Prices, Gouging and Haggling for Internet Domains?

GregStevensLA asks: "I'm considering paying for a 'premium' domain name for a small web start-up I want to form. The company that currently holds the domain name is offering it for $1500, but they made it clear to me that they expect a counter-offer and are 'willing to make a deal.' I've never done this before, and I have no idea what a reasonable counter-offer is. If I say 'I can't go above $1000' am I being too easy? Should I try to push for lower than that? My understanding is that these prices are hugely inflated anyway (i.e. pure profit going to companies that probably scooped up the domains for free). In some sense, paying anything beyond a registration fee is gouging, in my opinion. I don't want to be conned... on the other hand, this is the reality of business, and I don't want to come across as amateurish. Does anyone have any advice for this new-comer to domain name purchasing?"

Comments

Let's get this point out of the way

[linvir]

Let's get it out of the way early, because I can feel this wave of antipathy coming...

Please do your best to find an alternative first. Look into alternatives before succumbing and compensating these worthless parasites for their land grabbing.

Re:Let's get this point out of the way

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And then offer them $9- the cost of the domain at GoDaddy for one year, and make it clear that you're also willing to haggle. I wonder if they'll accept less than $750?

Re:Let's get this point out of the way

[toad3k]

Don't offer $1000. Jesus no. In fact don't offer anything, just specify that the aount they are asking is too much and to have a nice day. I was reading a transcript of an exchange with a registrar over a domain name that started at $5000 and ended up at about $100 as he made it clear that each amount specified was too much and that he was 'sorry but as an individual he'd have to decline'.

I wouldn't be surprised if the emails you get are nearly automated. They are just hoping for that one big score, and if you offer a thousand dollars, you will get drawn into a haggle that will cost you.

This is just my opinion.

Re:Let's get this point out of the way

[pete6677]

I would definitely start by offering far less than they're asking just to see how serious they are. $750 would be a good starting point, maybe even less. The longer they've had the name the more likely they are to sell, since its probably not in high demand. Profit margins in the domain market are even more obscene than high end jewelery stores, so they'll be making money no matter how much they sell it for.

Re:Let's get this point out of the way

[MindStalker]

Exactly. Even more importantly don't let your domain name hamstring you. Most people nowadays use google for find websites, they rarly type them by hand anymore. So, offer these guy $100 (hell I payed almost that much from a registrar 10 years back) get a domain name that is close to this use it, get your google rank up and don't ever expect to get this name and these guys will eventually crawl back to you.

Re:Let's get this point out of the way

[ClassMyAss]

I'm with linvir on the not paying the squatters the outrageous fees they're asking; unfortunately, I fear that enough domains are successfully sold for their asking prices to keep these people in business. At ~$10/year for registration, and $1000 asking price, you only need to sell one out of a hundred domains to break even. Push the asking price higher (and from what I've seen, most of them seem to be asking more to the tune of $5k), and you need an even tinier percentage of sales.

Here's a question, although I'm not sure if anyone has the answer: what percentage of registered domain names are parked for domain name speculators as opposed to containing legitimate content? I don't know any good way to check this automatically, as many of the parked pages have BS content on them that is recognizable as such to a human but wouldn't be easy to figure out automatically. But it would be interesting to know, for instance, what percentage of [dictionary word].coms are simply being sat on. From my checking of domains that I would want to use, it seems that somewhere around 95% of the names that are taken (that I would want) have no real content up, just a "Click here to buy this domain name" link and a crapload of ads.

I imagine more people would be accessing sites directly instead of relying solely on the search engines if more of the good names were actually being used. Not that there's any feasible way to bring that about...while it may go against our collective sense of Internet morality, I can't for the life of me think of a reason why domain speculation should be illegal.

Re:Let's get this point out of the way

[Pandora's Vox]

I got one of these dorks down from $3900 to $150... so go low.

Re:Let's get this point out of the way

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I would definitely start by offering far less than they're asking just to see how serious they are. $750 would be a good starting point, maybe even less. The longer they've had the name the more likely they are to sell, since its probably not in high demand. Profit margins in the domain market are even more obscene than high end jewelery stores, so they'll be making money no matter how much they sell it for.

I mentioned the $750 because it's the natural haggle price (as opposed to the "captive market" price of $1500, or the "free market, can always get another name" price of $8.95). In other words, it's where the haggling in a barter system would end up.

Hey Greg

[bluelip]

Hey Greg,

          We spoke eralier about you purchasing a domain name from us. In light of recent interest in the domain, we're now asking $2500.

Thanks,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Domain Dealer

Re:Hey Greg

[MBCook]

Reminds me of one of my favorite Futurama quotes, from the episode called "Put Your Head on my Shoulders." The gang is at Elzar's restaurant as bender comes up offering to sell roses to give to their dates.

Bender: Now how about a rose for the lady? Five bucks a pop!
Gary: I'll take one.
Fry: Oh, yeah? Well I want one too.
Bender: Eight bucks.
Fry: But you just said--
Bender: Demand suddenly skyrocketed. You all saw it!

Re:Hey Greg

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, thats kinda insane for a domain. I'm currently leasing a domain name redirect for $12 a year from a 3rd party company. I've got the full (.com) domain name without any of that other junk that a lot of those "free" domain name companies usually force you into, no restrictions on bandwidth either (since it's just a redirect). If you do your webdesign properly you can find yourself at the top of google's search very quickly no matter your domain name. I type in the origional name that I wanted and my website is actually 2nd on the search, regardless of the fact my domain name is a bit different. Don't waste your money on those greedy buggers, just settle for a domain name a bit differnet and focus on getting the search engines to find you.

Try to find a similar one

[Phantombrain]

I would suggest trying to think of a domain that is similar. The compainies that buy those domains are making pretty much 100% profit, and they very annoying. Don't support them and get another domain.

Re:Try to find a similar one

[torqer]

way more than 100% profit. It costs me ~20$ for 2 years. I got my domain thru Joker.com. They are simple and relatively easy to use. I would certainly look for an alternate domain name before handing over $1000 dollars.

Re:Try to find a similar one

[darkstar2a]

I've had a similar situation, and in my case I secured the alternates, but realized that the one they squated on would be more likely entered by people just trying to type it in.

I didn't want to build THEIR GoogleAd/Spyware potential with my name.

Patience is a virtue. They started at $5K! and after almost a year of telling them what they could do with their offers (they sent me another message every other month or so) I was tired one day and raised my "don't even contact me if it's not under" from $50 to $100. The next day I got an invoice!

I used a one-use virtual credit card (come on, I'm not stupid) and paid for it. 2 days later the change over completed and I spent a couple more bucks to transfer away from this unknown (to me) registrar the next day.

More than I wanted to spend, but worth the future problems I hope would come if my product becomes succesful. :)

What I find more annoying is the people that tell me I need to sell them one of my active domains because they want it. Are they spambots that are not even looking at the site, or do they just hope I'm stupid?

Find a better name.

[nxtw]

Don't give these cybersquatting bastards money. If cybersquatting wasn't so profitable, the cybersquatters wouldn't exist.

Re:Find a better name.

[Roody Blashes]

In other words it's a legitimate business.

I don't like the fact that all these "realty-squatting bastards" jumped on cheap land deals back in the 70s, but that's not going to stop me from buying a house.

If the market will bear it, then there's no real problem. Besides, you're under no obligation to honor the current DNS system and neither is anybody else. If you're so uptight about it, reinvent your own DNS and make it successful. Then you can do whatever you want with all the names.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

If the market will bear it, then there's no real problem.

Actually, that depends on your point of view. Markets are notoriously bad at setting prices in a truly efficient manner.

Re:Find a better name.

[Roody Blashes]

No, the people using them are notoriously bad at guaging whether or not the price the market set is fair.

Don't lay stupid economic behaviors in market users at the feet of the markets. Markets don't shoot people, people shoot people.

Re:Find a better name.

[sexyrexy]

Markets are notoriously bad at setting prices in a truly efficient manner.

That, also, depends on your point of view.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Don't lay stupid economic behaviors in market users at the feet of the markets. Markets don't shoot people, people shoot people.

The main problem I have with markets is the serious lack of information- by anonymizing the buyers and sellers as much as possible, you guarantee that the con artists will always win out because people don't have enough information to make an adequate decision. That's a stupid system, not stupid people. The only way market price will ever be fair is if all liars are shot on sight.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

That, also, depends on your point of view.

True enough. Markets are quite efficient from the point of view of the con artist. And only a con artist could like the free market. Cybersquatters are just another parasite on a system that invites parasitical behavior.

Re:Find a better name.

[GregStevensLA]

Don't you think, for a system to be judged a "good system", it needs to be a system that is "good" the way people actually use it?

It's like usability and interfaces. If people are constantly messing up, you can blame the users... or you can blame the system for not being designed with "real users" in mind.

Free markets are great when people don't quite behave the way people actually behave.

Re:Find a better name.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I don't like the fact that all these "realty-squatting bastards" jumped on cheap land deals back in the 70s, but that's not going to stop me from buying a house.

The difference is, there's a finite amount of land, and there's a finite amount of potentially-popular land. The domain namespace is potentially infinite. But squatters do use valuable resources, thus making it more expensive not for us domain-buyers, but for those running the system, thus (potentially) making future domain name registrations more expensive.

I don't think it'll ultimately result in a real change, though. Squatters will always cost more than just buying an original domain, and there are still plenty of those.

Re:Find a better name.

[pete6677]

What more information would you need? The squatters make it clear what they're offering and for what price. Its up to you to determine if its worth it. This being the internet, the potential buyer can research to see what people are paying for domains. They can also post an Ask Slashdot to get information from other peoples' experiences. Other than the fact that domain squatting is not an entirely ethical business, I fail to see how he's getting cheated here. He could always buy a different name for a much lower price.

Re:Find a better name.

[RalphSleigh]

*Cough* Should we give those bastards who bundle annoying toolbars with their web browser any money either?

Re:Find a better name.

[oyenstikker]

Yeah, I really hate that stupid google box that comes with Firefox.

Re:Find a better name.

[nelsonal]

Markets are really good at setting a price in an efficient manner (the pricing is free). They are horrible at distributing gains in an equitable manner (the returns for being the worst IT grad at San Francisco State in 1998 probably far outweigh being at the top of your class in 2001).

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

What more information would you need? The squatters make it clear what they're offering and for what price.

Have they? Do they include the date that the registration will be expiring if you do not pay their price so that you have a chance of grabbing it again before they renew?

Its up to you to determine if its worth it. This being the internet, the potential buyer can research to see what people are paying for domains. They can also post an Ask Slashdot to get information from other peoples' experiences. Other than the fact that domain squatting is not an entirely ethical business, I fail to see how he's getting cheated here. He could always buy a different name for a much lower price.

And run the risk of a competitor buying up the same name and slandering his business, you mean.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Are you a troll or just stupid?

Well, let's look at the track record so far of the pro-market people in this debate: We've got people who can't admit that a captive market is not a free market, that markets limit information transfer, and now an AC who can't even come up with a better argument for charging $1500 for a cyber-squatted domain name than to call me a troll or stupid. Who's the stupid one now?

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Markets are really good at setting a price in an efficient manner (the pricing is free).

Inaccurate pricing is just as bad as expensive pricing in the long run.

Re:Find a better name.

[nelsonal]

The market sets a clearing price, which may change based on differing information, but the huge benefit to a market is that someone (usually everyone) gets the pricing information at a nominal cost and that information is exceedingly hard to get in almost all other systems. Our society tolerates the other flaws of a market based system (the most obvious being asymetric rewards) because the value of the pricing information is much larger.

What does your statement mean? What is bad about expensive pricing? It almost always indicates that something required many human hours and other resources to create. By inacurate pricing do you mean volatility or fruad?

Re:Find a better name.

[lazarusdishwasher]

Have they? Do they include the date that the registration will be expiring if you do not pay their price so that you have a chance of grabbing it again before they renew?

The people that are squatting on slashdot.org have failed to inform me of the expiration date, So I was forced to ask bash whois slashdot.org. It seems that I have to try on 04-Oct-2006 04:00:00 UTC if I want to renew before they have a chance.

And run the risk of a competitor buying up the same name and slandering his business, you mean.

I am not sure how you can slander using a domain name, you could publish libelous information on the website and be sued accordingly. If a competitor has a domain the best they could do is sell similar products or services as long as they do not infringe on your trademarks.

IANAL

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The market sets a clearing price, which may change based on differing information, but the huge benefit to a market is that someone (usually everyone) gets the pricing information at a nominal cost and that information is exceedingly hard to get in almost all other systems.

I find it exceedingly hard to get in the so-called "free market". The clearing price is merely supply and demand. It does NOT take the following information into account:
-Cost of raw materials.
-Cost of labor.
-Amount of money in the market.
-Income of individuals that need the good.
-Fair profit.
-The needs of the individual workman.
-The needs of the individual consumer.

In other words it fails to take into account what EVERY 13th century peasant had as a right to under the guild system that it replaced- a fair wage and a just price.

Our society tolerates the other flaws of a market based system (the most obvious being asymetric rewards) because the value of the pricing information is much larger.

Value to whom? The information is controled to the point that corporations and other con artists have all the information- and thus all the power.

What does your statement mean? What is bad about expensive pricing? It almost always indicates that something required many human hours and other resources to create. By inacurate pricing do you mean volatility or fruad?

The free market is inaccurate because it encourages an abscence of information- and thus fraud. A distributist economy overcomes this not by setting prices by a central authority- like under communism or a stock market- but rather by setting prices individually based entirely on human relationships. You do the best work for people you know- and you give the best price to people you love. You should not be doing business with anybody else.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I am not sure how you can slander using a domain name, you could publish libelous information on the website and be sued accordingly

Lawsuits are settled to the highest bidder who can bribe the judge and jury.

If a competitor has a domain the best they could do is sell similar products or services as long as they do not infringe on your trademarks.

Well, see, that's the point, isn't it? The cybersquatters are infringing on trademarks to begin with. But you can't touch them because they're outside your local city government.

Re:Find a better name.

[nelsonal]

I find it exceedingly hard to get in the so-called "free market". The clearing price is merely supply and demand. It does NOT take the following information into account:
-Cost of raw materials.
-Cost of labor.
-Amount of money in the market.
-Income of individuals that need the good.
-Fair profit.
-The needs of the individual workman.
-The needs of the individual consumer.

All of those items pretty much make up supply or demand (with the exeption of the needs of the individuals could be wants.
It's very easy to get the price of most goods transacted in the free market especially in the internet era. All you have to do is watch the transactions. Newspapers print them, property sales are published at the courthouse, all manner of financial instruments are tracked daily, stores have published offer prices, and you can watch a few baskets to see what is selling at a given price (NPD does this for a large number of stores if you are really interested). You lose all of this information if you choose a different method. The guild system benefitted from the market's information flow but restricted the flow to guild members (which was what kept the guild in operation). At this point we are arguing about who should be the benificiary of the information flow not that it isn't worth having.

Value to whom? The information is controled to the point that corporations and other con artists have all the information- and thus all the power.

You keep bringing up corporations and con artists, but the information is there for everyone to use. They do use it, but plenty of consumers and honest businesspeople do, as well.

The free market is inaccurate because it encourages an abscence of information- and thus fraud. A distributist economy overcomes this not by setting prices by a central authority- like under communism or a stock market- but rather by setting prices individually based entirely on human relationships. Your restriction of information can only be maintained until you transact, at which point your transactions become information to all other market participants. A stock market is certainly not a central authority (anymore than the forum in Democracy is a central authority). It is central, but it takes input from all participants.

You do the best work for people you know- and you give the best price to people you love. You should not be doing business with anybody else.

Therin lies the hope and cruel reality of all non-market based systems. They seek to extend the social relationships to an economy, but it never works well once your unit gets much bigger than a family unit. True communism works great in a family, because in most families the members care a great deal about the whole. So price signals aren't necessary. It even extended to the kibbutz, but the only mechanism that effectivly can weigh all of the items (and others) in the list you cited using current technology is a market. Perhaps with more advanced computers we will be able to better allocate resources (and eliminate the emotional excesses and inequalities of a free market) but those are a long way off based on current macro economic models.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

All of those items pretty much make up supply or demand (with the exeption of the needs of the individuals could be wants. It's very easy to get the price of most goods transacted in the free market especially in the internet era. All you have to do is watch the transactions.

How many of these transactions are truly free? That is, how many of them were haggled over and decided on a Fair Wage and a Just Price, or did they just take the price offered without haggling?Chances are the later.

