical and local traffic'?

[MissionAccomplished]

WTF? What does this mean? They drive vertical and local traffic by redirecing 90210.com to local Beverly Hills companies? Sure they do...when I want to perform a search for Beverly Hills (90210), for example, I type in the Zip Code instead of the city name. Dumba$$es. Let's test their theory of driving vertical and local traffic when I type my zipcode plus .com into IE and Firefox.... 15 seconds later...in both Firefox (with Adblock) and IE 6 SP1...I get NOTHING but blank screen. Maybe Spysweeper is blocking whatever I see or is preventing a redirect to some sort of shitty ad or malware infested site. In either case, as long as users continue to implement antivirus, anti-malware/spyware and anti-spam software, squatters like Marchex will not make much money and eventually won't even be able to afford the domain renewal fees, even from Bob's Domains-R-Us type of registrars.

Bah!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

"That was to expected from a company that went public and reports to their shareholders. Lots of money and values don't go together."

Yeah! Just look at the Catholic church.

It's more okay with porn links on the frontpage

[Anonymous Coward]

Some folks got pretty worked up when I posted a link that showed Steve Lightspeed.

Name my kid!

[airjrdn]

I've got GiveMyKidA.Name any offers?

Re:Name my kid!

[bbkingadrock]

Charlie?

US unemployment rate is now 4.7

[DigiShaman]

Coupled with a strong US economy, no wonder the dot.com days are comming back!!! Yey, finally I get to wear more casual clothes to work. Oh, maybe now I can ask for a raise too. =)

For those in the UK, your unemployment rate is at a fantastic 2.9%

Hell ya, let's keep the momentum going!!! Bout damn time too. Good times are ahead, good times!

Re:US unemployment rate is now 4.7

[MissionAccomplished]

..and some other loser can now afford to pay more than the original $750,000 the domain name was sold for, to E-Bay I believe. Of course E-Bay now needs to figure out how to finance the 4.2B purchase of Skype so maybe a sale of shopping.com might be next.

Re:US unemployment rate is now 4.7

[MissionAccomplished]

I was referring to shopping.com that E-Bay now holds...

Re:US unemployment rate is now 4.7

[dino213b]

Our economy is doing better because the president reclassified cybersquatting jobs under the manufacturing sector.

Re:US unemployment rate is now 4.7

[TheRealGrendel]

Maybe my sarcasum meter needs adjusting but 10 seconds + google finds http://www.hrmguide.co.uk/jobmarket/unemployment.h tm
which says that as of April 12th 2006 :::::
April 12 2006 - The unemployment rate stands at 5.1% - marginally up on the previous month - however, 28.84 million people were in work in the period December to February according to the labour force survey (LFS). This is the highest figure on record, up by 78,000 in the last quarter and 147,000 over the last year. The working age employment rate is 74.5% - unchanged on the last quarter but down by 0.4% on the last year due to growth in the working age population. :::::::::::

2.9% vs 5.1%.. Close enough for slashdot I guess

Re:US unemployment rate is now 4.7

[Anonymous Coward]

You aren't reading the official figures. Sheesh! Here you go: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006 %5C04%5C13%5Cstory_13-4-2006_pg5_19

Sometimes business changes and you sell your domai

[inflex]

My wife a few years ago wanted to get into pet items, beds, toys etc etc and so I bought her a pair of domains to start the shop ( petluxuries.com etc ), alas, 6 months later and our lives had changed a bit and the pet luxuries idea was out the door, a shame since it's a rather profitable market. So now we're left with two domains that aren't much use to us, so what better to do than to sell them.

What does iritate me though is when I'm trying to buy a domain which is held by a mass squatter and despite seeing the domain become expired you can't even aquire it (due to the 3~6 month wait period :( ) only to find 6 months later that they finally did renew it at the last minute. 4 weeks I can understand but -6 months- ?

Paul.

The choice is yours

[suv4x4]

This is basic capitalism in action. As long as there are people willing to pay up a fortune, there will be people to try to sell it for a fortune.

Thing is, you don't have to have the money if you have the imagination. I've recently started brainstorming for domain ideas for some projects I'm releasing in the next couple of months, and I can assure you that despite it being difficult and sometimes frustrating to find a good name for free, it's ALWAYS possible to get one, if you so wish.

When I mention my domains I always get the question "how much you paid up". So I say: "Well I paid up 10 bucks" and get a frown of disbelief. Thing is I've better ways to spend a $5000 than for a domain name.

Here are a couple of very recent examples:

futuremethod.com/net (and fmethod.com/net for short): For my little web design firm team.

binaryconcert.com: Where I'll soon post experimental electronic music.

JUGAI.com: A home for a virtual gaming console concept I'm still working on.

DonBeats.com A site selling hip hop beats I did for my friend, who goes by the nickname Don Perinion. This site ranks on the first or second pages for terms like "beats for sale", "hip hop beats" or "buy exclusive beats".

FlashBeyond.com A new project for free and commercial Flash scripts, components, tutorials...

All those were free for taking and purchased relatively recently (except the web firm ones), and I've found hundreds of other good names in the process which are still free, but I won't list here for obvious reason of someone quickly "parking" them.

To recap: don't let the squatters make you believe there is NO good domain left free on the web, because they neither have the resource or money to keep up with the imagination of the entire world.

Re:The choice is yours

[MissionAccomplished]

Until Adobe gets ahold of the fact that you registered FlashBeyond.com and tries to sue you under some lameass copyright/trademark infringement. Though I firmly believe Adobe would have no grounds to do so as you have not infringed on Fair Use provisions, that the domain name might be misconstrued is more than enough for some judge to declare your site to infringe on something or other provision of law. Not only does squatting need to be addressed but also copyright/trademark laws.

Re:The choice is yours

[suv4x4]

"Until Adobe gets ahold of the fact that you registered FlashBeyond.com and tries to sue you under some lameass copyright/trademark infringement. Though I firmly believe Adobe would have no grounds to do so as you have not infringed on Fair Use provisions, that the domain name might be misconstrued is more than enough for some judge to declare your site to infringe on something or other provision of law. Not only does squatting need to be addressed but also copyright/trademark laws."

The trademark this site uses is "FlashBeyond" and the trademark of Adobe is still "Macromedia Flash" and soon to be "Adobe Flash".

