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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."
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.
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.
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