Newspapers print them, property sales are published at the courthouse, all manner of financial instruments are tracked daily, stores have published offer prices, and you can watch a few baskets to see what is selling at a given price (NPD does this for a large number of stores if you are really interested).

All of which is worthless unless the price is actually haggled over. You're only getting one side of the story with most of it- the price offered by the corporation, and if you don't want to pay their price, you're out of the market.

You lose all of this information if you choose a different method. The guild system benefitted from the market's information flow but restricted the flow to guild members (which was what kept the guild in operation). At this point we are arguing about who should be the benificiary of the information flow not that it isn't worth having.

Well, we're also arguing over the acruacy of that information flow- under the guild system for instance the information ALSO included the haggling price in a truly free marketplace- just try haggling over the price of tomatoes in a supermarket sometime.

You keep bringing up corporations and con artists, but the information is there for everyone to use. They do use it, but plenty of consumers and honest businesspeople do, as well.

I've yet to meet an honest businessperson, anywhere. And since when have consumers had the right to haggle over the price of anything they need in their day to day lives other than housing and transportation?

Your restriction of information can only be maintained until you transact, at which point your transactions become information to all other market participants.

Nope- that only releases the end result of the information, the price. It does NOT release the research that went into that price- not even to the buyer who must either accept the price or drop out of the transaction.

A stock market is certainly not a central authority (anymore than the forum in Democracy is a central authority). It is central, but it takes input from all participants.

Actually, it only takes input from half the participants- the sellers. The buyers have no real choice in the matter. In addition to that, the centrality IS the problem- any time you have a central authority of any sort you run the risk of it growing too large to truly take all opinions into account. Democracy doesn't work for more than 500 people- and neither do markets.

Therin lies the hope and cruel reality of all non-market based systems. They seek to extend the social relationships to an economy, but it never works well once your unit gets much bigger than a family unit.

So maybe we were never meant by our evolution to deal outside of our family unit. Perhaps the reason that the economy fails to work for most people is because we're simply not evolutionarily capable of working outside of the family unit.

True communism works great in a family, because in most families the members care a great deal about the whole. So price signals aren't necessary. It even extended to the kibbutz, but the only mechanism that effectivly can weigh all of the items (and others) in the list you cited using current technology is a market.

And even the market can't when it extends to more than a few hundred people.

Perhaps with more advanced computers we will be able to better allocate resources (and eliminate the

Re:Find a better name.

[egarland]

You do the best work for people you know- and you give the best price to people you love. You should not be doing business with anybody else.

Right. For example, you should have your parents or brother-in-law or someone else you know well be your financial advisors. Hell.. it works so damn well for stars, why wouldn't I. I mean... it's not like anyone's parents, or other close friends ever stole from them, right?

The sad reality is that people you know well are much more likely, to cheat, steal and rip you off than a Wall Mart cashier.

-Fair profit.
-The needs of the individual workman.

Frankly.. I don't care if you need more money. If the guy down the street will do the same job for half as much, I'll hire him. You want charity.. get in line with the rest of the beggers. You want to do business.. compete.

-Income of individuals that need the good.

Why would I pay more for the same thing than someone who made less money? That's basically the same as saying everyone should make the same amount of money, which is an economic policy with a long history of miserable failure.

As far as the rest of your points... complete garbage. The free market does an excellent job of accounting for and balancing all of them.

In other words it fails to take into account what EVERY 13th century peasant had as a right to under the guild system that it replaced- a fair wage and a just price.

And you know what else EVERY 13th centruy peasant had... they were a pesant! And they were in good company since almost everyone was a peasant too. They would look at a poor person in the US in awe of the lavish lifestyle they lead.

The free market is inaccurate because it encourages an absence of information- and thus fraud.

That's complete bs. Cooperations are more and more open books. Useful information is nearly impossible to keep hidden.

Systems that balance themselves are hard for many people to understand. The balancing point is chaotic and impossible to predict and people hate unpredictability. Lots of simple-minded hippie types like to advocate predictable calm systems but, the trade off is the system that will always be off balance.

People also rail about the unfairness when they lose their jobs. This is the hard underbelly of the system but it's necessary. It keeps people from being useless and forces them to do useful things. If it costs an American worker $40 to make a shirt and we can import them from china for $10, I'd rather buy the Chinese for $10 and give the American $30 to stay home and watch TV because at least they wouldn't being deluded into thinking they are doing something useful.

Re:Find a better name.

[nelsonal]

I'm not going to requote everything point by point:
Haggling
Free markets don't require haggling, the freedom of choice among products/brands and to choose not to buy a product (say peppers over tomatoes) is enough to have a free market. Personally I hate haggling over crap, just tell me what price you want and I'll take it or leave it, I bought my car on ebay in part to avoid the haggling over a price. On the information delivered by the market. The end result IS the valuable information, knowing that a transaction occured at a price is the information that a market provides. It's tremendously valuable, even without all the background research. Think of it this way, if you see a long line at the ice cream stand, on a warm but not hot summer day, you are likely to go investigate why. The fact that people are willing to stand in a line and "pay" a portion of their time to do so suggests that there is a very favorable transaction occuring. Even if the people who were in the line read the paper and saw the advetisement for a free banana split, you don't need to know all the research to get the same benefit. Transaction or lack of transaction carries more than enough information to make decisions on even if custom pricing is not accomplished.
It's the transaction information that I claim is well worth the admittedly large costs of a market based system.

On extending markets and economies:
Open outcry markets function exceedingly well with several thousand traders haggling over prices with surprisingly little more than 19th century technology. Using computers, millions of people participage in a host of markets constantly.
I will grant that I have a vested interest, my career would be impossible if I were unable to spread it to a much larger customer base than you are promoting, but there are millions of people like me, (probably the majority on this message board). I work in risk managment, prior to this I was at a pension fund. To offer those services to a small group would require too large a cost per person to add enough value to make a viable transaction for both parties.
I think both operating systems and economies have taken a surprising number of ideas from the other (queing behavior is one example that has gone both ways).
From where I stand it sure looks like the economy is working for a lot of people, we have far more choices than our pre market ancestors did, and the cost of many of our basic needs have fallen relative to our incomes. I've worked the earth for food and livelihood and find what I do now far more fulfilling (in non-material ways).

Re:Find a better name.

[egarland]

How many of these transactions are truly free? That is, how many of them were haggled over and decided on a Fair Wage and a Just Price, or did they just take the price offered without haggling?Chances are the later.

Haggling over each individual sale is a reasonable but inefficient and simplistic way to reach a balance. The system we have is similar but it's done in bulk and in public with records and much greater scrutiny and we call it free market competition. Manufacturers compete to create items cheaper and better than the next guy so the retailers will carry them and the retailers compete with each other to deliver the product to the consumer with the lowest mark-up possible.

Places with fair competition get fine tuned extraordinarily well. Where there is a lack of it is where things go wrong. Take, for example, the recent high fuel prices in the US. It has a partial basis in high oil costs but the real scandal there is the Exxon/Mobile record profits. The fact that the two largest and fiercest competitors in the fuel delivery markets were not just allowed to price fix with each other but were actually allowed to merge and avoid competing entirely is ridiculous.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Right. For example, you should have your parents or brother-in-law or someone else you know well be your financial advisors. Hell.. it works so damn well for stars, why wouldn't I. I mean... it's not like anyone's parents, or other close friends ever stole from them, right?

Not unless they were a dysfunctional family taken over by a broken market economy. See, that's the problem right there- economic matters DO affect personal relationships, that's why we need to start taking the personal relationships into account.

The sad reality is that people you know well are much more likely, to cheat, steal and rip you off than a Wall Mart cashier.

Just shopping at Wal-Mart means you're getting ripped off in ways you don't even suspect.

Frankly.. I don't care if you need more money.

Exactly right- the personal relationship has been destroyed to the extent that you just don't care.

If the guy down the street will do the same job for half as much, I'll hire him.

Yep, that's right- because you've forgotten how to be human and what counts.

You want charity.. get in line with the rest of the beggers. You want to do business.. compete.

And never mind how business actually destroys humanity, right? After all "It's just business" can cover any sin, can cover any felony. So what if your product kills people, it's just business, right?

Why would I pay more for the same thing than someone who made less money? That's basically the same as saying everyone should make the same amount of money, which is an economic policy with a long history of miserable failure.

Depends on what you consider to be failure- I consider any system where everybody is able to eat a success.

As far as the rest of your points... complete garbage. The free market does an excellent job of accounting for and balancing all of them.

Really? You've just said that you don't care about some of the most important of them, that all you care about is price. Seems to me you just admitted that the free market ignores all of them- it's just business after all.

And you know what else EVERY 13th centruy peasant had... they were a pesant!

And as a peasant, they were more holy, more spiritual, than any "businessman" today.

And they were in good company since almost everyone was a peasant too. They would look at a poor person in the US in awe of the lavish lifestyle they lead.

Yes, they would- if they had ever met one! One is only poor if one knows that there are rich people elsewhere. Good old Cain Killing Abel again.

That's complete bs. Cooperations are more and more open books. Useful information is nearly impossible to keep hidden.

Is that why computer security is a growing field, why everybody seems interested in closed networks and encryption?

Systems that balance themselves are hard for many people to understand. The balancing point is chaotic and impossible to predict and people hate unpredictability. Lots of simple-minded hippie types like to advocate predictable calm systems but, the trade off is the system that will always be off balance.

If the system feeds all of the people all of the time, then who cares if it is off balance? The real question is the individual human experience, not the group and certainly not a small minority of con artists.

People also rail about the unfairness when they lose their jobs. This is the hard underbelly of the system but it's necessary. It keeps people from being useless and forces them to do useful things. If it costs an American worker $40 to make a shirt and we can import them from china for $10, I'd rather buy the Chinese for $10 and give the American $30 to stay home and watch TV because at least they wouldn't being deluded into thinking they are doing something useful.

Except for- you don't. You buy the Chinese for $10 and leave your neighbor with nothing, until he breaks into your house to steal the $30, because you just don't care, as you said above. The end result of that "self balancing" system will be that the people with the guns will own everything.

Re:Find a better name.

[lazarusdishwasher]

Well, see, that's the point, isn't it? The cybersquatters are infringing on trademarks to begin with. But you can't touch them because they're outside your local city government.

The question states that the buissness has not started yet, which would mean there is no trademark to infringe upon. I would assume that any name that the squatters have would fall under the catagory of discriptive marks if I understand this definition properly, which would take years to aquire the trademark. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/dom ain/tm.htm

Assuming that a trademark qualifies for protection, rights to a trademark can be acquired in one of two ways: (1) by being the first to use the mark in commerce; or (2) by being the first to register the mark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("PTO"). 15 U.S.C. 1127(a). Remember, however, that descriptive marks qualify for protection (and can be registered) only after they have acquired secondary meaning. Thus, for descriptive marks, there may be a period after the initial use of the mark in commerce and before it acquires secondary meaning, during which it is not entitled to trademark protection. Once it has achieved secondary meaning, trademark protection kicks in.

I also disagree that lawsuits are won by the fact that the judge and jury are bribed. There is some corruption in the system, but I would say that a larger amount are one because the lawyers of bigger companies are on retainer. If the law firms are being paid a retainer fee then they know eventually they will need to go to court, so they probably can do some of the research while waiting for the case they will have to go fight. Bigger companies can probably afford a better lawyer. If I was buying a steak dinner for my hypothetical girlfriend (we are still on slashdot) which would give me a better meal Waffle House or a Steak House? Which would cost more?

Re:Find a better name.

[nelsonal]

You would probably be quite interested to learn more about the Japanese economic system. Melon may cost ~JPY 2000 each, but by golly they are really nice and the farmer makes a good living. It's market based but more social (just as they are more concerned as a culture with the group than the individual), their distribution of benefits is unlike both the US winner takes all (or most) and Europe's the government spreads it to everyone "fairly".
I consider a system where all able bodied individuals have the opportunity to provide for themselves and privately take care of all those unable to work (the orphan, widow and alien, etc) to be the best system. I tire of our system's coddling of those who should have been saving when they work but do not.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

To me, tranactional information is most certainly NOT enough to give justice or dignity to every human being. A transaction merely being advantageous isn't enough- price gouging is advantageous for both sides because there is no other way to accomplish the task in a captive market. That isn't enough to say that we have a free market- it says NOTHING about freedom, only whether or not the transaction is advantageous. Choice not to buy is not enough- you must *also* have the choice to buy from a different vendor for less, and get the exact same product.

Having said that- yes, my chosen career often requires a large consumer base as well. That doesn't matter to me. The benefits of having a society that cares for it's neighbors, that ties people's fates together in such a way that they are willing to do transactions that are not neccessarily materially advantageous merely to help one another out- is worth more than being able to earn a large amount of money, have more cars than I need, and use more energy in a day than 40 Kalahari tribesmen. The real keyword is security- the market will never be able to offer anybody security. Only with security can come freedom- freedom from need, freedom to want.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The system we have is similar but it's done in bulk and in public with records and much greater scrutiny and we call it free market competition.

And because it's done in bulk, it will never achieve justice or mercy, but only averages.

Places with fair competition get fine tuned extraordinarily well. Where there is a lack of it is where things go wrong. Take, for example, the recent high fuel prices in the US. It has a partial basis in high oil costs but the real scandal there is the Exxon/Mobile record profits. The fact that the two largest and fiercest competitors in the fuel delivery markets were not just allowed to price fix with each other but were actually allowed to merge and avoid competing entirely is ridiculous.

True- now think about what would happen if they were simply not allowed to merge at all- if each oil well, each refinery, each gas station had to be owned separately and serve only it's community? Competition is not neccessarily a good thing in small amounts- but it becomes a great thing in large amounts.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

You would probably be quite interested to learn more about the Japanese economic system. Melon may cost ~JPY 2000 each, but by golly they are really nice and the farmer makes a good living. It's market based but more social (just as they are more concerned as a culture with the group than the individual), their distribution of benefits is unlike both the US winner takes all (or most) and Europe's the government spreads it to everyone "fairly".

It's actually similar to my own Kwakiutal roots- which is unsurprising because the tribes both are based on are Pacific Rim tribes. (In some ways, I still see this as a military occupation more than a Republic- it took a lot of military might to take and keep the Oregon Territory). As a Catholic, I'm also very interested in Distributism as put forth by Pope Leo XXIII and Dorthy Day and GK Chesterton- Europe's current "fair" government has a tendency to not grant enough dignity for them (or as you put it below- the right to work and feed those who you care about who can't).

I consider a system where all able bodied individuals have the opportunity to provide for themselves and privately take care of all those unable to work (the orphan, widow and alien, etc) to be the best system. I tire of our system's coddling of those who should have been saving when they work but do not.

The last would not be neccessary if the system didn't also coddle those who do not work and live off of the work of others (the investor class).

Re:Find a better name.

[nelsonal]

Now I'm confused, how does haggling give dignity to anyone in the process? If my abilty to get the best price (or a fair price) depends on my ability to negotiate, I don't ever want to live in that society. I'm not sure how you can expect to buy say a bushel of wheat for a different price from two vendors, all the free market requires is that you can not buy wheat, that several vendors sell it (perhaps two grades or brands), and that you can substitute barley or corn.
Markets can transact in security (I'm thinking of several ways to do it now), but by design they cannot be security. Human nature cannot offer you security no matter how it's organized. In that sense, I don't disagree with you, in concept, but perhaps in execution. Markets will never provide the security you seek, because humanity can not. We're selfish creatures (except in very small groups, and even then our selfishness sometimes rears its head). I choose a market based system because they are the that works well knowing that all the other actors are flawed and selfish, rather than a system that depends on them not being selfish. I wish they weren't but barring the Mellinial reign I don't think human society will find that on it's own.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I also disagree that lawsuits are won by the fact that the judge and jury are bribed. There is some corruption in the system, but I would say that a larger amount are one because the lawyers of bigger companies are on retainer. If the law firms are being paid a retainer fee then they know eventually they will need to go to court, so they probably can do some of the research while waiting for the case they will have to go fight. Bigger companies can probably afford a better lawyer.

Anything that gives one party an advantage over another is a travesty of justice- and makes the system useless. Bribery vs good lawyers means nothing in this context; the end result is the same. Government of, by, and for the corporations- where being a citizen is absolutely worthless.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Now I'm confused, how does haggling give dignity to anyone in the process?

It makes the other person a *person*, instead of just a consumer or a worker or a businessman. The extended conversation of the haggling means that you see your "opponent" as a human being, instead of merely a faceless number.

If my abilty to get the best price (or a fair price) depends on my ability to negotiate, I don't ever want to live in that society.

I'd probably be at a bit of a disadvantage also- being autistic. But that would come back to doing business with people I KNOW, vs people I don't.