Now would I register "MacromediaFlashBeyond.com" we could have something to discuss here ;)

Since "Flash" is an actual word you can find in daily use, it can not be trademarked alone, it has to be trademarked together in a phrase with something else, or modified, for example "Phlash".

Therefore I'm not infringing on Adobe's trademark and I believe you can hardly call "FlashBeyond" to be squatting on Adobe's brand, I use totally different design style, logo design, "Beyond" is totally non-generic and I also never claim to be affiliated with Adobe or Macromedia.

There are hundreds of sites about Macromedia Flash that include "flash" or "mx" in their brand/domain names and Macromedia never touched them, nor it has a reason to.

Thanks for your concern though ;)

PS: Guys in Adobe already know of the site, btw, and they were no threats of any kind to sue me ;)

Re:The choice is yours

[damiam]

Since "Flash" is an actual word you can find in daily use, it can not be trademarked alone, it has to be trademarked together in a phrase with something else, or modified, for example "Phlash".

IANAL, but I think you're wrong. Everyday words can be trademarked in context with their field of use. It's fine if you want to name your band "The Windows" or whatever, but write an OS and call it Windows and MS is going to rape you in court, even though all you used was the simple, everyday word "Windows".

For another example, look at the current legal battle between Apple Computer and Apple Records - Apple is an everyday word, but it's still possible for infringement to occur if you're in the same market space (the music business, in this case).

Re:The choice is yours

[suv4x4]

"IANAL, but I think you're wrong. Everyday words can be trademarked in context with their field of use."

Well, in that case I'll try and not come up with a web plugin that competes with Flash ;)

Re:The choice is yours

[MissionAccomplished]

I was most definately writing in the key of sarcasm, but kudos to you for having the guys in Adobe aware of your site and seemingly appreciative of your work. Nice going.

Re:The choice is yours

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in that case I'll try and not come up with a web plugin that competes with Flash ;)

Cool. And, while your at it, you'll need to try not to come up with anything at all that has to do with Fash, including utilities, consulting, advertising, bulletin boards, or technical articles. Quite a site you'll have there, sparky.

Re:The choice is yours

[texaport]

don't let the squatters make you believe there is NO good domain left free on the web, because they neither have the resource or money to keep up with the imagination of the entire world.

And you can always just register the names that AOL uses for passwords on the outside of their free CDs at retail stores ... they parse a couple of nice six-letter words together for their unique combinations.

Re:The choice is yours

[suv4x4]

"Cool. And, while your at it, you'll need to try not to come up with anything at all that has to do with Fash, including utilities, consulting, advertising, bulletin boards, or technical articles. Quite a site you'll have there, sparky."

Sparky, you can go spread your totally unfounded FUD elsewhere, and check what these sites are busy with in the mean time:

www.flashcomponents.net
www.flashkit.com
www.flashloaded.com
www.flashcomponent.com
www.advanceflash.com

and so on and so on...

Re:Sometimes business changes and you sell your do

[davidesh]

ya I don't get the whole waiting period either on the domains when they expire. I think it should expire throughout the system within at least 48 hours... if you were slacking too bad so sad! (as I currently wait to grab a domain that expired 1 month ago...)

"Worth their weight in gold"?

[forsetti]

So, at $42.2222 per troy ounce, and 14.5833333 troy ounces in 1 pound, if these sites are really "worth their weight in gold", then on.com weighs ~1/2 ton while jasmin.com weighs only ~1/4 ton. Makes sense, of course, given the starvation diets most of those girls are probably on ...

Please don't crucify me if my math is off ... I'm tired. Just laugh at attempted joke ....

Re:"Worth their weight in gold"?

[jamesh]

I assumed by the title that there had been some sort of bust and domains had become worthless, given that a domain name is nothing more than a pattern of data on a disk, and that the pattern on the media weighs nothing(*).

But obviously the opposite is true. The next big thing will be businesses whose names are created by a random trigraph generator or are corruptions on existing words.

In Australia .com.au's have to provide evidence of registered company names, so in theory we don't have such a problem with .com.au domains names.

(*) if the difference between a 1 and 0 is measurable, then it's still going to average out to a positive or negative number so small that it's weight in gold would not be measurable in an given currency(**)

(**) insert joke about the value of the currency of your country here :)

Re:"Worth their weight in gold"?

[neus]

Nah u getting this all wrong ! Well an average 1U rack will weight about 45lbs, now a Sun rack cabinet weights at least 360lbs and can hold 38U's ... so that makes 45*38+360, that alone makes 2 070lbs! assuming that they use all the racks ( the company wont use only one 1U rack, to hold the domain name it maybe true but we must see the company as a it is, they aren't holding just one domain/website!) ... Gold is about $596/ounce and we got at least 2070lbs(=33120ounces) in material, that makes 33120*596, wich is roughly $19 739 520!! They sold the domain for $635,000 ??! Those poor domain owners have just been ripped off =|

Re:"Worth their weight in gold"?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, at $42.2222 per troy ounce [treas.gov], and 14.5833333 troy ounces in 1 pound [google.com] [...]

$42 per troy ounce, eh? I'll tell you what, I'll offer you $50 per troy ounce for all the gold you want to sell. Here's a free clue: http://money.cnn.com/data/commodities/index.html. Notice that gold is trading at over $600 per ounce.

Microsoft gives away domain name

[mychael]

Of course, if you goto http://officelive.microsoft.com/ and try to sign up for a web site using something else than IE you get this msg

You are not using a recent version of Internet Explorer and need to download it in order to use Office Live.

Re:Microsoft gives away domain name

[Anonymous Coward]

I think MS is pushing IE so hard out of sheer [lack] of principle now. It's not like they sell it.

I love when you spoof your User Agent and the site works perfectly with a non-IE browser. That tells me it's just snobbish "use IE or don't use my site"-ness.

Re:Microsoft gives away domain name

[Danga]

Well they are Microsoft and of course use ActiveX which not all browsers support so its a cheap way for them to at least get some advertising. So either change how your browser identifies or *GASP* click the "next" button on that page and everything should work fine (it works fine in Opera identifying as Opera anyway).

I used to work at ON.

[notthepainter]

On Technology, made the Meeting Maker calendaring application. Massively crossplatform (even had DOS, OS2 and Windows 3.0 clients!) They spun it off, good product. Guess the rest of the company doesn't need the domain, hope my 401k is fine!

I just loved that domain as an email address...

Paul

Here is one for the Network/Telcom crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

LanScape.com

I wasted a ton of money on domains...

