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Domain Resale for Fun and Profit (?)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the playing-the-name-game dept.

Ant wrote in to send us an amusing piece running over at wired about domain name hogs selling their domains on eBay and the likes. Not a bad little piece, but its pretty amusing the read some of the domain names that people seem to think will be worth money.

8 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. Not Surprising by hanway · · Score: 3
    Yeah, it's stupid, but it's easy to see why people try to sell stoopiddomain.com on eBay:

    • People are both greedy and stupid. Some are dumb enough to fall for Make Money Fast chain letters. Others believe that doing everything their Amway sponsor tells them to do will make them rich.

    • There have been specific examples of lots of money being paid for domains. Unfortunately for some, it actually takes an IQ above 80 to figure out why some names have value and others don't.

    • Network Solutions' payment system with its grace period and eBay's listing policy and new user credit mean that you can put in a claim on a name and attempt to auction it without having to shell out a dime. A programmer with a little time on his hands could probably put together some scripts to automate trolling the whois database for random combinations of dictionary words, creating new eBay accounts, and posting auctions. No expenditures required, and the slight possibility that a greater fool will come along and actually buy a domain and put a few dollars in your pocket.
  2. some people's kids ... by arthurs_sidekick · · Score: 4
    What I can't believe is the number of people quoted who say "people don't understand how valuable this domain name is, it's worth so much!"

    Oh come on! domain names, like anything else, are worth what people are willing to pay for them. Diamonds are valuable because deBeers keeps the supply line clogged, not because they're really scarce, and if people weren't willing to accept the stupid idea that an engagement ring should be a) bought at all and b) cost you at least two months salary (!!), diamonds wouldn't be worth much (apart from their industrial applications).

    If nobody's willing to pay for them, they're worthless. These people have gotten the idea that the 'net and anything related to it is just a gold mine waiting to be tapped, and can't believe that you could do something related to it and not make a quick few million.

    Man, the capacity for self-deception in some people is to be marvelled at.

    My capacity for going on rants today is too ...

    --
    "Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
  3. Re:Buy/sell property/domains for profit? No diff. by Eric+Savage · · Score: 3

    No, having a lisence plate that says FORD is not the same as having FORD.com. One is a useless personal id, the other is a common destination that would cause confusion. The point of trademarking is to avoid "first come first serve" type tactics, and brand name confusion. Nobody can start a car company named Ford because that would cause harm to thier reputation. If you have a legal trademark (which is not just registering it, but using it), you should be entitled to some protection, and domain names should be protected in this manner.

    --

    This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
  4. Linux-based domain squatters by fizbin · · Score: 3

    Try, sometime, doing up a whois on "The Linux Group" - I just wish I knew how to get WHOIS to not abort the search after a certain number of entries get found. I also wonder where they get the cash to hold onto all these names, since I don't see them marketing these domains to sell them.

    Anyone in the NYC area want to go pay them a house call and find out who they really are?

    Among the things they're sitting on:
    ENTERPRISELINUX.COM
    LINUXDNS.ORG
    DEBIANLINUX.COM
    LINUXADMIN.COM
    FREELINUX.COM

    and, apparently just for fun:
    ANTISTATICCARPET.ORG (and .NET)

  5. Re:Buy/sell property/domains for profit? No diff. by ethereal · · Score: 3

    Well, it doesn't cause consumer confusion if you are the Ford Bread company (I made that one up), the Ford Advertising Agency (I think this is real), or if your name happens to be Ford Prefect :) In the non-Internet world, you can have the same name as long as you aren't in the same market. I don't have any problem with corporations suing over domains that are deliberately intended to cause consumer confusion - for example, if I happened to get ford.com and put up a realistic car sales site which happened to sell my cheap Ford lookalikes. But I don't agree with companies that bring suits against sites which are clearly not causing any consumer confusion - veronica.org, ajax.org, and so on. In that case there is no consumer confusion - you can tell immediately that this isn't the site you wanted, and you retype the name and leave.

    --

    Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and

  6. They'll lose it when someone trademarks the name.. by cholko · · Score: 4

    Simple.. Cyber-Squatters are on the wrong side of case-law. If any big corporation whats their domain name that corporation only has to:

    1. Create a product with that name or catch phrase.
    2. Market it.
    3. Trademark the phrase
    4. Tell NSI to shut-down the offending name
    5. Go to court to and nail the cyber-squatter.

    I for one don't think people should be allowed to soak up domain names for profit. If they don't put a domain name to use they should lose it.

    --
    . * Did aliens forget to remove your anal probe?
  7. It's not the domain that's important by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    It's the branding. Look, if you could time travel back to 19xx and buy up the domain amazon.com would it be worth millions today? No. In fact "amazon" has nothing to do with books that I can tell. It's memorable, and it makes people think of a certain company because they have built the brand. Now books.com is another matter. It's something you'd be likely to try, like how you just type www.[whatever].com and see if what you think comes up. But you don't need to be books.com to sell books. Now if you already have an established name that people will be looking for online (www.coke.com) then it is important to get that name. slashdot.org by any other name would still be news for nerds. If it was named newsfornerds.org then slashdot.org would be a worthless domain name. ebay.com is another example. WTF does "ebay" mean? (That's a rhetorical question.)

  8. Odd little story by alkali · · Score: 3
    I have an unpronounceable and uncommon four-letter last name of Slavic origin -- call it "xxxx" -- and recently registered the xxxx.net domain for use as my personal site. Only weeks later someone had registered xxxx.com and offered it for sale for $3000. I strongly suspect that they won't find any takers unless I decide for some reason that I really need it. (On the other hand, I have heard that almost all four letter dot-com domains which are plausibly words have been registered, so perhaps it will have some value to someone who really feels they need a short domain name.)

    Assuming -- and this is kind of a big "if" -- the xxxx.com holders were motivated to register the name based on my registration of xxxx.net, does anyone have any idea how they found out about my registering xxxx.net? I didn't put up any content for some time after registering the site, so they clearly didn't find it by accident -- they must have (had?) some systematic way of searching such things out.