I'm not sure how you can expect to buy say a bushel of wheat for a different price from two vendors, all the free market requires is that you can not buy wheat, that several vendors sell it (perhaps two grades or brands), and that you can substitute barley or corn.

But with certain things you can't- which goes back to my other argument on rarity of the item. How easily can you suddenly go from gasoline to biodiesel? Not very easily, though both are fuels that do exactly the same job. That's what I mean by a captive market, rather than a free one. Price gouging exists in captive markets simply because it CAN. Under a truly free market, price gouging will never exist- because you can get the exact same product from a different vendor and/or haggle for a different price.

Markets can transact in security (I'm thinking of several ways to do it now), but by design they cannot be security. Human nature cannot offer you security no matter how it's organized.

Incorrect- for the first several thousand years on this planet we granted every human being some measure of security. All it takes to grant people security is local production to the consumer, and ownership of one's own means of production. Security does NOT require price fixing- in fact, price fixing is against human security. See Daniel Quinn's writings for more information on how tribal societies create security.

I choose a market based system because they are the that works well knowing that all the other actors are flawed and selfish, rather than a system that depends on them not being selfish. I wish they weren't but barring the Mellinial reign I don't think human society will find that on it's own.

And yet, we have, in the past- sometimes for tens of thousands of years at a whack. We expect such security because we evolved to expect it. We're called to not be selfish- we evolved to form small societies that do work. Expecting larger societies to work is the mistake; and a rather new one at that, at least in geological time scales.

Re:Find a better name.

[lazarusdishwasher]

Anything that gives one party an advantage over another is a travesty of justice- and makes the system useless. Bribery vs good lawyers means nothing in this context; the end result is the same. Government of, by, and for the corporations- where being a citizen is absolutely worthless.

I would not call it a travesty of justice, if you are blatantly wrong you will lose regardless of the money you are paying lawyers to represent you, Martha Stewart, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling are recent examples of people who could probably hire any attorney they want but they still managed to get convicted.

The reason that corporations have better representation is because they are willing to be selective. How many skilled jobs are listed in the classified section require no experiance. The more you are willing to pay the more selective you can be. Another advantage to retaining lawyers is the fact that they will help you avoid making the blatant mistakes that will get you convicted, the skill of the attorney matters more in the grey cases and not the black and white ones.

Corporations also survive because people buy what they sell, the easy way to take down a corporation is to stop the money from flowing in. If being a corporation gives you power over the useless citizen start a corporation. Once it takes off you will not have to worry about being a citizen anymore. Nobody is forced to be a worthless citizen because the money is out there to start a buisness with if you fill out the paperwork. what is required to succed is the proper skills to play in the market.

Corporations and People that make money rise to the top, while Corporations and People that lose money sink to the bottom. There are two ways to make money luck and skill. Those that rely on luck make the money fast and lose money fast, those that have skill make money slow and lose money slow. If you take the money from everybody and redistribute it equally my guess would be those at the bottom will return to the bottom and those at the top will return to the top.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I would not call it a travesty of justice, if you are blatantly wrong you will lose regardless of the money you are paying lawyers to represent you, Martha Stewart, Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling are recent examples of people who could probably hire any attorney they want but they still managed to get convicted.

Ken Lay actually claimed on the bench that the millions he stole were gone long before he came to trial- which makes me wonder what idiot ever hired him as CEO to begin with if he can burn through $400 million in 5 years.

For every one who gets caught, 10 go free.

The reason that corporations have better representation is because they are willing to be selective. How many skilled jobs are listed in the classified section require no experiance. The more you are willing to pay the more selective you can be. Another advantage to retaining lawyers is the fact that they will help you avoid making the blatant mistakes that will get you convicted, the skill of the attorney matters more in the grey cases and not the black and white ones.

I'm one of those who believes that in the end, all cases are black and white. Either you harmed your neighbor or you didn't.

Corporations also survive because people buy what they sell, the easy way to take down a corporation is to stop the money from flowing in. If being a corporation gives you power over the useless citizen start a corporation. Once it takes off you will not have to worry about being a citizen anymore. Nobody is forced to be a worthless citizen because the money is out there to start a buisness with if you fill out the paperwork. what is required to succed is the proper skills to play in the market.

Yeah, right, people will just give you money for filling out paperwork- sounds like quite the scam to me.

Corporations and People that make money rise to the top, while Corporations and People that lose money sink to the bottom. There are two ways to make money luck and skill. Those that rely on luck make the money fast and lose money fast, those that have skill make money slow and lose money slow. If you take the money from everybody and redistribute it equally my guess would be those at the bottom will return to the bottom and those at the top will return to the top.

Luck and skill- code words for the ability to lie. I've never met an honest businessman yet. I rather doubt I ever will.

Re:Find a better name.

[egarland]

If the system feeds all of the people all of the time, then who cares if it is off balance?

Who cares? Everyone. Because when it's off balance everyone loses, and not a little. Look at China for a good example. They are currently trying to balance both a "fair" centrally planned economy and a capitalist one. People living under the "fair" system are misterable peasants powerless against those who use brutal oppressive tactics against them. The ones in the harsh capitalist system are horribly exploited by corperations and are much happier for it. They live wildly better lives and have much more freedom and oportunity.

We are all victoms of the horrible unstoppable capitalist machine.. because we want to be. It makes our lives better. You won't convince me that making my life worse is worth it so I can get back to the roots of what it means to be human. The roots of humanity are plagued with famine, brutality, powerlessness and back breaking toil. My life is full of art and history and happiness and effortless productivity. I may not be as holy or spiritual as I would have been if I was facing death and starvation every day.. but that's a tradeoff I'm rather happy to make.

The real question is the individual human experience, not the group and certainly not a small minority of con artists.

An economic system that requires people to concider the needs of others over the needs of themselves is doomed. "A small minority of con artists" is a silly way of characterizing what is an obvious problem: when people are faced with the decision of balancing their needs with the needs of others, they typically give a higher priority to their own. The capitalist system works with this ensuring that to meet your own needs you have to meet the needs of others. A system that relies on this not being the case is doomed to failure.

You point out that economic matters affect personal relationships and this needs to be taken into account and yet are dismissive of the desire to not expose yourself to people who might abuse a business relationship with you. That has a horrible affect on personal relationships that we fortunately don't experience often in modern society.

One is only poor if one knows that there are rich people elsewhere.

That's relativism taken to it's most ludicrous extreme. Only someone who lives such a blessed life as to never have seen real hardship could make such a heartless argument. If someone is starving, downtrodden and powerless to do anything about it do you really think they're just as well off as long as everyone else is too? Unable to afford necessary medical treatments, unable to stop people from abusing them, destroying or even taking their lives at will. Being a peasant wasn't happy, wasn't fair, wasn't just as good as being poor today.

Is that why computer security is a growing field, why everybody seems interested in closed networks and encryption?

Yup. That's precicely why.

Except for- you don't. You buy the Chinese for $10 and leave your neighbor with nothing, until he breaks into your house to steal the $30, because you just don't care, as you said above. The end result of that "self balancing" system will be that the people with the guns will own everything.

Except for- he doesn't. Instead he finds a job that's useful instead of useless makes good money and is happy and productive. The temporary pain of adjusting to reality goes away and everyone is better off.

You seem to be very nostalgic for the days of old when life was simple. The problem is it simply sucked for almost everyone. A very few enjoyed an existance which was slightly less squalid but even they lived pretty awefully. This, even with the fact that there were many fewer people with many more natural resources to support them. Watch Les Mis sometime if you want a reminder about how much it sucked.

Re:Find a better name.

[egarland]

True- now think about what would happen if they were simply not allowed to merge at all- if each oil well, each refinery, each gas station had to be owned separately and serve only it's community? Competition is not neccessarily a good thing in small amounts- but it becomes a great thing in large amounts.

Incorrect. Economies of scale help efficiency dramatically. By your rationale small businesses would be cheaper than WalMart. They aren't.

That's the beauty of the free market economy. It steamrolls ineficient systems in favor of efficient ones, but not entirely sucking profitability out of things. You don't have to charge as little as possible, just less than a competitor could charge and trive and take your business away. The Exxon/Mobile thing will get sorted out.. because the profit margins have increased competitors will gain the ability to expand and compete and take their business away. In the short term, they will make huge money but in the long term, the company will lose ground and shrink.

There are rules that you need to keep things in balance in a free market economy. One of them is you can't have anti-competitive behavior. Buying your competition is an example of that anti-competitive behavior. Sometimes, merging is beneficial to economics though and the FTC is put in place to decide which mergers are which. The FTC made a huge mistake when they allowed Exxon/Mobile to happen, and it will hopefully be a lesson well remembered.

Re:Find a better name.

[NameCritic]

The term ''cybersquatting'' is sometimes wrongly used to refer to the sale or purchase of generic domain names. Due to the shortage of descriptive and generic available domain names, covetous entities often try to exploit the term Cybersquatting to suit their desired ends.

Re:Find a better name.

[nelsonal]

I'll keep thinking about, but am not sure that just localizing the means of production leads to security. This has been quite facinating, thanks. There is an old papers which I think you would enjoy, The Nature of the Firm by Ronald Coase--it's a pdf here (probably the most inspired economist I know of, he was, of course, smart enough to never admit to being one). He looks at the firm in a similar way as your view on societal units.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Who cares? Everyone. Because when it's off balance everyone loses, and not a little. Look at China for a good example. They are currently trying to balance both a "fair" centrally planned economy and a capitalist one. People living under the "fair" system are misterable peasants powerless against those who use brutal oppressive tactics against them. The ones in the harsh capitalist system are horribly exploited by corperations and are much happier for it. They live wildly better lives and have much more freedom and oportunity.

I'd point out that China is as much of a con artistry as the stock market is- both promise much but deliver little. China's central planning is designed to do one thing- move people off of farms and into factories, where they can be exploited more efficiently, just like the corporations and the stock market.

We are all victoms of the horrible unstoppable capitalist machine.. because we want to be. It makes our lives better. You won't convince me that making my life worse is worth it so I can get back to the roots of what it means to be human.

It hasn't made my life better- I'm working more hours than every generation before me just to keep my head above water. How is that "better"?

The roots of humanity are plagued with famine, brutality, powerlessness and back breaking toil. My life is full of art and history and happiness and effortless productivity. I may not be as holy or spiritual as I would have been if I was facing death and starvation every day.. but that's a tradeoff I'm rather happy to make.

My life isn't full of art and history and happiness and effortless productivity- it's full of 56 hour weeks just to keep my family in a house that is worth about 10x what it sold for when it was built in 1968. That's your "progress".

An economic system that requires people to concider the needs of others over the needs of themselves is doomed.

Only because greed is not sufficiently punished.

"A small minority of con artists" is a silly way of characterizing what is an obvious problem: when people are faced with the decision of balancing their needs with the needs of others, they typically give a higher priority to their own.

Families don't- and I'm sorry you live in such a spiritual vaccum that you can't understand that.

The capitalist system works with this ensuring that to meet your own needs you have to meet the needs of others.

No it doesn't- it gives the greatest rewards to those who take away from others, who lie, cheat, and steal.

You point out that economic matters affect personal relationships and this needs to be taken into account and yet are dismissive of the desire to not expose yourself to people who might abuse a business relationship with you. That has a horrible affect on personal relationships that we fortunately don't experience often in modern society.

How am I dismissive of that desire? Rather, I say it should be a right of every individual and community to exclude others! I'm very much for the idea of a shipping tax- where every cargo container is taxed at the destination for how far it had to come to get to that destination, thus encouraging business relationships that are physically close over those that are anonymous and long distance.

That's relativism taken to it's most ludicrous extreme. Only someone who lives such a blessed life as to never have seen real hardship could make such a heartless argument. If someone is starving, downtrodden and powerless to do anything about it do you really think they're just as well off as long as everyone else is too?

Primitive people were NEVER starving, downtrodden, or powerless. It's only when governments and economies started exerting power over larger areas than the single tribe that starvation, political oppression, and powerlessness came into being. The primitive tribe moves when famine comes- the totalitarian agriculturalist begs for hel

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Incorrect. Economies of scale help efficiency dramatically.

Economies of scale mean nothing when it comes to providing the most work for the most people possible.

By your rationale small businesses would be cheaper than WalMart.

They are when you take the full cost of business on an entire community into account. For each $1 you spend at a small local business- that dollar moves an average of 8 times through the local community. For each $1 you spend at Wal-Mart, $.08 stays in your local community. When it comes to providing your neighbors with jobs, economies of scale don't matter one whit- it's about 100x more expensive to shop at Wal-Mart than it is at your local Mom&Pop store in the long run.

That's the beauty of the free market economy. It steamrolls ineficient systems in favor of efficient ones, but not entirely sucking profitability out of things. You don't have to charge as little as possible, just less than a competitor could charge and trive and take your business away. The Exxon/Mobile thing will get sorted out.. because the profit margins have increased competitors will gain the ability to expand and compete and take their business away. In the short term, they will make huge money but in the long term, the company will lose ground and shrink.

Not likely- the money they make will just enable them to buy out their competitors instead of actually competing.

There are rules that you need to keep things in balance in a free market economy. One of them is you can't have anti-competitive behavior. Buying your competition is an example of that anti-competitive behavior. Sometimes, merging is beneficial to economics though and the FTC is put in place to decide which mergers are which. The FTC made a huge mistake when they allowed Exxon/Mobile to happen, and it will hopefully be a lesson well remembered.

The Bush Administration is quickly dismantling the FTC- and the SEC. They're anti-regulation. No-holds barred free markets is what they want. The problem with that is that it is anti-comeptitive- and there isn't anything to stop them because the Democrats are just as corrupt, just as bribed by big money, and so are the courts.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Close. The main difference being that the man in charge of the firm is interested only in profit- where the tribal chief, patriarch of the family (or matriarch in some societies) recognizes a primary duty not to self or to mindless profit- but to the members of his tribe/family. Thus a firm will sacrifice jobs if that is what is required to be profitable- but a tribe will never sacrifice members even if it means the membership as a whole is less wealthy.

The reason I think is anonymity- the workers are just resources to the firm owner, no different from a computer or a robot. The tribe members in a family or tribe are PEOPLE- the chief/patriarch/matriarch cares about their feelings and well being. That's a huge step backwards- and I'm not at all sure it was worth it.

Re:Find a better name.

[egarland]

Economies of scale mean nothing when it comes to providing the most work for the most people possible.

That's a horrible goal. I don't want to have to work more, I want to work less and get more for it. So far, I'm getting what I want and so are most of the people in the US.

My life isn't full of art and history and happiness and effortless productivity- it's full of 56 hour weeks just to keep my family in a house that is worth about 10x what it sold for when it was built in 1968. That's your "progress".

Inflated house prices are usually due to crappy restrictive local policies that aim to reign in the normal flow of housing expansion which drives prices up. That makes things better for all the existing home owners and dramatically worse for anyone looking to buy a house.

Unless you boycot walmart, however, your purchasing power has probably gone up from what it would have been many years ago and you probably live better.

They are when you take the full cost of business on an entire community into account. For each $1 you spend at a small local business- that dollar moves an average of 8 times through the local community. For each $1 you spend at Wal-Mart, $.08 stays in your local community. When it comes to providing your neighbors with jobs, economies of scale don't matter one whit- it's about 100x more expensive to shop at Wal-Mart than it is at your local Mom&Pop store in the long run.

That's untrue. If I shop at my local mom and pop store they buy the same crappy manufactured goods they just spend more time and effort selling it to me. Frankly.. I don't want to pay 100 shopkeepers 30% markup so they can put their kids through college while mine starve. I'd rather pay 10 walmart people minimum wage and push people who want to make good money into productive useful jobs instead of pushy retail sails.

The free market is very good at making something as expensive to buy as it is to produce. I know you don't believe that but you are wrong.

Not likely- the money they make will just enable them to buy out their competitors instead of actually competing.

I highly doubt, after all the recent press coverage, whether anyone will let Exxon/Mobile buy anything remotely resembling a competitor for a while.

and there isn't anything to stop them because the Democrats are just as corrupt, just as bribed by big money, and so are the courts.

The courts aren't corrupt they have just done some silly things lately and are floundering in a lack of reasonable leadership.