[Jafafa Hots]

Here's a few of the names I registered and never made a cent on:

BudgetDSL.com
BudgetDSL.net
Artoo-Detoo.com
See-Threepio.com
InstantOnPC.com
NoBootPC.com
EarnPage.com (wow that's dumb!)
DSLCheap.com
DSLCheap.net
MartianSprings.com
19x.net (I let it lapse, but I'm thinking I should have kept it... even for email, a 3-letter domain is cool.)
PeeRat.com !!! (yes!!! Pee Rat! Actually I was thinking Peer At. Shows what registering names at 4 am can cost you.)

I regged a bunch more, some of them probably ok (something with fix.com in it... I forget... hmmm.) I regged at least 50 over the years, and only one has turned out to have any value.

Re:I wasted a ton of money on domains...

[Random Destruction]

peerat?

I would have clicked the ac button on that one. heh. embarassing ;)

Re:I wasted a ton of money on domains...

[Jafafa Hots]

I have no pride.

Just remembered another one - lo-cal.com. oh, and immunotherapist.com!

Re:I wasted a ton of money on domains...

[1u3hr]

Artoo-Detoo.com See-Threepio.com

Lucas would have come after you if you'd ever tried to use these. Everything Star Wars related is (TM) and (R) to the hilt.

Re:I wasted a ton of money on domains...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why and how does one "immuno the rapist"? . . . yes i am kidding. An immune system therapist i get it. I think I'll click 'Post Anoymously' now..

Re:I wasted a ton of money on domains...

[aliquis]

Well, all I can say is: I hope you lost on it in total.

I hate the regular commercial part of the Internet, and I hate this kind of stuff even more ;)

Re:I wasted a ton of money on domains...

[Anonymous Coward]

BudgetDSL.net
Artoo-Detoo.com
InstantOnPC.com
DSLCheap.com

1) Not a dotcom
2) Has a dash
3) 3+ words
4) Requires capitalization to make sense

They all stink. I guarantee you'd only buy those names once registrations dropped below $9.
You'd have never paid $100/yr each with Network Solutions, or even $170 for 2 years later.

Play $20 minimum blackjack tables (instead of the nickle slots that occasionally pay ten bucks).
Luck and talent -- with the proper timing -- are better than relying totally on pure luck alone.

Re:I wasted a ton of money on domains...

[danhirsch]

I once had a customer that wanted to open an online therapy website...offer therapy through chat and/or web cam..etc... The actual funny part was they wanted me to register the website:

TherapistOnlineNow.com

Which in turn..I discovered...could be

TheRapistOnlineNow.com

So I think they didn't use that domain! I don't remember...never got the project. lol

Re:I wasted a ton of money on domains...

[tinkertim]

If I think of a cool name, and its available I generally snag it. Since I register so many domains for clients I get a really good bulk deal with my registrar. Most TLD's cost me less than $5 to get.

I use sedo, and have had some success moving them. I've received a few offers on some over the $1k range but want to see what else comes in.

I looked at it like this. The domain trade business is quite a bit like the playing lotto once or twice a week business, with approximately the same chances that you'll hit the jackpot.

Average lotto player spends about $10 - $15 a week on tickets, roughly $50 - $60 a month. I register about 10 domains a month.

Services like sedo allow you to park your domains, drive traffic to them and collect on a share of the PPC programs they use on the parking page, plus get offers on your domains. Helps build up Alexa traffic scores to increase the value.

Each parked domain makes me about $3 a week. So after having a domain a month not only does my little hobby not cost me anything, I make a couple of bucks in the process. I'm not getting rich doing this by any means, but my 200 or so domains pay for neat stuff like r.c. parts and model kits.

I never register one with the idea that I'm just going to sell it, usually I do intend to develop the domain into something. The parking just lets me afford to move a little slower "getting around to it".

Its turned into a fun hobby that helps pay for my other hobbies. The point is now my significant other can't really say much if I go out and blow a few hundred bucks on a nice meter or a couple old clunker linux boxes to play with (and the electric bill they tend to make).

If you go register dozens of domains today with the idea that you'll get rich, you'll be sadly disappointed. But like the lotto, there is that 1 in (some huge number) chance you'll strike gold. Treat each one just like a lotto ticket, potentially worthless.

Re:I wasted a ton of money on domains...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok then, here's a potential "lotto ticket"

How many of you guys have been buying up domain names starting with "www-" - a friend let me in on this "big" secret on the net (not overly convinced about it yet given I ain't seen jack about it on the net), apparently a new domain name goldrush that's gonna hit advertizers hard in the pocket if they
don't buy the "www-" domain names in their market.

The story goes people see the domain like:
www-slashdot.com and because it's so similar the brain says - "Yep, dot com, credible/authority site" and as a result the response rate is much higher.

Sounds plausible.

Have you heard about it, and more to the point, will it be a lotto ticket?

Might as well try...

[MikeWasHere05]

I registered outrun2006.net for some stupid reason (see http://www.outrun2006.com/ for what Outrun 2006 is) and now I don't want it. You get it for as much as you want to pay for it. Message me if you want to buy.

Domain names worth their weight in gold...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and since domain names don't have any mass, they don't weigh anything.

Thus, domain names are worthless.

Not For Sale!

[Anonymous Coward]

I registered a 3-letter dot-com, which is also a word, in 1994 and still received calls about it until I anonymised it.

It's hard to tell companies and people that something is not for sale, and have them understand it. To them, if they want something, there's always a price.

Luckily, with my low cost of overhead (registration fees), I've outlived everyone that's wanted to buy it, and in the end, I still have it and my dot-com lives; as opposed to the disappointment I would have if they would have let it just die out to the hands of a reseller.

For those in a position of being offered cash for your domain, I highly recommend some wording in the contract that you would have first right of retrieval should it no longer be used.

(Highest offer was high six-figures USD)

-Registered, but anonymous

Cardboard box effect?

[Glowing Fish]

There is a piece of old lore that sales of cardboard boxes is one way to see if there is an upcoming business recovery or expansion...because when businesses start preparing to ship more things, they need lots of cardboard boxes to do it with.
This may or may not be true, but, we could still look at an upswing in domain names as a type of "cardboard box effect", it may mean that e-Commerce is picking up again.
Or it might mean nothing at all!

on.com, what about off.com

[NCalGal]

If on.com went for $635,000 I wonder what off.com went for? Wish we could stick to numbers. Ahhh.. member the days of compuserve email address's of numbers? I think mine was 174211.7411, or something like that. I have it sitting in a drawer somewhere. Sigh... capitalism at it's worst. It's all in the name, race, right place-right time... yadaa yaddaaa dang!

http://www.go0gl3.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever owns go0gl3.com should take revenge.

