I don't know about everyone else, but it pisses me off when I go to buy concert tickets and some scalper has bought them all up. So if I want to see the show, I have to pay two- or three-times the price just because he got there before I did. And he never had any intent to *see* the show.
The same way with squatting. Once the internet became the *thing* whole hordes of these miscreants were reserving everything from diarhea.com to bigtits.com, just waiting for someone who acutally *needs* the domain to come along and need it. Many friends of mine have had to pay BIG $$ to get the most mundane domain from someone who never had any intent on ever using the domain.
The problem is big and a solution is unsure. My domain, for example, has been sitting unused for about the past four months waiting for an opportunity for me to upload content. But my intent is there. If someone *really* wants to buy my domain, they could have it for the internic fee.
As for Linus wanting to protect his name, I'm all for it. He has a genuine interest in seeing that all *commercial* uses of his name and trademarks are legitimate. This cannot apply to parodies, since even copyrighted material may be parodied under fair use (in good taste, of course.) I think that if anyone were able to go and actually reserve a domain with linux in it (that is, if the squatters haven't reserved all possible purmutations by now) then Linus wouldn't have a problem unless the site were somehow harmful to Linux and its perpetuation.
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I don't know about everyone else, but it pisses me off when I go to buy concert tickets and some scalper has bought them all up. So if I want to see the show, I have to pay two- or three-times the price just because he got there before I did. And he never had any intent to *see* the show.
The same way with squatting. Once the internet became the *thing* whole hordes of these miscreants were reserving everything from diarhea.com to bigtits.com, just waiting for someone who acutally *needs* the domain to come along and need it. Many friends of mine have had to pay BIG $$ to get the most mundane domain from someone who never had any intent on ever using the domain.
The problem is big and a solution is unsure. My domain, for example, has been sitting unused for about the past four months waiting for an opportunity for me to upload content. But my intent is there. If someone *really* wants to buy my domain, they could have it for the internic fee.
As for Linus wanting to protect his name, I'm all for it. He has a genuine interest in seeing that all *commercial* uses of his name and trademarks are legitimate. This cannot apply to parodies, since even copyrighted material may be parodied under fair use (in good taste, of course.) I think that if anyone were able to go and actually reserve a domain with linux in it (that is, if the squatters haven't reserved all possible purmutations by now) then Linus wouldn't have a problem unless the site were somehow harmful to Linux and its perpetuation.
My $.02.