You are quite right about politicians being corrupt, and I see very little reasonable talk about the right way to solve it. Politicians are currently horribly starved for money. Anyone with any little bit of money can buy them off easily. This is due to a very democratic sounding ruling from the supreme court with seriously un-democratic repercussions. They ruled that people can only donate up to $1,000 to politicians turning fund raising into a form of election, which sounds healthy until you realize that it's an election that only rich people can participate in and that you now can't win an office without first winning the rich people contribution vote. This desperately needs to be overturned. We traded the appearance of corruption from big contributions, for real hard core systematic corruption and a fundamental undermining of the democratic system. Politicians raise money from companies while they preside over bills that regulate them, a practice that is obviously corrupt and that most politicians wouldn't touch with a 10 foot poll except its now the only way to get enough money to stay in office. Worse, most of the solutions I hear proposed would simply further empoverish politians increasing their corruptibility even more.

There are big problems with politics today, everyone seems to know it but they don't know what it is. The supreme court took a functioning system and detroyed it's balance in an attempt to make it more fair

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

That's a horrible goal. I don't want to have to work more, I want to work less and get more for it.

You've been working more and getting less in return for it, on average, for 40 years now. And worse yet, you have less of a chance (as a percentage of the total population) of being able to work at all now than ever before in the history of the country.

So far, I'm getting what I want and so are most of the people in the US.

Actually, you probably aren't even getting that- wages are down in relation to inflation and have been for 40 years now.

Inflated house prices are usually due to crappy restrictive local policies that aim to reign in the normal flow of housing expansion which drives prices up. That makes things better for all the existing home owners and dramatically worse for anyone looking to buy a house.

And who passes such laws? Centralized governments who know NOTHING about local environment or local conditions. Yet another way centralization is the problem.

Unless you boycot walmart, however, your purchasing power has probably gone up from what it would have been many years ago and you probably live better.

Not according to that leading economic indicator, the Cost of Living Equation. You know, the one that gives us the idea of inflation? Buying power for just about anybody drawing a paycheck has not kept up with inflation over the past 40 years. However, if you inherited all your wealth and are living off of dividends, it's a different story. Oh yeah, and Wal*Mart- you really need to compare their prices to the Mom&Pop stores sometime, if there are any left. Interesting thing about Wal*Mart's pricing scheme- it goes down, then goes back up as local competitors go out of business.

That's untrue. If I shop at my local mom and pop store they buy the same crappy manufactured goods they just spend more time and effort selling it to me. Frankly.. I don't want to pay 100 shopkeepers 30% markup so they can put their kids through college while mine starve.

Actually, they're NOT the same crappy manufactured goods if you shop at the right places- they're American made pride, not Chinese crap. And in addition to that- your kids will starve anyway if you shop at Wal*Mart because nobody will be left to hire them when they drop out of high school. Add to that the fact that 92 cents of every dollar you spend at Wal*Mart goes to support the communists in Bejing and Bentonville, that makes you a TRAITOR.

I'd rather pay 10 walmart people minimum wage and push people who want to make good money into productive useful jobs instead of pushy retail sails.

Too bad under the Wal*Mart model there won't be any productive jobs left- just work for the Chinese Labor Gulags.

The free market is very good at making something as expensive to buy as it is to produce. I know you don't believe that but you are wrong.

Where did I say that the free market did any less? I said that the pricing of the free market supports PROFITEERING- you can't make a profit if you're selling something for less than it's produced for.

I highly doubt, after all the recent press coverage, whether anyone will let Exxon/Mobile buy anything remotely resembling a competitor for a while.

The press doesn't matter- this is no longer a democracy. What matters is the bribes Exxon/Mobile pays in the form of campaign contributions, not what some pansy voter thinks when choosing between the Democrat, who took money from Exxon/Mobile, and the Republican, who took money from Exxon/Mobile.

The courts aren't corrupt they have just done some silly things lately and are floundering in a lack of reasonable leadership.

Boy, you really are naive- the courts have been purchased, lock stock and barrel, by the corporations since 1876.

You are quite right about politicians being corrupt, and I see very little reasonable talk about the right way to solve i

Re:Find a better name.

[egarland]

You've been working more and getting less in return for it, on average, for 40 years now.

No way. The average family has cell phones and cable and air conditioning and 2 reliable cars (not that shit Detroit tried to push on us 20 and 30 years ago) and spend tons of money keeping ourselves healthy (whereas before we just died). While employment may be down around you, it's doing fine most places. Life isn't perfect, far from it, but it's better than it used to be.

One of the most powerful influences on the buying power of the average American is the giant efficient chain stores like Wal*Mart driving the prices down lower than they ever have been.

You argue that the standard of living in the US is dropping.. that just isn't true. That may be true for you personally, but that might just be because you are a militant nut and nobody wants to hire you for a good job. :)

And who passes such laws? Centralized governments...

Incorrect. Most of these laws come from town/city zoning boards. Thats as local as government gets. They are influenced by overall trends and ideas like the "suburban sprawl" misinformation you keep hearing people spew but the decisions are purely local.

Actually, they're NOT the same crappy manufactured goods if you shop at the right places- they're American made pride, not Chinese crap.

Oh please! Nearly every mom and pop store will have plenty of chinese made stuff in it and Wal*Mart has plenty of US made stuff in it.

In the end, and I doubt it will take too long, China will rise from the backwords third world nation it has been into a modern economic superpower. Quality will rise, it's people will demand high wages and we will be back on a more or less level playing field like we are with Japan.

In the meantime, we are having them do all the work and we're keeping most of the money and paying US people to mangage and engineer and market the products, instead of being factory workers. We win on both ends, more cheaper products and more better jobs.

Oh yeah, and Wal*Mart- you really need to compare their prices to the Mom&Pop stores sometime

I do. All the time. Wal*Mart is cheaper. Sometimes a lot cheaper. Like 1/10th the price. Some US company wants to sell me an 16 foot inflatable plastc pool for $3,000. It's well made, superior in every way to Wal*Mart's, but Wal*Mart sells a 16' pool for $279. The US company and the Mom&Pop store (which is right across the street from Wal*Mart by the way) can take their $3k price tag and shove it. I don't want a pool that bad, I wouldn't buy it, I wouldn't have one. I'd go without. The Wal*Mart one I'd buy. Those aren't the only things I've found at 1/10th the price either. We live in a world where it's unimaginable that people would gouge us for things if it werent for competition, but we get just the slightest touch of what it would be like and it crushes us as with the recent gas price hikes. Imagine going to the store and not paying $100 for groceries but $500. And you beg and plead and haggle with the store owner so they cut you a break and let you leave for $400. That's not better.

I said that the pricing of the free market supports PROFITEERING- you can't make a profit if you're selling something for less than it's produced for.

And in a free market you can't sell it for much more either or someone will undercut you and steal your business. There are pockets for profiteering but when the playing field is level, they must remain small or you will get your customers stolen.

The press doesn't matter- this is no longer a democracy.

Incorrect. While there are plenty of tricks and cheats people can use to influence governmnet, at the end of the day it's elections that decide who represent us. The power still lies with the people, they just don't know how to use that power to fix whats wrong.

I'm talking about it, and I have a solution. But it's not a pretty one.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

No way. The average family has cell phones and cable and air conditioning and 2 reliable cars (not that shit Detroit tried to push on us 20 and 30 years ago) and spend tons of money keeping ourselves healthy (whereas before we just died). While employment may be down around you, it's doing fine most places. Life isn't perfect, far from it, but it's better than it used to be.

Then why are there more renters now than homeowners? Why is home ownership down since 1950? Why, in the past 5 years, have wages risen .07% on average, but inflation 3%? Yes, we've got a few technological toys- but it's all financed on several trillion dollars of governmental, trade, and consumer debt.

One of the most powerful influences on the buying power of the average American is the giant efficient chain stores like Wal*Mart driving the prices down lower than they ever have been.

Wrong- the most powerfull influence on the buying power of the average American is the willingness of banks to hand out credit cards at 37% Annual Interest Rates.

You argue that the standard of living in the US is dropping.. that just isn't true. That may be true for you personally, but that might just be because you are a militant nut and nobody wants to hire you for a good job. :)

Just got hired yesterday- for a government job. I've given up on private industry which no longer seems competent for the place they've been given in the social structure.

Incorrect. Most of these laws come from town/city zoning boards. Thats as local as government gets. They are influenced by overall trends and ideas like the "suburban sprawl" misinformation you keep hearing people spew but the decisions are purely local.

I've seen the farmland disappear- and btw, large metro areas are ALSO centralized government. You have to go back to the tribes to find truly decentralized government.

Oh please! Nearly every mom and pop store will have plenty of chinese made stuff in it and Wal*Mart has plenty of US made stuff in it.

Not if you go directly to the local craftsmen it isn't. I buy American made, not Chinese crap. And last time I was in a Wal*Mart, I took a good look at the shelves, and couldn't find ONE US made item in any department other than food. And even then, things like Vlassic Pickles and good ole' Kerry Ketchup were coming from MEXICO. There are closed factories all over the United States due to Wal*Mart and Target and stores of their ilk.

I do. All the time. Wal*Mart is cheaper. Sometimes a lot cheaper. Like 1/10th the price. Some US company wants to sell me an 16 foot inflatable plastc pool for $3,000. It's well made, superior in every way to Wal*Mart's, but Wal*Mart sells a 16' pool for $279. The US company and the Mom&Pop store (which is right across the street from Wal*Mart by the way) can take their $3k price tag and shove it. I don't want a pool that bad, I wouldn't buy it, I wouldn't have one. I'd go without. The Wal*Mart one I'd buy. Those aren't the only things I've found at 1/10th the price either. We live in a world where it's unimaginable that people would gouge us for things if it werent for competition, but we get just the slightest touch of what it would be like and it crushes us as with the recent gas price hikes. Imagine going to the store and not paying $100 for groceries but $500. And you beg and plead and haggle with the store owner so they cut you a break and let you leave for $400. That's not better.

1/10th the price, 1/10th the quality. And I buy all of my groceries from the FARMERS, not from a store which charges a markup.

And in a free market you can't sell it for much more either or someone will undercut you and steal your business. There are pockets for profiteering but when the playing field is level, they must remain small or you will get your customers stolen.

Or you simply use your profits elsewhere in the country to undercut prices until

Re:Find a better name.

[egarland]

The elections are all faked- there hasn't been an honest election in the United States in 120 years.

Where do you get that?

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Where do you get that?

Look at the laws that have come out since then- except on a few superficial items, the money and the laws flow a single direction. Vote for the Republican, you're voting for the rich elitest business interest. Vote for the Democrat you're voting for the rich elitest business interest. Vote for the Libertarian and you're voting for the rich elitest business interest. Vote for the Green and you're voting for a guy who denies that he's getting money from the rich elitest business interest, until somebody brings out his campaign contributer's list, and finds only rich business people on it becase hippies have no money.

And there are no other viable parties.

It's all a show, a fake, no different than a cartoon on TV.

Re:Find a better name.

[egarland]

you're voting for the rich elitest business interest...

Everyone who donates to campaigns are rich. The idea that this could be different is silly. You won't be donating to candidates unless you have nothing better to do with the money and that only happens when you are pretty well off.

However, the idea that receiving money from wealthy people makes you thier puppet is silly. People are individuals who in general do things that they feel are in their best instrest. If they want to get elected again they will do things that will get them more votes.

The problem is that challengers are so empoverished that unless you killed a hooker or something they won't have the money to explain to voters that you are corrupt and shouldn't be voted for. The $1000 limit ensures that.

The way to fix it is to create a system where politicians lose more votes for getting paid to support bad legislation than they win.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Everyone who donates to campaigns are rich. The idea that this could be different is silly. You won't be donating to candidates unless you have nothing better to do with the money and that only happens when you are pretty well off.

If we had Sound Money, this would be different. It would also be different if we had a true democracy and the rich had nothing to gain from bribing politicians. Give the budgeting capaibility back to the people- take away the central government and central bank, and you'll solve that problem.

However, the idea that receiving money from wealthy people makes you thier puppet is silly. People are individuals who in general do things that they feel are in their best instrest. If they want to get elected again they will do things that will get them more votes.

Only fake, superficial things. And since spending money on the campaign is the #1 way to get elected- doing what your contributers want you to do is the easiest way to get re-elected. And who ever said people were individuals? Human beings are social- they sucumb to peer pressure.

The problem is that challengers are so empoverished that unless you killed a hooker or something they won't have the money to explain to voters that you are corrupt and shouldn't be voted for. The $1000 limit ensures that.

Having a centralized government that the rich can go to for one-stop shopping ensures that- remove the power of the central government, and they'll have to bribe 180 million voters instead, and then we'll have TRUE democracy.

The way to fix it is to create a system where politicians lose more votes for getting paid to support bad legislation than they win.

Or simply take away their right to legislate at all- run everything through a national referendum instead.

Re:Find a better name.

[egarland]

If we had Sound Money, this would be different.

The problem isn't the absence of the gold standard. The problem is allowing deficit spending. That should be banned.

I would like to see a constitutional amendment forcing a general population vote to approve any deficit spending with a 4 year time limit on that approval. I'd also like to see a hard limit on spending of 30% of the income in the entire population. Let them distribute the taxes however they like but don't let them exceed that number without the vote.

It would also be different if we had a true democracy and the rich had nothing to gain from bribing politicians.

Public opinion is even easier to sway than politicians. Remember, the money that is corrupting things isn't for the politicians personally, it's simply to convince the public that they should vote for them instead of kicking them out of office. I remember a great example of this somewhere, Australia I think, where DeBeers actually convinced the general public to allow DeBeers to have a monopoly on all the country's diamonds instead of selling them on the open market.

The problem with a true democracy is that people don't have time to give issues enough thought to consider anything but superficial arguments. There is no deep thought or discussion. We'd get dumb laws like "Brad and Jennifer must stay together" and "Nobody can be rich" and "all people must follow x religion" and dumb crap like that. Our society is a complicated system with complex behavior and interactions. Laws don't ever simply do what their creators intended them to, they change the system's balance to a new equilibrium. Representative democracy works better because the people making laws have time to understand them.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The problem isn't the absence of the gold standard. The problem is allowing deficit spending. That should be banned.

Deficit spending is always possible with a fiat money system- if the government needs more money they just print it.

I would like to see a constitutional amendment forcing a general population vote to approve any deficit spending with a 4 year time limit on that approval. I'd also like to see a hard limit on spending of 30% of the income in the entire population. Let them distribute the taxes however they like but don't let them exceed that number without the vote.

I wouldn't even allow that- TAXPAYERS should get to allocate their own taxes, and if that's not enough, then the additional is something the government shouldn't be doing.

Public opinion is even easier to sway than politicians. Remember, the money that is corrupting things isn't for the politicians personally, it's simply to convince the public that they should vote for them instead of kicking them out of office. I remember a great example of this somewhere, Australia I think, where DeBeers actually convinced the general public to allow DeBeers to have a monopoly on all the country's diamonds instead of selling them on the open market.

It would be interesting though, if each city/town/rural district were allowed to set it's own tariffs- I wonder what the corps would do if they needed to sway not one, but several thousand different elections at different times.

Re:Find a better name.

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The problem with a true democracy is that people don't have time to give issues enough thought to consider anything but superficial arguments. There is no deep thought or discussion. We'd get dumb laws like "Brad and Jennifer must stay together" and "Nobody can be rich" and "all people must follow x religion" and dumb crap like that. Our society is a complicated system with complex behavior and interactions. Laws don't ever simply do what their creators intended them to, they change the system's balance to a new equilibrium. Representative democracy works better because the people making laws have time to understand them.

Ah, but you miss my point with this. I want only the superficial, dumb laws to get through- deep laws should be decided LOCALLY not NATIONALLY.

Don't Buy It

[mysqlrocks]

I refuse to give money to domain squatters. Buy another domain name, be creative. Domain names become less and less important every day. Focus on SEO and other ways of getting people to your website. The domain name just isn't that important unless you're going to do a lot of non web-based advertising (radio, TV, print, etc.). You can pay for a lot of clicks on Google AdWords for $1000.

Re:Don't Buy It

[patio11]

Yep. Are you intending for your web site to be a destination location? Like, someone will log on and say "I want to go to Bob's web site now, www.bobswebsite.com"? Because the vast majority of home users do NOT have usage patterns like this and I'm guessing your users won't either. Back in the olden days of the Internet, when search engines were unknown or cruddy and Internet expertise was nil, somebody who wanted to try out that whole "buying books online" thing might actually type in www.books.com just to see if it worked. Then books.com, internet.com, business.com, nameofyourbusiness.com, etc were worth a lot of money. Now, most of your first-time leads are going to be coming in from search engines and they largely don't care about your domain name (helps to have a search term in the url, of course, but you can get that just as easily by naming yourself www.bobs-pc-shop.com instead of www.bobs-pc.com). Your returning customers will either remember the domain name (rather unlikely), go to their history tab (very unlikely), go to a bookmark they made (suprisingly likely, and a convinient "bookmark this site" button works wonders), or just do it the easy way and Google your business name again.