Quick! Let's reinvent DNS

[cpu_fusion]

So, let's say we get a group together some weekend, buy some beer, and reinvent DNS in a way that obliterates the value of all these registrations.

Then we'd just need to get Firefox, and of course IE to ... oh, yeah. Nevermind.

Re:MOD IGNORANT PARENT DOWN - EXPLANATION

[BWJones]

Okay. New rule

No.... No new rules. We have enough, thanks.

People who have no idea HOW SOMETHING WORKS, are no longer allowed to use Slashdot as an outlet for their ignorant ranting.

You do have an ID in the mid 600000 range, so you have not been around here long, have you? Slashdot is one of the biggest rantspaces on the Internet. That said, I understand exactly how the process works as explained below.

Those domains displaying domain parking pages are OWNED. That means someone exchanged goods, services, or currency for property. The property was the registration of the domain name. Still with me?

OK, that is perfectly understandable. Do you have any idea of how these companies "OWN" these domain names? Of course you do as you are trying to use/justify this same model to make money for yourself. For others here that may not know, they buy them up in bulk and find any and all possible relevant combinations of names in the hopes that someone will find a need for that name and then exchange again, more money to buy that domain name at a later date. Simple parasitic business with no real contribution to anything other than lining their own pockets.

1. After registering a domain, your nameservers typically default to some that the registrar provides.

Yes, and that drives more revenue to the domain name registrar who can then run statistics on how much traffic that name gets which then allows them to "valuate" that domain name for cost increases for ownership.

2. These at-the-moment "unused" domains, which number in the millions, get between a little and a LOT of traffic that would otherwise go nowhere.

See above explanation to 1.

3. An enterprising registrar sees this as an opportunity for offsetting costs, and profit (see: capitalism).

Yes, yes.... capitalism. I'm all for it, but hopefully that capitalism actually does something that contributes to society.

1. Someone registers a domain, and puts a program like the aforementioned on it to drive revenue - either while developing a site for it, or they simply are doing so well with it that it is "maximized". (Lingerei.com is an example)

Or.... statistically more likely and factually born out by the evidence, they simply sit on the domain and let it lie fallow until someone comes along that wants to buy it.

Idiot

[metamatic]

It's clearly not a free market, because there's a monopoly on control of the root servers. The monopoly prevents additional top level domains from being created, and ensures that any which are created follow the same speculation-encouraging rules as .com.

Re:Idiot

[heinousjay]

They've created a bunch of TLDs - that no one cares about. People want the classy .com and they won't settle for anything else. It's not the control of the names that causes these issues, it's the desires of the consumer.

Most of the posts on this article can be summed up as "I hate when someone makes money."

Re:Idiot

[metamatic]

No, the problem is that all the alternatives to .com are run like .com, with special startup periods when all the people who already own .com domains get to register all the same domains in the new TLD. So they all end up copies of .com. See .eu.

A more sensible idea would have been to have a new TLD where you couldn't register a domain you already had in .com. Or a TLD where you weren't allowed to park domains for more than a few weeks. Or a .sucks TLD for protest sites, where trademark owners are specifically prohibited from registering domains to stifle speech.

The best idea of all would be a domain where transfer of ownership was prohibited. That would almost eliminate stupid domain name speculation.

Of course nobody cares about the TLDs they've created. Most are very special purpose (.mobi, .museum), the rest are just like .com, with exactly the same problems, only less well known.

Jasmin.com

[chillax137]

Thanks for the link, man. I've got some I can share too.

This comment for sale!

[suv4x4]

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Tell me about it :-[

[danarm]

I had brainstormed for an URL for my news site for HOURS. Everything containing the word "news" is taken and filled with "parking pages" or ads.

In the end I got http://newsminator.com/ and thought it's obvious it comes from Terminator. When I showed the site to my friends they said things like "WTF!!! What kind of stupid name is this?" and none of them made the connection with the glorious character played by Arnold.

So, I guess too much imagination when choosing your domain name CAN be a bad thing.

Re:Tell me about it :-[

[GeoSanDiego]

I own FakeNews.com ! Havn't done anything with it yet though.

Re:Tell me about it :-[

[Bastard of Subhumani]

I guess too much imagination when choosing your domain name CAN be a bad thing.

Well it might be that.

Or it might be your total inability to speak English, because it's obvious to anyone who does that [vowel]wsm[another vowel] is pretty clumsy to pronounce.

Re:Tell me about it :-[

[danarm]

That is an excellent domain name. :( I wish I thought of it first. :)

Blue.eu, Macau.eu, Jasmin.eu still available

[fragles]

Blue.eu, Macau.eu, Jasmin.eu still available after this post. Wow. So right now I can buy those domain in .eu (which is still very inexpensive) and in few years I can get at least 1/10 of that.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Google will change Adsense and this will crash

[Animats]

In the beginning, we had banner ads, and advertisers paid for "impressions". Then we had banner ad glut, nobody looked at the banners, and the bottom fell out of banner ads.

Then we had click-through, and advertisers paid for "clicks". Now we have "click glut", very few clicks lead to a sale, and the bottom is falling out of "clicks".

What we're going to end up with is something where advertisers only pay for actual sales. This creates accounting problems, but Yahoo Store and parts of the porno industry already have it working.

The main thing keeping the click trade going is Google. When the day comes that Google stops paying affiliates for clicks, others will follow and the domain spam industry will fall apart. This will probably happen right after Google gets a payment system in place.

Re:Google will change Adsense and this will crash

[AlXtreme]

Using Adsense you can already measure the cost per conversion (CPC, the cost per sale). Google isn't paying anyone for clicks, it's just a broker between two people buying and selling advertisement-space/clicks. As long as the people buying advertisements get a high enough conversion (which they can already check themselves), this could go on indefinitly.

It would be relatively easy for Google to implement a payment-per-conversion system, however this would put a lot more risk on the person selling advertisement-space, thus it simply won't be used. Google knows this. You'd rather receive $10 a click a few hundred times a month than wait a whole year for someone to get a mortgage which might get you $10000 at once. Plus, there is the drawback of the buyer not playing fair (just remove the google-conversion-tracking bit from your system, and voila, you've earned yourself $10000 and the seller wouldn't know any better).

From what I've seen (I'm no expert on this), I'd say this system is probably even more robust than another famous broker: Ebay. As long as there are people wanting traffic via advertisements and there are people offering advertisements on their websites, Adsense will continue to exist. With Google laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:Google will change Adsense and this will crash

[stonecypher]

The main thing keeping the click trade going is Google.

Oh, nonsense. Less than one in eight domain squatters use Google. The domain squatting game existed years before Google did. Google doesn't even run the kind of scam ads that most squatters do.

What is it with people like you believing that without Google, the entire Internet goes away? Do you honestly believe Google's the only ad broker on earth? That all these advertisers will just say nevermind? That these content providers will go "well that's the end of my business," and close up shop? There are ad brokers out there that pay much better dividends than Google does - AdBrite and Chitika come to mind.

Wake up. Google is an advertising agency, and you're falling for it hook, line and sinker. Without Google, the state of advertising gets shaken up for a month or two, the internet goes elsewhere, 2-3% of sites don't switch because it's not worth the time, and life goes on.

And they're parasitic AFTER the sale too!

[King_TJ]

Just recently, I learned *far* more than I ever wanted to about attempting to claim a domain after a previous owner lets it expire. It's amazing what a racket that whole thing has become!

One of my clients paid a consultant to set up a web site and some email hosting for his daycare centers a couple years ago. Well, recently, that consultant ran into some personal problems (divorce, etc.) and became very difficult to reach/unresponsive. So finally, the daycare owner decided what he needed to do was redirect the registered domain to a new location, build a new site, and have it hosted elsewhere.

Problem was, the consultant registered it under his info, and we had no real way to obtain the password to make the changes needed.

Luckily, I noticed the domain was just about to expire, so I decided to keep an eye on it and planned to buy it upon its expiration. Now, the *traditional* rules say domains are back "up for grabs" after about a 30 day grace period, after expiration. But nowdays, it seems most registrars don't play fair. Instead, many just transfer the domains to their name, and sit on them indefinitely - charging an inflated price to re-purchase them. (I guess the line of thought is, if a name was good enough for someone to pay to register it once, then it's got an above-average chance of having some value to someone else - or even to the same person if they just let the renewal slide....)

In other cases, the expired domains automatically get put up for auctions to the highest bidder. (Some registrars like GoDaddy let you bypass this step by paying a $25 or so fee while the domain you want is still in their "grace period", but of course, that still means you're paying about 5x as much as you would have if it was some random name that was never registered before - AND, you're forced to become a captive GoDaddy customer in order to get it.)

The ones in auction can *really* turn into a money-grab, because companies have been formed to do nothing but automatically bid and re-bid on your behalf, for a stiff up-front fee, promising they'll guarantee to get you the domain you want. (Basically, if you're a normal human following manual bidding procedures, you're absolutely going to lose to their mechanized system.) You're fine if you're the only one bidding on the name you want -- but if it's a reasonably attractive/popular name, it can escalate into a very expensive bidding war involving 3rd. party services really quickly.

Anyone got some capital to throw MY way?

[get quad]

http://www.commroot.com With a little effort this set of domain names could be generating some significant revenue.

What about other TLDs?

[andyatkinson]

What does the slashdot crowd think about the growth of other TLDs? I think del.icio.us, scriptaculous, and other clever uses of country code domains and things are "built-in" branding, and often just as memorable or more than .com. This might take a while for grandma to understand, and is not as easy to speak, but it obviously has semantic meaning. I worked for days to come up with a .com name, after going through dozens. Choosing a name of a business is difficult enough....

Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I just checked and you can get this phonetic domain if you want it

teknooz.com

It seems to fit your link farm fairly well. It's not the greatest, but I do think it's better than "newsminator".

Re:Here's an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You know. You don't even deserve this, but I'm going to give it to you anyway.

"Newsminator" just plain stinks. You need to hire someone with a background in the language arts. Anyhow, here's the freebie (I checked again) and these are available.

newsinator.com
newzinator.com

Extra points if you can figure out why "newsinator" and "newzinator" are better than "newsminator".

Re:Here's an idea

[Jason1729]

The extra points also apply to this quote

Re:And meanwhile, Microsoft gives away domain name

[TheSpoom]

Question: Do you actually own the domain name Microsoft registers "for" you? Microsoft says you can transfer in a domain if you so choose, but funny enough, they mention nothing about letting you transfer the free domain out if you are unsatisfied with their services.

Re:MOD IGNORANT PARENT DOWN - EXPLANATION

[NoTheory]

No, what he's showing disdain for is people who profit at the unwilling expense of others, through no effort or cleverness of their own. And i'm sorry but i think there are probably a good number of people who agree with him (myself included)

Besides, using "yeah well they did it first" doesn't mean that it's right, or that other things should be modeled in the same fashion, even if one was to accept that land development is a suitable analogy to domain squatting.

Worth a heck of a lot more than that

[Anonymous Coward]

0 ounces of gold = $0

You said why....

[woolio]

Why can't .com administrators apply the same rules instead of going for a money grab

ROTFL. I don't think you understand the significance of your own question: .com is for those who want to make money.
Why should the administrators of .com do anything else?

They didn't get all the zipcodes.

[Anonymous Coward]

> which happens to own a .com domain for every single
> zip code in the United States.

This part of the article is wrong. These guys did register all the remaining .COM and .NET domains for USA zip codes, but some enterprising people like myself beat them to a few zip codes.

Still Waiting...

[SmartSsa]

for an offer on MyNakedAss.com...

Re:Still Waiting...

[Kangburra]

for an offer on MyNakedAss.com...

There was something about a probe heading your way last week.

Re: IGNORANT...

[1u3hr]

So the thing that you so emphatically show your disdain for is in fact a timeless trade: Land Development. People are buying up previously unused spaces, and adding some or no value to them - in hopes that their value will exceed the purchase price plus carrying costs at some point in the future.

So being a "timeless trade" makes it okay. Like armed robbery, white slavery, "protection", etc. And the term "development" is misleading. A parked site is not developed like land; land is usually developed by providing access and services. Nothing in a parked domain is useful except the name itself. Youi'll notice hte other "timelsss trades" I mentioned are illegal. Though domain speculation shouldn't itself be illegal, it should certainly not be encouraged.