Heck, I'm as atypical as a user can be and I've been finding myself Googling "Amazon" recently.

Re:Don't Buy It

[GregStevensLA]

You're right.... I think I am trapped, a little bit, in an "oldschool" attitude about the transparency of domain names.

At the same time, I can't help wondering... would www.google.com have gained as much popularity if it had been www.askmenoquestionsilltellyounolies.me.uk ?

Would www.myspace.com be as popular if it was called www.socialnetworkingprofilesforyouandme.org.tw?

Re:Don't Buy It

[Glonoinha]

Actually Google wasn't even a word - they made it up because googol was already taken.
Yourname.com (or whatever) is already taken, so make something else up. If it can work for Google, it can work for you.

Re:Don't Buy It

[patio11]

Both Google and MySpace are intended to be what my father the real-estate agent would call "destination locations" -- you go out with the specific intent to patronize one or two of them, the same way you go out with the specific intent to patronize your bank. This is why a bank generally does not stress overmuch about being on a corner. You can compare this to gas stations, which are NOT destinations (nobody says "Hmm, I think I'll hop in the car and drive over to that Shell station on 67th street next to the Burger King") -- their location is critically important to them. Almost every gas station you find will be built on a corner, for maximum visiblity and accessibility.

In the Internet, things are almost completely reversed. If you're a destination, then you might well get accessed by the address bar (Amazon, Google, eBay, MySpace) -- its very important to you to have a punchy, memorable, very unambiguous (can't be mispelled or misremembered) name. If you're not a destination, you rely on people seeing you "from the road" as it were, and in today's internet "the road" is Google. Google doesn't care whether you have a maximally-punchy minimally-long domain name or not.

I wouldn't write a 45 letter domain name for the heck of it, but you can feel free to not treat "six to eight characters terminated with .com, and exactly equivalent to your business name" as the gospel anymore. You're the expert on your own business, so you're best qualified to determine whether your users will see you as a destination location or not.

Re:Don't Buy It

[fermion]

I think it is a bit more complicated than this. Gas stations aare wierd because people will often stop at whatever gas station is on thier way because it is not a long term stop. For example the station that is accesible directly to the off and on ramp of a freeway has an advantage to one in which the driver has to take a convoluted route. This is the same for fast food stores. OTOH, banks, stores, and the like, is often more a time commitment.

But even banks will pay extra to build where the customers are. For instance, there are two new banks near me. Both are built on pretty recently expensive real estate, real estate that could have been had much cheaper a few miles down the road. But they built where the money was.

So there is some element of "location" here, like being a .com, and bussiness routinely make decisions to pay exhorbanant fees for location. But there is a second issue here, and that is branding. If one is burger king, then building a consistant brand means that you must use something like BK.com, and, if the brand is established, then the law pretty much gives access to those domain.

However, a new service still has to worry about presenting a consistant brand and a veneer of credibility. It may be shallow but I think twice about dealing with a so-called pro that has an address at aol.com, or ms.com, or even mac.com. I mean I would sooner conduct bussiness out of the trunk on a olds. When banks merge they spend massive amount of cash rebuilding the brand. So why is it not rational, when one is trying to build a new brand to not invest money in it?

I am not trying to defend these creeps. I do not even like the fact that allegedly reputable registrars like godaddy have the service of stealing domains from those who forget to register, and then try to scare their clients into long term registrations based on the fact that godaddy has a service that can steal them if the client is one second late. But a cool name seems be helpful for bussiness, and a domain matching the cool name does seem to provide some added value.

So, what is the advice to the original question that no one want to answer, but rather demean the poster and criticize the behavior that all of the money making world seems to believe, at least to some degree, is rational. Just like any other deal, figure out what it is worth. Not how much you can pay, but what it is worth to you. Just like any other product. Try to negotiate to that price. If you can live without the domain, lowball. If not try to find the current going rate and start there. It might be the 1K, it might less, or more. If you can't justify the cost, move on. Perhaps there is another name use can use. Perhaps there is another way to represent the name.

At the end of the day it is a bussiness decision, and all this emotional crap that all these allegedly rational posters are pulling is just not useful. To get anything done we all have to deal with scum. If you can't take the scum, then stay out of the bedroom.

Re:Don't Buy It

[Anonymous Coward]

Actuale... The Road isn't built yet.... :-)

Re:Don't Buy It

[cooley]

They didn't make up the word "Google". It's been used in the Snuffy Smith comic strip title for over 85 years, and I assume it was probably a word before then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Google

Re:Don't Buy It

[lilmouse]

At the end of the day it is a bussiness decision, and all this emotional crap that all these allegedly rational posters are pulling is just not useful. To get anything done we all have to deal with scum. If you can't take the scum, then stay out of the bedroom.

However, as a business decision, one has to consider whether one wants to encourage such behavior. As a business, it might be much better to avoid such people in the hope that they will eventually starve, after which business will be easier to conduct.

--LWM

That's nothing

[El Cubano]

The company that currently holds the domain name is offering it for $1500

I recently received a solicitation for a church domain name. I am the webmaster for my church and another church in North or South Carolina (I forget where), no longer needs one of their domain names. The church I attend has the same name, but is located in another state. Basically, the guy said he wanted to offer us first dibs. When we inquired as to how much he wanted, he said that it had been "appraised" at up to $20,000. Though, he was very nice about it and said that he would give it to us for $8000. Sheesh. I recommended to our pastor that he ignore the request since we already have a well known and establishd domain.

Re:That's nothing

[DigiShaman]

Don't worry, there's a nice place in Hell for people like him.

Re:That's nothing

[MavEtJu]

he said that it had been "appraised" at up to $20,000.

Appraising something is the same as saying "what the fool would give for it".

The church I attend has the same name, but is located in another state.

There *is* some logic about the ca.us and or.us and other state.us domain names. Throwing everything in one basket is not good planning.

Re:That's nothing

[DigiShaman]

I'll see you in Hell.

Re:That's nothing

[dubl-u]

Don't worry, there's a nice place in Hell for people like him.

But if your pastor can ask for the process to be expedited, we'd all be grateful.

.com is overrated

[JanneM]

For a small business, that's a serious chunk of money - too serious. You will end up in a "bidding war" with yourself as they try to suck as much cash out of you as possible. It really is overrated to have a .com adress in any case; if you like the name, look for name.us, name.org, name.net, name.whatever. A lot of countries have restrictions on their top-level domains (you need a business address in the country or similar), but there's a whole set of top-level country domains that are offered to any comers for their mnemonic value, like .tv if your business is related to broadcasting, for instance, or .nu, always popular in Scandinavia.

Re:.com is overrated

[GregStevensLA]

I understand what you're saying... however, I've always been a little bit of a purist when it comes to top-level domains. I feel like .info really should be an information site, .org really should be an organization, and .uk really should be in the UK...

I know the reality of it. I doubt there is a single .tv site that is based in Tuvalu. But I'm still resistant... I don't want to contribute to "muddying up" the semantics of top-level domains.

Am I being naive about this?

Re:.com is overrated

[Alfred, Lord Tennyso]

I'm afraid I gotta disagree with you there, at least to a point. If your .foo domain name duplicates a .com domain name, then you're just buying trouble. If there's somebody actually there, you'll risk looking like you're surfing off their trademark, and maybe you are. Even if there isn't, people will go to the wrong web site all the time. Get popular enough that people are going to domain.foo, and the scuzzball domain squatter is going to make a ton of money off you selling to a scuzzball who puts up nothing but Google ads to people who type domain.com out of habit.

Or worse, they'll put up an exact duplicate of your page and use it to steal passwords and credit cards.

In general, non-traditional TLDs just look unprofessional to me. I'd never buy anything from a .biz domain; I just wouldn't trust the guys who own it.

For the most part I consider general-purpose TLDs a waste of time. But they do have this going in their favor: if it keeps the question asker from paying anything to the squatter, and the squatter has to continue paying his $3.25 (or whatever it is) a year to sit on the domain, along with a few thousand others... well, that makes me smile just a little. If people abandoned .com in droves, leaving the squatters holding the bag, it sure wouldn't make me unhappy.

Re:.com is overrated

[JanneM]

Exact the opposite for me. Most industrialized country domains are at least as trustworthy to me as the open top-level domains - if I go to a .co.jp address, for instance I know it's at least a real, registered company, with a real business address in the country. An .se domain is going to be registered by someone in Sweden, someone known and identified by NIC-SE, the domain authority. The .eu (and I suppose .us) are similarily minimally vetted.

By contrast, whatever scumbag wherever on the net can register a com domain with no checks and no oversight. An otherwise unknown company with only a com domain is a bit suspect - why are they hiding behind such a generic domain?

Re:.com is overrated

[MalusCaelestis]

I've got to disagree. A .com domain is incredibly valuable for a business. If I want to visit a company's Web site (one I've never been to), I type companyname CTRL+Enter (i.e. www.companyname.com) in the address bar. If the site doesn't come up, I Google the name of the company and see what comes up.

The real problem is when a company's name is somewhat generic (e.g. "Tom's Computer Repair Service"). Google for that and you'll be lucky to find the result you want in the first page or two.

If a company without a unique name (whose corresponding .com domain probably wouldn't be taken anyway) has a Web presence without a logical, intuitive domain name, chances are they're not going to be much better off than if they didn't have a Web presence at all.

Re:.com is overrated

[JanneM]

The real problem is when a company's name is somewhat generic (e.g. "Tom's Computer Repair Service"). Google for that and you'll be lucky to find the result you want in the first page or two.

And how does a com address help? is it tomscomputerrepairservice.com? or repairservice.com? computerrepair.com? Perhaps tomsrepair.com, tomscomputerrepair.com, tomcomputer.com or tomsrepariservice.com - or tomwillrepairit.com, tomisdaman.com, havetomwillrepair.com or someothertomgotallofthoseadressesalreadysoihadtose ttleforthisone.com.

For most companies a com address really is like a glass lobby - it's expected to be there but it's overly expensive and in practice not particularily useful.

Yes!

[durandal61]

Hope to god they don't read Slashdot! :-)

Re:Yes!

[hahafaha]

Are you serious? Who rated parent ``Insightfull''? It was so obviously a joke...

Price Gouging

[Distinguished Hero]

Can someone explain price gouging to me? If someone offers to sell you something at a price that you consider too high (gouging), you don't buy it. If someone offers to sell you something at a (high) price, and you agree to pay the person the money, that means that whatever you are buying is worth more to you than the money that you are offering in return (therefore not price gouging). Since (almost) all transactions are voluntary, and people engage voluntarily in transactions only if they think it is to their advantage, how can price gouging exist? Can someone clear this up for me?

Re:Price Gouging

[numbski]

It's very simple really.

All domains are worth precisely $12. No more, no less.

If someone has registered a domain, and is offering to sell it to you for more than that, they're nothing but leeching parasites, or as the PC like to call them, "cyber-squatters".

Don't feed the parasites.

Re:Price Gouging

[Methuseus]

Price gouging is a term that I guess is more apt with monopolistic services. This may not be the best use of the term, but it can sort of be applied.

Basically what price gouging means is one of two things. Either one company has a monopoly on something (like MS Windows) and charges higher than normal rates (at least I think so) for the product, but you can't get it from another vendor. The other way to price gouge is for all vendors of a specific product to agree on a basic pricing strategy (as people are saying is happening with gas stations in the US) and they all stick to it even though their actual costs are much lower than the amount they raised prices.

If that isn't clear enough let me know and I'll try to give you a better explanation.

Re:Price Gouging

[linvir]

Get a decent browser, and you'll be able to type "wp: price gouging" in the address bar and find these things out for yourself instead of starting a long, boring Slashdot discussion. From the resulting article:

Price gouging is a frequently pejorative reference to a seller's asking a price that is much higher than what is seen as 'fair' under the circumstances. In precise, legal usage, it is the name of a felony that obtains in some of the United States only during civil emergencies. In less precise usage, it can refer either to prices obtained by practices inconsistent with a competitive free market, or to windfall profits. In colloquial usage, it means simply that the speaker thinks the price too high, and it often degenerates into a term of demagoguery.

Do not mod this post up. I know where you sleep.

Re:Price Gouging

[chill]

It's very simple really.

All domains are worth precisely $12. No more, no less.

If someone has registered a domain, and is offering to sell it to you for more than that, they're nothing but leeching parasites, or as the PC like to call them, "cyber-squatters".

Don't feed the parasites.

Bullshit. There is such a thing as supply and demand. Domain names have features such as being easy to remember, have connotations to other items, being short, etc. This is why something like gmail.com is much more valueable than MyCantRememberTheNameForEmailButThisMightBeIt.com or asdf1324la8h_asdlkjuq7.com.

A domain name is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it, no more and no less.

You might want to review some economic theories postulated after the 17th Century. What you're espousing is called the "natural price" in Pre-Classical Thought.

Re:Price Gouging

[EvanED]

Get a decent browser, and you'll be able to type "wp: price gouging" in the address bar and find these things out for yourself

Or Firefox, if you set it up right. You can go to en.wikipedia.org (or whatever you want your language to be), right click on the search box, and choose 'add keyword for search'. I choose 'w' as the keyword, so I can type 'w price gouging' and go there.

I also set it up so that 'man whatever' searches the manpages on freebsd.org, 'g whatever' google searches (yeah, I know there's a dedicated box, but the address bar's a bigger target), 'imdb whatever' looks up on imdb, etc.

Re:Price Gouging

[linvir]

Thanks for that, you Informative bastard. My version of Konqueror is pretty unstable, and I'm starting to consider moving back to Firefox. This information means I win either way.

Re:Price Gouging

[GregStevensLA]

You can define your own URL protocols (like wp:) for use in Internet Explorer, too, if you're willing to fiddle in the registry a little.

(yes I know this is off topic, sorry)

Re:Price Gouging

[dougmc]

All domains are worth precisely $12. No more, no less.

Ok then. Then I wish to buy google.com for $12. I trust that since you've set the price, you can make sure the deal goes through?

Once I've acquired google.com, I'd also like business.com, sex.com, apple.com and microsoft.com. That's five domains -- how about 5/$50?

Re:Price Gouging

[EvanED]

I think I learned it from a /. comment, so I thought I'd give back ;-)

Re:Price Gouging

[FLEB]

There are practices which, in the eyes of the market and in the interest of a leveled playing field, may be considered to be "fair play", but are still repugnant, dishonorable, corrupt, anti-social, leeching, and cause damage and fallout. These states are not mutually exclusive. Domain names are a "natural resource" of the Internet. Do cybersquatters have the right to strip-mine cheap domains by the hundreds and leave behind vast tracts of ugly, pointless crapflood and inflated ransom where someone with more initiative and actual talent could have created a beautiful construction (or even a crappy-but-sincere site)? Sure, they're free to buy $8 domains just as anyone else is.

To say they're just quicker, that's the market, and it's all just business, however, hides the fact that, aside from the virtue of being first to force-feed a dictionary down their registrar-of-choice, domain squatters really don't have many other virtues... at all. The term "parasite" fits quite well, unless you're one of the few who actually consider pages of spam and linkfarming with "Learn more about [domain-name-of-the-site-that-you-really-wanted-th at-expired-and-got-snapped-up-by-some-squatting-ra tbastard]" to be a positive addition to the Internet.

Sure, it's a free market. Yes, it's supply-and-demand coupled with disproportionately low first-time costs. It's all a natural and fair system, and there probably isn't one that's better, but that doesn't even touch the fact that domain squatters are useless leeches and parasites, and generally, all-around "not a good thing". You can sit around and point at how shiny and clean the "supply and demand" system is, but I still see this very real effect here... the do-nothing virtual-lardass sitting on some piece of property they have no intention of ever making anything of, trying to grow disproportionately rich for having done or been little of value to anyone.

No, I don't want to change the free-market system, I haven't seen much better. Still, though, people need to realize that things like (accurate) name-calling, boycott, anger, hate, protest, ostracism... these are parts of the system! To yell "Shout it to the hills! This person and their kind are a load of shiftless parasites! Buy nothing from them, and seek to eradicate them! Make them hate themselves and their career choice!" is as integral a part to capitalism as is "fair market value". Basically, the heat comes with the kitchen.

Re:Price Gouging

[ottothecow]

What you describe is price fixing which is a form of (illegal in the US) rent seeking. Someone has a monopoly on a good (whether it be an almost complete monopoly with no high-penetration substitutes like Windows or a specific good with lots of substitutes like a specific CD or a set of CDs from a certain record label). A domain name is more like the latter, there are lots of domain names out there but the squatters have a perfect monopoly on the ones they hold. If they arent using them, the domains are simply factors of production that are going unused and are being prevented from use by anyone else.