Its all bollocks anyway

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

I mean seriously, I constantly have customers coming in fretting about domain names. One chap sits at the visitor PC and spends hours (literally) trying different iterations of common words, and combinations. This is just silly. I tell them to relax, the name really isn't important. Content is king on the internet, the name doesn't matter a damn.

Lets take our favourite website, slashdot. What exactly does that have to do with technology or news? Nothing, and yet its one of the most successful sites out there. Google is a verb, for gods sake, and its domain name has exactly zero to do with searching. If these guys had their way, it would have been called simplysearch.com or something. One of our most successful websites LIreland the domain name doesn't mention anything to do with driving or driving schools.

This domain name hunting fad will be consigned to the murky annals of bankruptcy before too long, as more and more useful, content rich sites gain a reputation and a following. Meanwhile, trust me, the name doesn't matter a damn.

Close, but you're way off

[cgenman]

Those domains displaying domain parking pages are OWNED. That means someone exchanged goods, services, or currency for property. The property was the registration of the domain name. Still with me?

OK, that is perfectly understandable.

No, it is not. They don't own anything.

Those domains displaying domain parking pages are BEING ALLOCATED to them by the domain name registrar, who has allotted these names to them on a first come-first serve basis. However, even that is a misnomer as really the registrar is agreeing to have their DNS servers resolve to the name that IP address.

Now, IP addresses are allocated more intelligently than domain names, for some reason. If someone won't be able to use an IP block, THEY DON'T GET IT. IP's are a limited resource in the system, and the system wouldn't function without them. Domain names are the same. If somebody goes out and registers my name dot com, then nobody else can use that domain for their communications (hence, why I have a dot net). If someone runs out and registers Chrystler.com, that is a resource that Chrystler can no longer take advantage of. If someone registers every single dictionary word in the book, then they've just effectively removed a huge chunk of the available name space.

Parking domains are the same thing. They're not like owning a car. They're a gentlemen's agreement between everyone in the system that whoever asks for the car first can use it. Then one person asks for the car for forever. Then they rent the car to other people in the system for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Perhaps the system the system shouldn't be based upon trust, but that doesn't mean these people aren't parasites.

Personally, I'd love to see a secondary internet evolve where all of the 2nd tier DNS servers agree that anyone that is camping a domain name can go screw. Of course, I'd love to see registrars agree that anyone camping a domain doesn't really deserve to keep it and can go screw. To simplify, these people should get their domains taken away, their computers burned, and their dogs shot. They're fucking parasites, and don't deserve to breathe the same oxygen as real human beings.

Re:Close, but you're way off

[MadUndergrad]

Interesting if off-topic little tidbit: MIT apparently owns 1/256th of all IP addresses. I.E. everything under a certain number out of the first set of numbers is allocated to them. When you think about it, that's a gigantic amount of space to be owned by one entity like that.

Stuff.by.net vs. Things.on.com

[whig]

Does it seem like Books.by.net and Music.by.net or adult-oriented content addresses like Porn.by.net would be valuable?

It is generally the case that .com names are worth considerably more than .net. But consider a marketing campaign for a company that is selling cars online, by web or by net so to speak. A TV ad could say, "Shop for a new car at Cars by net," while showing "Cars.by.net" on the screen.

Sure, "Cars dot com" works as well or better, but that one's taken, and so is almost every other "Product dot com" domain. So the question is, would "Cars.on.com" be better than "Cars.by.net"?

Which is the more valuable domain space?

I'm asking sincerely, even though I have a self-interested motivation in doing so. I've literally been told by some appraisers that By.net should be worth 10-25% of what By.com would be, and it just doesn't make any sense at all.

Re:Stuff.by.net vs. Things.on.com

[Anonymous Coward]

dot-com is immediately associated with not only internet business, but most everyone who's been on the net knows it can be typed in the browser address bar. If you just say "cars by net" and show cars.by.net you will lose some percentage of the stupider (and thus profitable!) potential customers. Not only that, but even the people who figure out that it's another kind of internet address, will see it as a bit odd, non-mainstream. You'll have to market a lot to change these associations. But in the end, the address is worth whatever you can convince someone else to pay for it, and you have a lot of good things going for you, so don't let me discourage you.

Re:Stuff.by.net vs. Things.on.com

[stonecypher]

You're thinking about it wrongly. The reason it's worth 1/10 to 1/4 what buy.com is is because 75-90% of a domain's value is people going "huh, i wonder if i can [verb] things on [verb].com."

The other 10-25% comes from domains working the way they're supposed to - someone goes out and actually builds something there, then gets the word out, and people go hit the site. In the case of two- and three-letter domains, the value there is drastically inflated, because they're so much easier to remember, even if you're not particularly trying. In the case of simple-word domains, especially verbs and conjunctions, that's *massively* up-valued by the flexibility of the domain.

However, these people are trying to bilk you. There's a very, very profitable way to deploy this specific domain, and they want the golden goose. Nobody buys things at their real value; they buy low and try to make back the margin. These people are telling you 10-25% because it sounds likely, because in most cases they'd be correct. In the case of by.net, there is a specific use which would hideously up-value the domain.

Think hard enough and you'll see it. Otherwise, email me, and I'll take a tiny slice in exchange for showing you how to turn that into a bucket of gold.

Re:Stuff.by.net vs. Things.on.com

[wfberg]

Of course! drive.by.net !

Cybersquatting?

[frinkacheese]

I thought that this was called Cybersquatting and was not allowed? It really is annoying, especially with .eu when suddenly everything you could ever wish to register has been "stolen" and companies are charging extortionarte fees to let you have them. This really must be just wrong?

So what happened to the cybersquatting rules whereby you could challenge a domain registration?

Scaling domain costs?

[cgenman]

First domain - 5 dollars
Second domain - 20 dollars
Third domain - 50 dollars
Fourth domain - 100 dollars
Subsequent domains - 1,000 dollars

Sure, you have the problem of people registering things under other people's names, but that can be solved.

Essentially, your e-mail and personal identity domain should be basically free, your first and second hobby domains should be reasonably priced, your third and fourth domains should have a lot of motivating factor behind them, and if you need 5 or more domains you're probably a very large company with a lot of people working for you.

Re:Scaling domain costs?

[SteveFoerster]

I respectfully disagree. There was a time when I had three domains for different projects, one for my personal site, and one for my resume and other professional information. I don't think that I should have had to shell out $1,175 a year for that. Besides, people would use fronts to own domain names if there were a graduated registration fee. Once it's cheaper to incorporate or register a DBA than to pay the higher fee, well, there you go.

Re:Scaling domain costs?

[dtobias]

So why not use logical subdomains for those things, like resume.yourname.whatever?

Make

[SpaceAdmiral]

I'm working from memory so I may have some of the details wrong:

There was an article in Make magazine a few months ago about domain names (I believe it was written by Tim O'Reilly). Basically, it said (paraphrased), "If we were registering a domain name for this magazine a few years ago, we would have needed to get make.com to get any visitors. However, given the ubiquity of search engines now, makezine.com is fine . . . people will still find us with no problem."

So, um, what I'm saying is, domain names aren't as important as people think they are.

itunes

[wwmedia]

http://www.itunes.dj/ Itunes.DJ anyone?

Parking Sucks

[MikeFM]

I want a Firefox plugin that blacklists parking domains the way Adblock blacklists ads. So that if I try to go to one of those pages it just warns me that it's a parked ad trap and allows me to choose not to go. Better yet, let the search engines screen the blacklisted sites out for you.

EU is wrecked.

[mossico]

I had 5 .eu pre-registers. Every single one was taken before me by linkfarms, 9/10ths of the .eu addresses I've tried to register have been taken by linkfarms most of which seem to belong to some firm called blix. They shouldn't allow one firm to register thousands of domains.

Re:EU is wrecked.

[pe1chl]

... said the guy who pre-registered 5 domains and then supposedly tried to register at least 10...

In the early days, in .nl any company could register at most ONE domain name. ONE.
That was a clear rule. Once that was weakened to "ok, a second or third is okay too, but only when those are tradenames of that same company" the big mess started.

(there is still the distinction between "first domain" and "next domain" in the .nl WHOIS server)

A bit wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Oscar! .... dotcom

Re:A bit wrong

[demental]

GOB IS NOT ON BOARD! the no scar reference is to the (2nd to last) episode when they had a saddam lookalike on trial in iraq. Probably closer to the truth than anyone can imagine. Truly great show and i miss it alot.

Re:Rules for Domain Names:Money Grab

[Kingduck]

This is america! Money is all that you can grab! :-)

Search Engines?

[Elastri]

This may be a bit naive of me, but as more people turn to search for finding things more, are't a lot of these domains going to go down in value? I barely ever type a domain anymore. I'll reflexively google the name, then click it when the website comes up.

Re:Search Engines?

[GeoSanDiego]

Search engine costs per click are rising as more and more individuals are competing for the same key words. Thus having a unique domain name becomes relatively more valuable.

Irony

[MadUndergrad]

Does anyone else find the title " Domain Names Worth Their Weight in Gold Again" ironic and amusing, or is it just me?

I mean, seeing as domain names have no weight, what with being intangiable and all....

howto: multiple domains to sell at once?

[highlytuned]

I'm looking to sell a bunch of domains together (highlytuned.com / highlytuned.net / highlytuned.co.uk / highly-tuned.com / highly-tuned.net / highly-tuned.co.uk) but all brokers I've seen want them listed separately. Any recommendations?

And the rest.

[Martin Spamer]

It doesn't stop there :

The page behind Jasmine [dot] com also tries to install flash malware.

There are javascript pop-up's hidden hundreds of characters off to the right, which appear to be click-through ads.

The link techinterviews [dot] com behind the poster prostoalex is another link farm.

/me smells a rat.

Weight in gold?

[Clazzy]

If it's determined by length, I'm registering supercalafragalisticexpialidocius.com straight away!

Re:MOD IGNORANT PARENT DOWN - EXPLANATION

[cortana]

3. An enterprising registrar sees this as an opportunity for offsetting costs, and profit (see: capitalism).

Yes, yes.... capitalism. I'm all for it, but hopefully that capitalism actually does something that contributes to society.

They can use the extra capital to improve their services which will benefit all their customers, and give their competitors the incentive to make similar improvements.

AfterNic - Where domain names are traded

[howiefl]

For a real idea of what domains are coming up for sale or if you wish to sell one, go to AfterNic.com.

'Nuff said.

Re:AfterNic - Where domain names are traded

[01101101]

For a real idea of what domains are coming up for sale or if you wish to sell one, go to AfterNic.com.

That was actually pretty good for a laugh, the names people come up with to try and resell. Although I have to give somebody credit for getting $365 for buffybuns.com.

Re:MOD IGNORANT PARENT DOWN - EXPLANATION

[Moderatbastard]

You do have an ID in the mid 600000 range, so you have not been around here long, have you?

Do you think you got modded up on the basis of what you wrote, or your 5 digits?

All you "Look at me, I got a low ID" brigade are just fat useless twats who were already unemployed and bored before the dotcom crash.

Re:MOD IGNORANT PARENT DOWN - EXPLANATION

[Anonymous Coward]

You do have an ID in the mid 600000 range, so you have not been around here long, have you?

Statements like that instantly discredit whatever else follows in your post. He or she may have gotten a new ID at some point, or like many people, may have read Slashdot for years before registering. Grow up.

But

[binkzz]

They don't weigh anything..

books.com, search.com, computers.com, auction.com

[DoninIN]

Are surely much more valuable domain names than amazon.com, google.com, and ebay.com? The thing no one has explained to me yet is are these idiots making money squatting on all these domains? Or is this like all those "work from home" things, where none of them really make any money, but the meme of the multi-level marketing thing is infectious and spreads prolifically? Same question could be asked about spammers, how many of them make any real profit, and how many more are either spamming at a loss or at a rate less than they could make the kwikky mart per hour? Seems to me if these things are all as usually un-profitable as I imagine we could educate away at least some of the annoyance caused by spam and domain spam etc.

The slashdot name.

[aliquis]

The name does have something to do with the content.

Slashdot = /. = inverted ./ = path to the current directory in unix.

I think that matches "News for nerds" quite well.

Re:The slashdot name.

[What'sInAName]

Well, that's a stretch. If you read the /. faq, (I think it's in there) it comes from way back in the day when people would have to say "The web address is 'h' 't' 't' 'p' 'colon' 'slash' 'slash' ....

Pretty funny, actually.

Re:The slashdot name.