The market price on an unused domain is somewhere around $10. Used domains obviously have higher prices (to the point of being completely unsaleable like google or microsoft) but an unused domain whether it is unused because nobody has bought it or unused because a squatter has bought it and not used it is still unused and has no added value. If it is worth more than $10 to the squatter, then that is the value they put on it, but they cant really expect it to sell on the market until there is a buyer with a strange fasciniation with it that places them at a higher point on the demand curve. An example of this would be the domain I recently registered; It is still empty but I have some slight attatchment to it so I probobly wouldnt sell it unless you offered me more like $50. I doubt its going to sell before I decide to use it so its not a problem that the market wont bear that price (on the other hand, I have a domain a registered before it that I decided I dont like, I'd take whatever I could get for that domain, whether it be $5, $10 or $100).

At this point, there is no real way to prosecute the squatters but they are still creating inefficiency in the market. This is the point where a little bit of regulation might be nice (but the question of how to do this is very difficult). In the case of the record companies, it was obvious how to deal with their price fixing and that is why we all got our miniscule checks in the mail. In the case of microsoft, they have some really good lawyers but they still paid. In the case of cybersquatters...what they are doing is certainly a bitch move...and its inefficient...but its not illegal

Re:Price Gouging

[Amouth]

you know i remember when i bought my first domain name.. i think i paid 99$ to register it.. squaters didn't exist back then.. except for the big names and well they lost in court...

then it went to 35$ a year.. a few more of the posiable populare names where being squated..

then it went 10$ . and even less in bulk.. now we have the worst squating we have ever seen..

I would be more than happey to pay 35-99$ a year for the domains i run because i know they are worth it to me.. and if putting the price back where it was will stop this endless squating then so be it.

Re:Price Gouging

[numbski]

Feh, I keep seeing comments like this, but you know exactly what I and the others in this thread mean.

Google has a legitimate business use for their domain. They registered it, and yes, if they ever choose to relinquish it, then that name would sell for millions or more.

That is NOT what we're discussing. We're discussing names that aren't being used for any practical purpose, but merely squatted to try to make a buck off of someone else that really does want to use it.

Leeching parasites.

Re:Price Gouging

[LunaticTippy]

I'd have no problem with this if it were treated as property.

Subject to property tax. Squat on a thousand domains worth a thousand bucks each? (potentially)

Pay property tax on $1,000,000. Probably around $5,000 a year, depending.

Re:Price Gouging

[chill]

'd have no problem with this if it were treated as property. Subject to property tax. Squat on a thousand domains worth a thousand bucks each? (potentially) Pay property tax on $1,000,000. Probably around $5,000 a year, depending.

Taxed by who? Taxes are levied by governments and property tax is on tangible items that have defined boundries. Exactly which gov't agency do you propose levy a property tax on domains?

Keep in mind, there is no such animal as a multi-national taxing agency that is recognized in the U.S. Even taxes in the E.U. are handled by member States and not the over-arching organization.

There are also several examples of items that are not subject to either real or tangible personal property taxes.

  -Charles

Re:Price Gouging

[LunaticTippy]

Well, it's just a sarcastic comment because every time it comes up people say it is just like real estate. You don't see people buying up 1000s of plots of real estate for $3/each and waiting until they get an offer of $15k because of property tax.

Now that I think about it, I kinda like the idea though. You're taxed on real property by whoever regulates it. The ICANN or whoever would tax domain names.

Keep in mind this is a joke suggestion, meant to annoy free-marketeers who claim it is just like real estate.

I'd excempt anyone who is using the domain in a proper manner, to be determined by a panel of monkeys.

Re:Price Gouging

[MyNameIsEarl]

It's very simple really.

All domains are worth precisely $12. No more, no less.

If someone has registered a domain, and is offering to sell it to you for more than that, they're nothing but leeching parasites, or as the PC like to call them, "cyber-squatters".

Don't feed the parasites.

Let's apply your reasoning to concert tickets. I am going to see Pearl Jam tommorrow, all of the seats have a face value of $53, the concert sold out in 15 minutes. If I wanted to buy floor seats in the first 10 rows from Stub Hub(where I got my tickets from, damn they sold out fast) I would have needed to pay hundreds of dollars. Seats with a less desirable view were selling for much less.

I ask you are all Pearl Jam concert tickets worth precisely $53? Or was it only possible to purchase those tickets for $53 at one point and the more desirable ones are "worth" much, much more.

Re:Price Gouging

[numbski]

That's a more complicated arrangement.

What we're dealing with is a land-grab of people who have no reasonable claim for any of these zones, but buy them all up to keep others from grabbing them.

Now, I could go on and on about ticket scalpers who pull the same lame BS in real-life, and you and I both know that is precisely what it is. If Stub Hub had an arrangement with Pearl Jam to buy those floor seats to resell at a higher price, so be it, but otherwise they're just scalpers.

Re:Price Gouging

[dougmc]

I keep seeing comments like this, but you know exactly what I and the others in this thread mean.

Sure, but the statement that `All domains are worth precisely $12. No more, no less' totally ignores reality. In fact, it ignores reality so blatantly that I'm amazed that anybody would dare make such a claim.

Fair or not, right or wrong, good domain names are not an unlimited resource, and all of the single dictionary word dot com domains have been gone for quite some time, and they do have value beyond the $12 (though you can pay less) that somebody spent to register them.

We're discussing names that aren't being used for any practical purpose, but merely squatted to try to make a buck off of someone else that really does want to use it.

Something is worth what somebody else will pay for it. Nothing less, nothing more. It's simple economics.

Also note that the claim was not `unused domains'. It was `all domains'. If you look at specific domains, some are worth may more than $12 (google.com) and some probably aren't worth anything (2435346sdgdfgeryu42t43g.tv.)

People squat on domains because it makes them money (or at least they think it will.) Like it or not, it's life.

Saying `all domains are worth $12, no more, no less' is like saying that `All pennies are worth $0.01. No more, no less' -- it totally ignores the fact that some pennies (and domains) are worth more. Like this one, which some have sold for as much as $82,000.

Re:Price Gouging

[dougmc]

i think i paid 99$ to register it.

Are you sure about that? if I recall correctly, at first domains were free, and then they were about $35/year, and then the price dropped as other registrars became available. I don't recall the price ever being $99/year.

Or is this domain not .com/.net/.org?

Re:Price Gouging

[dougmc]

That's a more complicated arrangement.

Not really.

What we're dealing with is a land-grab of people who have no reasonable claim for any of these zones, but buy them all up to keep others from grabbing them.

What you think about the situation is irrelevant. They have the domain, and you don't. If you want it, you can't just go up to them and tell them how unfair it is -- you have to give them money. (Though if you have a trademark on the domain, you might be able to pick option C -- get the ICANN to give it to you. But that's another matter.)

(However, often a little thought will find you a domian that's almost as good without feeding the parasites. vegashotels.com is taken? Perhaps vegas-hotels.com is available? How about hotelvegas.com? etc.)

If Stub Hub had an arrangement with Pearl Jam to buy those floor seats to resell at a higher price, so be it, but otherwise they're just scalpers.

Strange statement. If Pearl Jam says it's ok, it's ok, but if not, he's a scalper?

What it really means is that Pearl Jam didn't properly price their tickets correctly in the first place. Their goal is to maximize profits, right?, which would mean that they should strive to sell every ticket for as much as somebody will pay for it. To achieve that goal, every ticket should have a different price based on how desireable it is, ranging perhaps from thousands of dollars for the front row to $30 for the very back. It might alienate the customers though, so they should be careful. Perhaps they should give all the good tickets to Stub Hub (some company? Guy with no legs?) to resell (with most of the money going back to Pearl Jam), so that way Stub Hub can be the bad guy rather than Pearl Jam?

Either way, economics will make it so that unless you're lucky, you'll pay more for the better tickets. Like it or not, if you want good concert tickets, you can either get your band and be first in line at 8am and hope for the best, or pay a scalper.

Some states have outlawed ticket scalping. But attempting to thrwart a free market like this doesn't always work, and the scalpers will skirt the law, and if the law is really effective (and it rarely is), it just means that you might not be able to get a ticket, no matter how much you want to pay, which isn't quite right either.

From A Seller

[paulthomas]

I know there are people with a lot of disdain for cybersquaters here on slashdot.

I recently put two domain names that I own up for sale. They point to an austere page that says essentially: "Welcome. I do not need this domain anymore and if you would like it, I am willing to sell it for $50. Contact me ..."

There is certainly a difference in amount, but my domain names are fairly obscure and (likely) won't be of much interest to anyone. I'm not going to renew them, and my thought is that if anyone would like to have them sooner than the expiration then they can pay me a small amount for that. Hell, a couple of the big registrars still charge around that much for one year.

Maybe this person isn't a cybersquater per se, perhaps he once used this domain and thinks it is worth something. So far as I know, there isn't even a way to relinquish a domain name that is registered some time out into the future back into the commons. Determine what you will pay for the privilege to use the name now rather than later (or instead of another name), and make an offer. Be upfront -- "This is what it is worth to me, this is what I will pay, final offer, let me know." Depending on your project, maybe it is even worth what he is asking.

If you have a firm value in your mind and do not pay more than that value, you'll win -- regardless of whether you get the domain.

Don't do it!

[jericho4.0]

This is not the reality of business, this is cybersquatting. Please don't give them a dime for their scam.

Just say no.

[Bamfarooni]

Do not feed the vermin.

Rarity

[Marxist Hacker 42]

If a good is significantly rare, or the need for that good is significantly high, then the transaction cannot be described as voluntary. If the transaction is not voluntary, your reasoning falls apart.

The question is in this case- do you change the name of your business, or run the risk of your competitor being willing to pay the $1500 to grab this domain and then slander your business or direct business to their site in your name. The risk is great enough that this is not a voluntary transaction- and while the gouging is indeed great (had you grabbed that domain yourself, you would have saved more than two orders of magnitude), the cost of NOT grabbing it is potentially even greater.

Re:Rarity

[GigsVT]

You know as well as I that if his competitor did that, the arbitration would turn the name over to him in a minute.

Re:Rarity

[Marxist Hacker 42]

You know as well as I that if his competitor did that, the arbitration would turn the name over to him in a minute.

Arbitration is always won by the company with the deepest pockets for bribing the arbitrators. I have no faith in arbitration, courts, or anything else presided over by a government elected of, from, and by the corporations.

Re:Rarity

[Jim Buzbee]

If a good is significantly rare, or the need for that good is significantly high, then the transaction cannot be described as voluntary. If the transaction is not voluntary, your reasoning falls apart.

Gimme a break. I've had my eye on an original Van Gough for years now. It is significantly rare, so by your definition my attempt to purchase it is not voluntary. After all, the cost of canvas and paint should make it less than $100. Anything more is gouging! Maybe if I stamp my feet and picket the gallery, then maybe I'll get my way. Better yet, I'll get a law passed outlawing the practice of letting the market decide the price!

Re:Rarity

[cdrguru]

Better count on the 2nd amendment then, because it will be the folks with guns that decide things. And today, the police are significantly outgunned by the gangs.

Re:Rarity

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Gimme a break. I've had my eye on an original Van Gough [vangoghgallery.com] for years now. It is significantly rare, so by your definition my attempt to purchase it is not voluntary.

That's correct- you don't have the choice to go to another person for the same painting, at least legally (saw a man on "Globe Trekker" on PBS who MIGHT be able to serve you for the $100 you're willing to pay- if you're willing to go to Hong Kong), thus this is NOT a free market by definition.

After all, the cost of canvas and paint should make it less than $100. Anything more is gouging! Maybe if I stamp my feet and picket the gallery, then maybe I'll get my way. Better yet, I'll get a law passed outlawing the practice of letting the market decide the price!

Possibly- but at any rate, the point is that significantly rare or needed items are by definition not a part of the free market- the "market" will bear any price for such items because you'll simply freeze out the lower income consumers without losing any profit.

Re:Rarity

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Completely agreed- which is the reason one of my hobbies is non-lethal home protection alternatives to firearms. It's amazing what a loud enough stereo aimed outward and tuned to a 10khz shriek will do.....

Re:Rarity

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Do you believe a seller has a right to withhold a good from a buyer?

I believe that goods are divided into needs and wants- and to put needs on the free market instead of sharing them is the very definition of the mortal sin of greed.

If not, then it follows that you believe the seller is partially enslaved to the buyer, since you believe the buyer is entitled, on some level, to the good the seller produced or purchased with his own labor.

The foolish man asks for freedom, not knowing what he asks for. The wise man knows that we are all slaves to each other.

If you do believe the buyer has a right to withhold his good, then what is the difference between withholding a good completely, and offering that good for a million dollars?

The difference is that the billionaire can still afford to get the good- thus what you're really talking about is classism, bigotry based on income.

Slander is illegal, and someone else using your company name to attract business is a violation of trademark law (please correct me if I'm mistaken about this).

Unless you're lucky enough to have registered your trademark *before* the cybersquatter grabbed the domain name, AND have registered the trademark with the LOCAL governmental authority of both your competitor and the cybersquatter, violation of trademark does not apply. And we all know that slander cases go to whomever has the most money for lawyers- so we're back to class bigotry again.

In summary, there is no such thing as gouging in a free market. All prices are determined by supply and demand.

Too bad that by definition, this ain't a free market. Not by any stretch of the imagination. If it was, then you could simply re-register the name with a competing Domain Name System.

Re:Rarity

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a significant difference between a luxury good, and something that's basically essential (food, medecine, to a far lesser extent, gasoline, etc.).

Price gouging is when they take advantage of a temporary emergency to make people pay out the wazoo for things they know they'll be able to replenish shortly, using the fact that people cannot afford to wait against them.

E.G. it'd be like raising the price of medecine based on the knowledge that you would die without it. Of course, from the libertarians I've heard opine on that situation, I guess the "free market solution" would be to kill them, take the medecine, and bribe/extort the jury, judge or police (whichever is cheapest).

Appearing professional

[Xtifr]

If you want to appear professional, the correct response is, "no, thank you, but I have no interest whatsoever in paying more than a standard domain registration fee." This is unfortunate, because the most appropriate response is far less polite! :)

I fear your business is not long for this world

[wowbagger]

I fear that your business is not long for this world. My reasoning is this: You are considering spending a large chunk of change for a domain name from a cybersquatter, rather than striking out to find an unused name you can register for a percent of the money. Given that ALL small businesses starting out are cash-strapped, the fact that you are willing to waste your limited money in this fashion makes me doubt you will spend your other money wisely. The fact that you then turned to Slashdot for advice on this would tend to confirm the hypothesis that you are not really thinking coldly and rationally enough to found a successful business.

I don't want to sound harsh, but I do think you really need to step back and reconsider your plans - perhaps you can locate a local college where you might get a dispassionate third party to help fix you a nice big bowl of Reality Checks.

I've watched too many businesses fail because the founders, while having the best of intentions, made bad decisions because they were not willing to face the harsh, unpleasant facts.

Please - do prove me wrong. Be successful, and when you are successful, feel free to email me and say "Boooya! In your FACE Wowbagger!" If you can be successful you will have earned the right to do so, and I will congratulate you.

But if you keep doing things like seriously considering spending $1500, or even $100 on a domain name when you are just starting out - I don't expect that email.

Re:I fear your business is not long for this world

[GregStevensLA]

Ah, but you see, you overlooked the wisdom and insight of one business move:

• I asked Slashdot.

;-)

(in all seriousness, though: your point is well taken)

Re:I fear your business is not long for this world

[Noishe]

It's unfortunate that someone decided to call you a troll. Had I any moderator points I would have marked you insightful.

Your post is both polite and logical, if just a little cold. Unfortunatly, cold is warrented in this case.

So to the idiot who thinks it's wrong to tell someone when they're being stupid, well you just need life to teach you a few lessons.

To wowbagger, better luck on your next post.

Re:I fear your business is not long for this world

[epine]

I didn't regard that post as a troll whatsoever. Heck, with the money he saves buying a generic domain name, he can afford to buy himself a nice Herman Miller Aeron chair.

As far as squatting goes, you can't maintain an empty ecological niche that has proven this profitable. Blaming the squatters is hugely misguided. It's like blaming teenagers for having sex. When a giant new chunk of realestate becomes available (e.g. wild west) you tend to end up with one of two models: land grab, or public auction. The public auction is hard to set up until a market already exists. And people heap just as much vitriole on the FCC for attempting this as they do on the squatters for exploiting what was given to them.

Traditionally the government ends up applying a property tax on assets of this nature. A mil rate assessment process is devised, and anyone setting up shop on a street corner in Manhattan had better plan to operate a viable business or find themselves taxed into bankruptcy.

Anyone care to hazard a guess whether the people presently screaming out about squatters will be first in line to yell their leather lungs out when the government comes along and established a domain-name mil rate assessment bureau?

Re:I fear your business is not long for this world

[wowbagger]

I'd given up on /.'s moderation system a long time ago - if you look over my posting history you'd notice a reduction in the number of posts per unit time, precisely because of things like this. With the metamoderation system rewarding poor moderation and punishing good moderation, the moderator "pool" looks rather like the "pool" at the end of my neighbor's septic line.

Oh well - my goal of communicating my opinion to the submitter of the story was achieved (and thanks for the response, BTW).

Re:I fear your business is not long for this world

[stonecypher]

My reasoning is ... Given that ALL small businesses starting out are cash-strapped

Yeah, um. Most aren't, actually. See, Slashdot has a very strange perspective on business, because a tremendous (by comparison to the typical world) percentage of developers, especially web developers. Back in the real world, you can't start a business on two guys, a good idea and two months of secret hard work. Sure, it works on the web. It doesn't work for any business with a brick and mortar presence. It doesn't work for any business which needs significant equipment. It doesn't work for any business which needs staff to develop its first product. Etc.

Back in the real world, a business operating on a startup budget of less than three million dollars is considered efficient. It's easier to get a million in venture capital than $200k, because venture capitalists look at margins and multipliers, and the volume on <1M just isn't interesting to them. When you're a startup with three million, and you want to choose between $1500 for a domain people can remember and $10 for one they can't, you'd be a fool not to buy the $1500 domain. No matter how simple its interface, Google would not have succeeded if it was on www.zarqu7ar.com .

Say what you will about squatters - immoral because they speculated on a resource you now want, disgusting because they want to make a profit in a capitalist society. One thing they are not, however, is stupid. Those prices are that high because that's what the market will bear, and that's what the market will bear because sometimes you need to shell out a little cash to be memorable.

perhaps you can locate a local college where you might get a dispassionate third party to help fix you a nice big bowl of Reality Checks.

Yes. Spend $20k on tuition because $1500 on a domain is going to put you out of business. You, by the way, should spend $1.50 on a calculator.

But if you keep doing things like seriously considering spending $1500

Yeah, a business with startup costs, that's absurd. Why, nevermind that professionals are saying that startup costs on a software firm may be as low as half a million dollars now. Nevermind that the typical marketing expenditure for a startup is 7-12%, suggesting a marketing budget on the value software industry of $40-60k. Nevermind that short, germane domains have been shown to have as much as a two-order-of-magnitude impact on name retention, suggesting a marketing value of $4m-$6m.

No, $1500 is totally out of the question. (cough)

I don't want to sound harsh, but I do think you really need to step back and reconsider your plans - perhaps you can locate a local college

Tu quoque. As the founder of several successful businesses, I openly question whether you've ever started or managed a business, and whether you're qualified to determine what caused the failure of other businesses you've worked for. Don't get rankled - I used to work for a software place in Pittsburgh which seemed like it was on the perpetual edge of failure, a VC money sink run by incompetants who spent more time instant messaging than doing actual work.

And you know what? They're still around, and profitable, while all these "well-run" businesses from software engineers who'd "seen the mistakes" their old bosses had made and "knew better."

The fact of the matter is simple. If someone who wasn't an engineer came up to us and told us not to use some software design technique because they'd seen a lot of other businesses use that technique and fail, we would laugh in their faces. The software design technique is far less important than using said technique correctly, and neither can fix a fundamentally flawed premise, even if it's something that from the outside sounds perfectly grea

Re:I fear your business is not long for this world

[stonecypher]

Gee I love going through a post looking for numbers and switching them for their english counterparts. That way, when I write 39 workers and convert to text, I can forget the thirty and look like an idiot.

A domain name is off limited value

[SmallFurryCreature]

It may have some value if it is an obvious name that some people might enter directly into their browser. Just ask yourselve how often you do this?

A lesser value might exist if the name is easy to associate. weather.com for instance is easier to remember as a weather site then sfgsjkdhgfksdfk.com It don't matter to find the site via google but in ads or just remembering the site from previous visits weather.com is just a bit easier.

The last case is if you already got a real world brand name and now want to have that same name on the web. Just recently I wanted to visit the vanguard page. It wasn't the first result on google (a game not coming as the first result for its name is pretty rare) and I actually had to scroll down to see vangaurdsoh.com

Does it matter? Well not much as you can see BUT I have in the past just typed in vanguard and gotten the wrong site.

So the question to you is, does the above apply to you? Is that name really worth 1000 dollars? It sounds like it is a lot of money for you. So most likely not. Try finding another name or one from a different domain like say .net .us or whatever.

Most people will either use a search engine to find your site OR find it by being given the URL in some other form. Focus on something that is simple to remember and doesn't cost a 1000 dollars and do some advertising.

Re:A domain name is off limited value

[Anonymous Coward]

But sfgsjkdhgfksdfk.com is my favorite weather site!

Or was it sfgsjkdhgfgskfk.com? Damnit, I knew I should have written down that IP address.

I fail it

[linvir]

Sorry Mr. Question Asker, I tried my best to save your Ask Slashdot from mindless Slashbot mutual reassurance, but judging from the comments so far, which have almost exclusively echoed my frosty piss to the letter without being marked redundant, I have failed you. I apologise sincerely and vow to turn my brain in during the next amnesty on inadequacy.

Invest in something useful

[dereference]

It costs less than half of that to register yourself a unique service mark or trademark in a couple relevant classes. It's just as intangible, and you do need to do some research up front, but it keeps its value far better than any domain name. It can take months to complete the process, but if you've done your research the process itself is painless and can be done almost entirely online. As an added bonus, if your registration is successful you can petition ICANN to transfer any (new) infringing domain names to you, as the rightful owner of the mark (you can't necessarily grab existing infringing domains as far as I know, but then again you're going to look for a better name anyway, right? Yes, I thought so).

Buying a Nolo book on legal protection is definitely well worth the $30-$50 investment, and the knowledge gained will carry over to any new businesses you might decide to start. Don't even consider paying a huge chunk of hard-earned money for a domain name without at least understanding the basics of legal rights that do (and don't) convey with it.

Re:Invest in something useful

[mgabrys_sf]

Actually, getting a real-trademark / servicemark also invalidates older domain names. Unless! - and this is a big honkin' unless - those earlier domain names are registered trademarks. Most domain names are NOT however, and it's why a group I was contracting with in Kansas City was looking at a list of brands I gave them and the conversation went like this:

"I haven't searched against existing domain names for these - so keep that in mind"

"Dont' worry - as soon as the trademark application is on file with the patent office we can send out cease and desists to anyone using one off the list".

Doing some checking later confirmed that none of the domain names that were being used came up on state or federal trademarks searches, and were squashable. Which they in fact did to about 4 if I recall, before settling on one name.

Trademarks - you're little understood friend. And don't forget blanket trademark declarations under copyright protection. It's how a TV or Movie company can instantly protect a new film or program by placing the name of the project as copyright held by parent trademark. It should also be noted that I'm not a lawyer in these matters but have been surrounded by them in many professional instances when it comes to copyright and trademarks.

Please pay some legal wanker if you really want to get serious about any of this crappola.

First things first

[sfjoe]

Before you try to decide whether to pay it or not, figure out what the domain name is worth to you. Will that $1500 be a good return on the investment? Isn't there something more worthwhile you can be spending your capital on? If your business model requires you to have this and no other domain name, then you'll have to suck it up and soend the money. Start out with a sub-1000 counteroffer. This is business - if you're going in feeling afraid of looking foolish, then you're going to lose your money. Go in with the attitutde that you can walk away at any moment if the deal doesn't work for you.
Remember - they have nothing. That domain name isn't worth jack until they get a buyer. They don't want you to walk away. Give them a chance to take some of your cash off your hands and they'll go for it.

You're lucky

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

I hate to say this, but you're lucky to be getting it for $1500. There are TOTALLY UNUSED domains that people are unwilling to sell me for even as high as $5000.

I'd say be creative, though: offer $1000 and a case of beer delivered to their office this coming Friday afternoon.

Re:You're lucky

[dougmc]

There are TOTALLY UNUSED domains that people are unwilling to sell me for even as high as $5000.

A fried of mine has a domain. It's a five letter common dictionary word dot com. He gets occasional offers to buy it -- people have even offered as much as $15,000 for it.

We don't use it for a business, but we have our mail and web stuff and such on it, so it's certainly not unused, and it would be a big drag to replace it. So he's not going to sell it for some small amount of change. But $15k? Sure, why not?

He's gotten several offers over $10k, and they never pan out. I'm not sure what their purpose was, but they never follow through. Perhaps they found out how much spam this domain gets? :)

So now we just ignore email offers to buy the domain, because we assume they're not serious. Perhaps if somebody were to send a snail mail letter we'd take it more seriously?

In any event, there's still very much of a goldrush mentality when it comes to domain names. The professionals want $5k for their crappy domains, so we ought to be able to get more for our good one? (In reality, the professionals only get $5k if they find a real sucker, but people don't see it that way.)

My advice? The domain name doesn't matter that much. Get something new, don't pay a squatter for it. And when you pick a name, buy it immediately, as the registrars are known to watch the queries for domain names, and if they see a good one, they'll grab the domain themselves and then offer to sell for a lot more. So today you find reallygooddomainname.com and it's available, but tomorrow it might not be -- tomorrow they want $1000 for it.

Re:You're lucky

[dougmc]

... turns out I was wrong. Somebody saw this post, emailed me, I put them in contact with my friend, and now the domain is sold, for a nice chunk of change.

Of course, now I have 50 mailing lists to update ... *grumble grumble grumble*

Offer the lowest price possible and test them out

[Centurix]

Really, you cannot trust anyone who spouts about counter offers. Offer them $150, a good offensive play.

Someone squatted on centurix.com and I asked them how much. $5000 was the reply, so I said $100 is my best offer, if that's not enough then have fun with the domain. They accepted, I had the domain for 2 years and just let it lapse, the same company bought it again after I had it. Good luck to them, my current domain suits us much better.

The only thing that really matters is...

[natmsincome.com]

... how much is it worth to you?

As some other post hove mentioned would a .us or a .net be just as good considering they are about $10? If you really want to the .com but can get the others then buy them and tell the seller that you don't really need the .com because you already have the .net and .us you're only willing to pay $100 to $200 to get it as well.

You can do the same thing with online.com, int.com, home.com etc.

That eing said I wouldn't make an offer much under $100 as I expect they'd probably reject it. If you make the offer to low they're likely to just make it into a parked domain with adds.

Get a trademark, then UDRP

[Animats]

One of the more useful things to do in domain disputes is to get a trademark. If you do business or have a product named "Zowie", get a trademark on "Zowie". It's not that hard, it costs a few hundred dollars, and the process is entirely on line. Doesn't matter what category of product the trademark is under, or even if it's on the principal register. You can almost always get registration on the supplemental register, which means you can't keep others from using the name, but they can't keep you from using it either.

Once you have a trademark on the domain that describes your stuff, you can make a cybersquatting complaint. If the domain owner is just parking the domain, under the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy that's considered "use in bad faith". Then you send a letter to the domain owner, threatening a UDRP proceeding.

(If it's a "private registration", the registrar will now "uncloak" the domain so fast your head will spin, because they don't want to be the party to a UDRP proceeding or lawsuit.)

At this point, either the other side will offer to sell you the domain for less than a UDRP costs ($1000), or you go forward to a mandatory UDRP proceeding, which is an instant win when you have the trademark.

Re:Get a trademark, then UDRP

[Dr. Zowie]

I object to your using my login name in your post.

--Dr. Zowie(TM)

This is easy

[hotspotbloc]

We're talking about small change here (less than $1k USD), not "business.com" money. If you're serious about wanting the domain then just buy it. This isn't a "red vs. blue pill" issue, there is no rabbit hole, it's a business decision. Make it and move on to building great software.

Domain Value...

[Jace of Fuse!]

This isn't exactly an answer to the question, but it could be interesting while we're on the topic.

One of my domains hosts a site that really was just something a friend and I put together back around 1999 or so. It was just a little project that we figured we would play with. We mostly neglected the site, as anyone who has ever visited it can tell you.

We had considered just giving up on it all but over the years people kept offering us money for the name. The highest offer we ever had was for over $4000 and for the life of me I don't know why we didn't take it.

In the end I'm glad we didn't.

We're about to shut the site down in it's current form and actually do something "real" with it. It's no-so-humorous humor is old and the site's popularity is long past it's prime. But we're both older and wiser now and we think we can actually make a site with content of value to readers. We have a somewhat recognized name that's been on the web a long time, we have both expanded our skills, and we both have a wee-bit more time than we did back then.

So what's my point?

Our site has been around a while and is more or less a cobweb site now. But it's a simple name that is easy to remember, it's established in the search engines, there are links to us from all over the place, and all in all we kind of like it.

So I'm glad we didn't sell. It would have been easy to take the money and run a long time ago, but if we were going to try to find a good domain today things would be a lot harder.

Needless to say it would take a lot more than $4000 to pry this domain out of our hands now.

As a side not, over the years it appears that businesses in other countries that operate under the name Tagor have started showing up on the web. Some might say we're squatting the name from them, but we don't see it that way. We had the name before we knew it meant anything to anyone and we actually have plans for the site.

Re:Domain Value...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.targor.com/

Site not loading error page.
Either your sites DNS has stopped working or your site has a major error.
Please contact support for help.

Looks like your site is about to be squatted to me.

Re:Domain Value...

[Jace of Fuse!]

Nah. The co-author of the site works for ISDN.Net. :)

There's just no telling what that's all about.

It's only temporary, though.

Simple

[nincehelser]

Forget the money. We're only talking $1500 at most if you buy it at their price. If your business plan is decent and that particular domain name is critical to your marketing plan, $1500 is peanuts. Your time and energy are probably worth a lot more than $1500.

Assuming you don't have the $1500 to spend and you have the time to haggle, start at $250. This is enough to raise their interest. Expect a few rounds of counter offers...just two or three at most. Anything more and you're wasting time.

An experienced negotiator might get the domain for around $300. A novice negotiator can probably get them down to at least $750. What it really comes down to is your negotation skills.

Implicit Business Value = (Nearly) Zero

[carpeweb]

Comments seem split between "don't pay those bastards a red cent" and "well, if it's worth X, then you should pay it".

Both sentiments seem valid to me.

It's hard to imagine how the business value of the domain name(s) in question could be very high for a business that doesn't yet exist. Unless you plan to make cars and one of the names is cars.com, I don't see how a specific name could be very meaningful.

Come up with something clever, like, I don't know ... /.? This site could have been called anythingelsebutshorterthanthissoit'seasytotype.com and had the same success it has as /.

Domain name parking is NOT cybersquatting

[voss]

cybersquatting is using someones elses good name to make money.

Its a different issue if you thought of a cool domain name and got it before
anyone else...or even if you found a name that several people might want
"sex.com" its still not cybersquatting.

Squatting sucks but legit buying exists.

[MikeFM]

Mostly I agree, but I also have some sites that I started and never went anywhere. I never turned them into spam ad sites and I mostly still own the domains because I keep forgetting to cancel the auto-charge on the domains. I don't want $1500 for these domains but enough to cover what I've spent on them would be nice. Say maybe $150 each? I don't think that's unreasonable given that I'm making no effort to sell them and still wouldn't mind making them work if I found time to make the sites I originally planned.

I also recently considered buying a domain that was in active development by someone else but for which they hadn't had commited strongly to branding. I probably could have bought it for $500 but eventually decided it wasn't really worth it for me. I thought $500 was fair though.

Re:Squatting sucks but legit buying exists.

[Blakey Rat]

I always wanted to make a Thundarr The Barbarian fan site, so I bought the domain... but I never got around to making the site. A couple of years ago, I got an offer to buy it from one of the employees of Raven Software, so I ended up selling it for $100 and a copy of Soldier Of Fortune Platinum that came on CD-R. Heh.

Re:Squatting sucks but legit buying exists.

[MikeFM]

That works. I'm glad they had the decency just to make a fair offer and not jump straight to lawsuits.

slashdot.com

[mnmn]

Hmm. I visited using slashdot.com. Maybe I'm at the wrong website.

But so are you!!