[bwcbwc]

I thought /. was older than that: it's the vi (and more) editing command meaning "Search for any character". Considering the number of characters (human and byte-sized) on /., this makes just as much sense as the http: explanation. It's also a pretty useless command, which also seems appropriate to many of the posts here. :)

Re:The slashdot name.

[Firehed]

Nope. Spell it out. h t t p colon slash slash slashdot dot org. It's even on the FAQ.

What does the name "Slashdot" mean?

"Slashdot" is a sort of obnoxious parody of a URL. When I originally registered the domain, I wanted to make the URL silly, and unpronounceable. Try reading out the full URL to http://slashdot.org/ and you'll see what I mean. Of course my cocky little joke has turned around and bit me in the butt because now I am called upon constantly to tell people my URL or email address. I can't tell you how many people respond confused "So do I spell out the 'dot' or is that just a period?"

And domain names are important

[aliquis]

Domain names are important because search engines seems to value the occurency of the searched word inside the domain quite high.

Other off topic things I don't like about googles search result are that a search for "product-name review" often results in lots of pages which has the word "consumer review" or similair inside them, even thought there are no review and never a large and good one. When I search for something like that I want to have more on my bones then "I've bought it for $30 and I like it".

Re:And domain names are important

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Domain names are important because search engines seems to value the occurency of the searched word inside the domain quite high.

Yeah, but if you can't get it, don't sweat it.

Re:And domain names are important

[dtobias]

If that's the case, then can't you just create subdomains within whatever domain you do have, and put the keywords there? No need to register new domains for every keyword you're trying to spamdex.

Idiot-ChinaNET.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's clearly not a free market, because there's a monopoly on control of the root servers. "

So then there was no point to the Chinese internet or the EU/UN trying then.

Cybersquatters retort

[TheDrewbert]

Check out this "definition" of cybersquatting from LinkUWant.com, a link farm who is holding the URL of the name of my company.
http://www.linkuwant.com/website/cybersquatter.php
"This term is used by envious corporate world executives and attorneys."
Feel free to slashdot them.

Dot-com vendors.

[saintlupus]

Ah, wonderful. Maybe I can look forward to another batch of emails offering to sell me "roadflares.com", since I own the .org.

Attention asshats -- I'm not a commercial entity. That's why I registered the .org. Am I the only person following the guidelines on this sort of thing?

--saint

Re:Dot-com vendors.

[chawly]

I noticed this bit, and it gained my sympathy:

"Attention asshats -- I'm not a commercial entity. That's why I registered the .org. Am I the only person following the guidelines on this sort of thing?"

The short answer to your question is, I'm sorry to say, "very probably!".

Re:Dot-com vendors.

[The Cisco Kid]

Those guidelines havent been enforced or followed for quite a while.

http://www.icann.org/faq/#regrules .org, .com, and .net have been unrestricted for quite a while .edu, .mil and .gov are still restricted tho.

Re:Dot-com vendors.

[dtobias]

I'm going out of the way to avoid ".com" for my noncommercial projects, which are in .info, .org, and .name domains instead.

Re:Don't Confuse Weight with Mass ...

[Bastard of Subhumani]

It is patently obvious that domain names are worth their MASS in gold, mass being a measure of the degree to which the domain name warps space-time about it.

Steve Jobs has loads of money. And reality warps around him. Hey, I think you might be onto something here!

No, you wasted a ton of domain names.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your wasted money is your personal thing, the domain names were wasted for everybody else.

Okay....

[infosec_spaz]

Who will give me $5000.00 for www.pirate-ninja-zombie.com ????? Come on....I need the money for college :o)

Re:books.com, search.com, computers.com, auction.c

[stonecypher]

Domain speculators serve tremendous numbers of ads. 99% of google's revenue is ad-based. QED.

For what it's worth, just think it over. These people own sometimes upwards of 20k domains. We always say "there's no way they could sell a tenth of a percent of their $5k domains." Okay, so what if that's true? Buying domains in bulk they're like fifty cents each; if we assume a turnover of one tenth of one percent, and a return of $5k each, then they've made $100k off of a $10k investment.

Yes, they're making money, or they wouldn't still be doing it. These guys buy domains as quickly as they can think them up.

Sow as ye reap and all that

[fm6]

The ironic thing is that this domain squating wasn't really possible until until a lot of people got all bent out of shape because Network Solutions was charging $50/year to register domains, and they had no competition. They helped force NS to share the business with other companies that were free to charge as little as they wanted. One result of this was bulk registration services, that let squatters grab every name in the phone book and every word in the dictionary for just pennies a domain.

So now a domain name worth having costs thousands of bucks. Of course, you can renew for only $10/year...

Ain't the free market great?

Cool

[The Cisco Kid]

If this is true I should start seeing those six figures offers I could have gotten for microwave.com in 2001 start coming in soon now.

Ignorant

[SonicSpike]

Your ignorance has shown through your post.

First off, it would more than likely be a trademark infringment instead of a copyright infringment.

To obtain copyright, you must express anything with a minimal degree of creativity in a tangiable form. To obtain a trademark, you must simply use a logo, slogan, etc in commerce. Registering these two with the appropriate US gov offices provide extra protection, but is not absolutely needed.

Secondly, why do we need legislation? Who would enact it, US Congress? How could it be enforced outside of the US? It can't. Legislation isn't really a good idea in this instance (it rarely is). Instead let the free market and the courts decide on the best course of action. They are closer to the situation anyway. Besides, legislation usually causes more problems than it solves.

Gotta Stand up for Go-Daddy (was: Re:Bah!!!)

[sjs132]

It really seems your knocking Go-Daddy for no reason...

I've never had a problem with go-daddy not giving me my domains I request, unless it WAS already taken. And the ones I have, a few do have "Parked" pages, until I get my sites up. I don't understand your problem with this? If I wanted, I could put FOR-SALE pages, but thats not my intentions. besides, Go-Daddy could just be the register for the name, and the site hosted elsewhere... Some folks need time to figure it out, etc...

So in short... I'm saying don't knock a site unless you've tried them... Then give specific complaints, not BROAD sweeping complaints that have no basis.

Stop the insanity

[rfisher]

As I've written before, domain names aren't property, & we should stop treating them as such. It should not be possible to sell a domain name. Your only options should be to keep it or release it. Someone taking money to release a domain should be charged with bribery.

(I'm all for the registrars continuing to charge, as long as they are just being a registrar & not playing the squatting game.)

I'm generally very libertarian & capitalist, but treating domain names as a commodity is just insanity.