Don't offer them $1500

[menace3society]

Off them $25 and a bus ticket. If they don't go for it, hack into their servers, download child porn, and report them to the FBI.

Well, no.

[Animats]

I've been looking at some UDRP decisions. First, registration on the supplemental register is not considered to confer rights meaningful in a UDRP proceeding. You have to get on to the principal register.

Second, priority is an issue. You need to have some rights in the name predating the acquisition of the domain by the current owner. Registering a trademark helps, but the history of its use may matter.

Sorry about that.

responses

[dpille]

1) If your trademark application post-dates their domain registration, you will absolutely lose.
 
2) Even with the cheapest arbitrators, a UDRP filing costs $1300. Why would you pay that when a few hundred more guarantees you get the domain? Remember, filer pays.
 
3) Trademark applications (in the US and most of civilization) require proof of use to register. You won't even have the registration to throw around unless you're already using the name. Obviously, from the article, the submitter is not already using it.
 
4) There is no longer an "instant win" in UDRP. The arbitrators are no longer clueless, they actually are crafting careful law to avoid crap like the suggestion above.

Safer Domain Name Checking

[resistant]

And when you pick a name, buy it immediately, as the registrars are known to watch the queries for domain names, and if they see a good one, they'll grab the domain themselves and then offer to sell for a lot more. So today you find reallygooddomainname.com and it's available, but tomorrow it might not be -- tomorrow they want $1000 for it.

Certain registrars and resellers are notorious for selling "recent inquiry lists" to domain kings. I actually lost a domain name this way a few years back, after checking availability. It was very unlikely that specific domain name, which was meant for a personal site for a family member, could have been picked by accident by someone else with the same two-day period (while I was mulling it over).

After that experience, I became very cautious about where to check domain name availability. OpenSRS used to be good for a simultaneous WHOIS search and check of availability, but now they have this annoying captcha. At NameCheap, an Enom reseller which I've used for years for most of my small collection of domain names, I've never lost a prospective domain name after an inquiry and subsequent mulling, although apparently they did recently decide to keep as a "pay for click" empty parked domain name one that I decided to drop as superceded (for a business idea) by a more relevant term. I've not had problems either with GANDI, but haven't used them for new domain names for years.

There are undoubtedly many decent registrars and resellers, and a few bad ones run by slimebags, just as with any type of business.

By the way, a great place to check information on ownership of a domain name is here. Basic membership is free with a simple registration (use fake information and a throwaway email address if you are more comfortable with that), and they have lots of neat tools even for free memberships. Just make certain you only use it for domain names which you know are already taken, because the people who run it are in the business of reselling domain names, and giving them ideas isn't good.

Am I getting a fair shake or getting conned?

[BidNo]

Sorry but most of this discussion is terribly naive. Internet domain investing is very real and very large with billions of dollars in investment capital. Did you know Internet ad revenues have now passed those of local newspapers? If you want to buy Trump Tower you either buy it or not. But you're not going to jawbone Trump into selling for the price he originally paid for raw land and bricks. If don't buy, find something else that suits your budget. Or buy land and build your own. When there are many buyers for a domain name, supply and demand drive the price - after all, there is only one. The original OP question was, "am I getting a fair shake or getting conned"? In real estate, recent comparable sales are used to evaluate this question, and it's the same with Internet Domains. Try the site http://dnsaleprice.com/ to search for recent sales comparable to the domain of interest to determine if you're getting a fair price. Cheers, BidNo

Re:Am I getting a fair shake or getting conned?

[metamatic]

The fact that there are plenty of suckers willing to pay some parasite thousands of dollars for a domain name doesn't change the essentially worthless nature of a domain name, and doesn't change the fact that the people who squat on domains they aren't using in order to try and extort money are lowlifes.

My rule is: Don't feed the parasites. Think of a new name. Remember that none of the biggest most successful Internet companies paid off cybersquatters for "prime virtual real estate" like search.com or books.com; they all went with obscure names nobody had registered like "Google", "ebay" or "Amazon".

In fact, paying big bucks for a domain name is a pretty good predictor of business failure, as far as I can see.

Re:Am I getting a fair shake or getting conned?

[CharAznable]

Err... you have exactly one post. Are you a cybersquatter that happened to read the article and decided to come here to justify yourself?

Re:Am I getting a fair shake or getting conned?

[BidNo]

Yeah, sure. Whatever... Do your own research and let the facts speak. You might want to start by occasionally reading WSJ, Business Week, Business 2.0, etc., etc. Oh, wait - I think you have to be 18 to subscribe to these. Note to Mod: If you delete or edit this post, please also remove the inflammatory post above. Thanks, BidNo

What legacy does the domain name have?

[Ankh]

Is there a holding page there now? If so, what google pagerank does it have? If it has a pagerank of 0, and does not show up in google searches for text that's on the page, don't go near it: if it's in what Google calls a "bad neighbourhood", they won't list it or let you use AdSense ads on it until you've demonstrated in some way to them that it has changed. E.g. perhaps if it had porn ads on it, or used to be part of a "black-hat SEO link rink".

On the other hand, if it has pagerank of, say, 5 or more, or if there's some reason why you're set on that name, go ahead. Yes, once you get a few decent incoming links you'll get even a new domain to have good search results, especially with a simple (but syntactically correct) "home page" that doesn't rely on Flash, and has some content. Buying the domain name is either getting you a tiny jump start, or is getting something easy for people to remember.

If $1500 is a lot of money to you, offer them $500 and stop buying those expensive shoes :-) A startup is unlikely to get far in under two years (on average in most Western countries), so you need to have funds to go without other income and pay all your bills for at least that long.

You can try downloading the Google toolbar for Firefox (there's a link on my Website and thousands of others, or go to google.com) and it'll show you the pagerank of sites you visit. The numbers go from 0 (it goes last in search results or is not in the index) to 10 (pretty much always on top of the results; there are only a very few "10" sites).

Google pagerank isn't the only metric, especially as Microsoft starts to enter the search market, but right now it's at least half of it, and if you don't show up on the top half of the first page of google results (once you have some content) you'll be invisible to much of the world. Do a search for (1) your proposed company name, including with likely spelling mistakes, and (2) for the products, e.g. "lemon flavour socks", and then look at the first ten or so results in some detail. Are they high pagerank sites on Google? If they're, say, 7 or higher, you'll have a hard time displacing them. If they're large companies, or in a lucrative business (e.g. lawyers looking for people with scars from lemon picking seeking workers' compensation!) you won't compete well. Look also at who is sponsoring ads.

Of course, you can repeat this on Yahoo and MSN.

If you pick a name that has very few matches, but is memorable, $1500 is not very much to pay.

Some other useful Google-related links:

• Google AdSense advertising programme;
• Webmaster Eyes to see the Google rank of individual links on a page;
• an unofficial google adsense FAQ
• 
  
  I'm saying all this because it seems to me that more people follow links or use search engines than type stuff speculatively into the address bar.
  

don't! (also paul graham's advice)

[same_old_story]

not worth it.
but if you will consider his opinion more throughly:

paul graham's take on it.

chose a different name

[bigbigbison]

Don't bother paying a premium for a domain name. If you have a good service or website, people will find it. Did a wierd name or unusual spelling hurt google or flickr or deliscious (however it is spelled)? Remember you are asking this question on a site that is probably one of the hardest to say and get people who haven't heard of it to understand what you are saying "slash dot dot org" but people seem to find the site ok. Getting people to your site is the hardest part no matter what the domain name is. Once you get them there, then the battle is half won. If they find your site, people will either a)bookmark it, b)remember the url and type it in again, c)remember how they got there, and the wosrt case senario d)not be able to remember the name or how they got there in which case a "valuable" domain name won't be all that usefull because there is no accounting for what people will or will not remember.
Regardless, once again all that depends on people actually getting to the site in teh first place. The days of people randomly typing in urls is over if it ever existed in the first place (sure my firends and I used to type in things just to see if that existed, but we were just curious, not looking to use the sites we found). It is a cliche, but there is a great deal of truth to it too: "If you build it, they will come."

If you do go ahead and buy, some business advice

[jezor]

I won't comment on the business issue (if it's worth it for you to have that name, the price is actually fairly reasonable), but make sure you document the deal properly. Sign an agreement for the sale that requires the seller to go through the appropriate registrar's process, and make sure you don't pay until the process is moving along. Make sure the seller says it has the rights to the name, and that it will cover your costs (i.e. indemnify you) if someone comes to sue you because the seller was actually an illegal cybersquatter. Also, make sure that, as soon as the name is switched, the seller takes all reference to it out of its print and digital materials.

You can see a really old article I wrote about the process on the BusinessWeek Web site. I hope it's helpful. {Jonathan}

I saved this from a Slashdot post long ago....

[jafiwam]

I am not sure what document it comes from, but:

Paragraph 4(c), which the "respondant" can use to defend the domain name, seems pretty easy to satisfy:

(i) before any notice to you of the dispute, your use of, or demonstrable preparations to use, the domain name or a name corresponding to the domain name in connection with a bona fide offering of goods or services; or

(ii) you (as an individual, business or other organization) have been commonly known by the domain name, even if you have acquired no trademark or service mark rights; or

(iii) you are making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue.

Note that this is a logical-OR. If you can claim any of the above you get to keep your domain. This guy didn't fall under any of the categories.

Note paragraph (iii) can be partially established by having a "price" negotiation with the squatter. Meaning you can prove they wanted to gain commercially by using a name similar to your trademark or common name.

Thus, using the negotiation itself against them in domain name arbitration to take it away from them. If everybody tied these guys up in arbitration and court all the time they wouldn't find squatting profitable anymore. I am sure that those "spam offers" of "you could make thousands on your domain name!" are for that purpose. To establish a foothold.

How important is the name?

[Kelson]

No easy answers, just some things to consider:

• Are you dead set on this name? Would you be OK with another name, or a variation on this one?
• Does it have to be .com? Would a .net or .<country> domain work as well? (But avoid .biz or .info if you're going to us it in email. It seems like 90% of these domains in use are run by spammers, so your mail will look suspicious.)
• Do you think getting this exact domain will gain you the discoverability, memorability, etc. to make up for that $1500?
• If you stick with this company name, but choose a different domain name to start with (you can always add aliases later), are you willing to take the chance that the current owner will jack up the price in the future?

Why aren't all these posts redundant?

[Blakey Rat]

Ok, yes, we know Slashdot hates domain squatters, yes, yes, but stop posting the same damned thing over and over again! And moderators, stop moderating every single goddamned one to +5! We only need to see it once, everything after that is redundant.

Re:Why aren't all these posts redundant?

[mysqlrocks]

Actually, my post was the first one to say something other than simply "screw the domain squatters" and provide some alternative suggestions. Look at the time on the comments. You'll see other comments that were posted after mine but appear before mine because they were responses to earlier comments. So, why don't you ask the moderators to mark someone else's comment redundant, eh? I've had my posts marked as "redundant" before when I was the first person to make a particular point because of the way the slashdot threading works.

Re:Why aren't all these posts redundant?

[Blakey Rat]

Yeah. Of all the "domain squatting sucks" posts (5 on the front page, as of this count, none of them marked "redundant"), I suppose yours is above average. But god I get sick of reading the same goddamned thing over and over and over again... especially when I can tell from the question that I'll be reading them over and over and over again. It's obvious that the Slashdot moderation system doesn't work, or at least doesn't work well.

But seriously, if people don't have anything relevant to add to the question, then they shouldn't post. And if they do, moderators should mark it either off-topic or redundant, as needed. The question is, "what's the best way to negotiate a price?" not "please Slashdot, tell me how much you hate domain squatters for the ten-thousandth time, please!?"

Re:If you do go ahead and buy, some business advic

[strongv]

You might want to update this article. 1998 ? Things have changed A LOT since this article was written. LMK if you want some insight on that.

domains 4 sale

[strongv]

Most people don't like the fact that they have to pay anything extra for something they COULD have gotten cheaper. We all like to go to the discount store because we don't like that we have to pay higher prices for a shirt with a little label on it when it's "just the same" as the other shirt without the label. What about the land someone buys to build their home on ? Do they cry over the fact that the person who bought it before paid next to nothing or that the realtor takes a % of the transaction and pockets it. We all live with markups, broker fees and the reality of economics. If you don't like paying premium for a Polo shirt go to walmart. If you don't want to pay premium for a nice property, go buy a card board box.

Way off base

[Da_Big_G]

Most of the comments here are way off. You make no mention of what the domain is currently used for or what the current owner has planned or in the works. It may be that they already paid a designer/programmer $1500 (or more!) for development work.

Even assuming (like most of the responses) that the domain is not being used *at all*, the current owner got there first and as long as the domain didn't conflict with a trademark at the time of registration and wasn't registered for the purpose of exploiting someone else's existing trademark, there's no way to get it in UDRP. Even if you go register a trademark now, since their registration will predate your trademark's issue date, you can't win. IANAL, so ask a real one if you don't believe me.

My advice: drop the cash on it now because domain prices have only been and will only continue to go up. Try offering $1k and see what they say. If your site can't make the $1500 back in a relatively short period of time your business model is flawed and/or you should come up with a different name.

Re:If you do go ahead and buy, some business advic

[jezor]

It's not something I can update there, given that the site belongs to BusinessWeek. I'm aware how much has changed (most notably the leap from a single registrar to many of them) but the concepts (research the procedure; document the process; consider the followup) remain fairly valid, I think. I appreciate the offer

Other considerations

[Webwork]

1. Type-in traffic: If the domain is a naturally descriptive phrase - MiamiHotels.com - you will benefit from steady type-in traffic. For every type-in visitor, and they can be considerable in a world of 100s of millions who are online - that's one less click you have to pay for via AdWords, etc. 2. Type-in traffic II: If the domain has a baseline of traffic you will have an "insurance policy" against search engine results volatility, that is, one day you rank and the next day you tank in the search engine. 3. Memorability as brandability: What's branding about? Lots of things, but foremost you want to be remembered - by association. Which is the easier path to remembrance: BostonPlumber.com or BobsPlumbingServicesLLC.com? My vote is on . . . (I'm sure you can guess). 4. If you follow 1-3 then you can see that certain domain names have inherent value and some people were savvy enough (and old enough = had a credit card at the time) to register some pretty neat domain names. Chances are, if you (the naysayers) had the chance and the foresight, you likely would have registered a few yourself. Of course, the purists never would have done that as they knew some day Google would love them and their website - briefly - until the latest algo change. 5. SEO as the alternative remedy? Ya, like that's going to work for the long haul. Especially when everyone and their brother is playing the same game and the search engines are hard at work in an effort to make SEO irrelevant. 6. Overpriced? Inflated? So what? Don't get your shorts all bunched up in a knot. If it makes you feel that you have greater meaning in this world - that you have STRONG opinions - great. OTOH, feel free to devote that energy and attention to something that might really matter. If the guy/gal holding the domain is a bum then a bum's karma will be their lot. Why make your karmic lot that of the whiner, the self-righteous, the judge? Move on. Somebody holds a domain for a cruddy little links page. You got time for that as an issue? (Just kidding, of course, on this point. You can labor about whatever gets you torqued. :-P ) 7. OMG - They're doing nothing with the domain! It's parked! Ummmm, ya, but if you notice there's a lot going on in the parking industry. More and more they're turning those domain names into mini-portals. Almost as good as 791/2% of the domains that are actually developed, at least in terms of delivering something that the casual user might find useful. Truth is, it either gets down to a business decision or a moral/ethical/political issue. I cannot recommend too many political issues for a business, as there is ultimately no answer that will work for everyone, across all ethnicities, religions, cultures, etc. Not to say it's not a legitimate area of focus, just that if one labors to make the politically correct decision on all possible issues chances are that one will never get down to the business of doing business. That's not bad if mom and day are paying the bills, but those days are numbered. Choose the domain name and pay the price if the domain name has some traffic, is easily brandable, is memorable, works nicely on business cards and letterhead and bills, AND it's worth it to you for those and other business reasons.

All TLDs are a waste of time

[Vorondil28]

For the most part I consider general-purpose TLDs a waste of time.

Man, all TLDs are a waste of time. Real men use IP addresses.

Not only do you save the registration costs, but you ensure a far more educated clientele. :-P

DON'T DO IT

[vince1]

I'm considering paying for a 'premium' domain name...

I highly recommend that you never purchase domains offered for sale for anything more than the price of registration. When you do, it promotes and rewards cyber squatting.

Cyber squatters offer no value added service by registering domains and then charging large amounts of money for them. It is a dirty business and they are just industry leaches.

Read how this domain was stolen after over 5 years of ownership by cyber squatters. If people did not reward them, they would not have profitable motivation for this behavior.