An idea I've been tossing around: What if domains cost $100 if more than one person wants it? The idea here is to squeeze the squatters with 000s of domains.
Whenever I want a domain, most of the ones I want are taken. Not by people who are making use of it, but by people who are squatting in hopes of extorting anyone who would actually use the domain to produce value.
I'd actually be happy if Verisign or any other private company or any government extracted such an unfair price for useful domains because it would free up so many more useful domains for use.
Edit: I'd love to hear good arguments against this, I'm partly throwing this out there to see others thoughts.
I have doubts how this could work. Let's say, I register the domain name A for my personal use. So far, nobody else wanted it. One day I get an email from somebody claiming to want the domain as well. He makes me an offer: he would step down if I paid him $30.
I'm neither willing to pay $30, nor $100 dollars for my personal domain. $10/year is already enough, so I'd probably have to decline and risk losing my domain (because he could simply buy it for $100). I'm sure there are many scenarios where someone could even buy your domain (assuming you're not willing to pay $100), and damage your reputation (and since it is the Internet, sueing them can be impossible if he is outside of the us and getting back the domain name through a court would be way more expensive then $100).
Now, another scenario is when a domain broker bought domain B before company X does. The domain broker paid the usual price because nobody wanted it at that time. Now, company X wants to buy that domain and offers the register $100 for it. The domain broker is asked if they still want it for $100 by the domain register. They would agree knowing that they can sell the domains for a lot more than $100 to company X.
I don't see how this system could help anybody but maybe I just didn't understand your proposal right.
You're talking about game theory as it relates to pricing / auction games. This is a really well-studied topic, and indeed there are much more efficient ways to match value to demand.
Squeezing out squatters also squeezes out anyone without means from domains they're not using for commercial purposes.
I already spend too much money keeping things online. Of the handful of domains I don't do much with, one is just for my primary email account. The same name is registered on other TLDs so there would probably be some demand for it. Am I making a "useful" enough use of it? There isn't even a web page on it. Am I "producing" enough "value"?
Or am I expected to lose a domain because someone else could use it to make money? Or simply because they could afford to spend more money keeping their stuff online than I do? No, that guy can go fuck himself.
It's a limited shared resource, and if someone else would do something with it that's worth the fairly reasonable sum of $8/mo, when it's not worth that to you, then yeah, I'd rather they have it, especially if it also means that good names aren't all camped on by rent seekers who do literally nothing with the domain. That said, I think we should just price all .com's higher, regardless of demand for specific domains.
We can leave other tld's for things that aren't worth $8/month to their creators.
The thing about seeking rent, is that's domain names are not a limited resource, even .COM. Domain squatters are seeking rent, but not in a traditional sense of a limited amount of land.
A creative individual can come up with a new, memorable name. If you have a service about pets, then pets.com doesn't have to be your name.
For example, a friend really wanted [firstname][lastname].com, but there happened to be a hugely popular singer with this name, so he went with 1[firstname].com, resulting in a short, catchy registration.
In terms of land, you can't just create it (and in terms of reclaiming land from the sea for example, that land is considered capital).
Sure, there are a nearly unbounded number of .com domain names, but there absolutely is a limited number of memorable, reasonable length domain names in .com, which is what I and everyone else are referring to when we talk about this problem. If there wasn't, you wouldn't have domain squatting.
One's target audience generally has a harder time picking up and remembering completely made up names.
If it were worth $8 per month to someone else, but not to forgottenpass, that person could just pay forgottenpass $8 per month (or some lump sum equivalent). That this does not happen suggests one of the following possibilities:
1. The domain name is not worth $8/month to someone else
2. The domain name is worth $8/month to forgottenpass
A simpler deterrent would be to linearly increase cost of the next domain you buy. This is the opposite of bulk discounts, and should make squatting unfeasible (at least not in large numbers).
I think this is exactly how it should work. Perhaps the first 5-10 are normal priced and then increase at some f(x) from there. I think others made good points about having a few for future or personal reasons like email or whatever. But I don't see a great reason why aside from squatting or having tons of companies why someone should own 200x .coms. Though I don't know if it should be per domain per tld or just plain per domain for the counts
How would you decide that two buyers are the same entity? Unless you are going to force people to upload photo IDs or something, I don't see how this could work reliably.
How would you envision that working? If people started asking for a domain you own, you would get billed more because of it? Or would you have to register your desire for a name and give people a chance to say, 'no, i want that, too!'
Either way sounds bad for a legit company just trying to set up their own site, as it gives competitors an opportunity to cost them some money.
If you had something else is mind, please share more...
The reason squatters work is in fact, the dispute resolution cost. A friend of mine passed away, and along with him went control of the domain of a site I was a part of. He had, prior to his death, left a note that me and another friend were supposed to keep the site running. And I own two of the other TLDs of this domain.
Domain squatting is supposedly against ICANN rules, and we have a clear brand we're trying to protect.
So when it was squatted, and listed for somewhere around $1,000, I figured this was an open and shut case with ICANN. Until I found out that filing a dispute would cost me even more. Dispute resolution seems to be offered up to a couple of different organizations, all of which charge exorbitant rates to examine your case.
So squatters have a massive range of profit margin they can make, as long as they keep the prices under the ICANN dispute resolution costs.
When you mean "squatted" - you mean that you (or someone) let the domain expire and forgot the registration fee.
That's not "squatting" or stealing. You just forgot to renew it or have a backup card on file or transfer the domain after his death.
You make it sound like someone came in and stole it when the onus is technically on you to maintain control of this domain. You can register a domain for multiple years if the domain is important in case of an unexpected accident (or death).
Unfortunately, yes, we lost control of the domain because nobody was able to secure a renewal for it. The problem is that after that, it was sold to a third party, not the registrar, who listed it for an exorbitant price. They have no interest in the domain other than selling it to us, and it has little to no value to anyone else.
There should be an easy way through which you can complain against the squatters online. Maybe Google should act as a mediator here as they can blacklist any domain from their searches and thus hold about as much power as the registrars/ICANN.
In any case, what happened afterwards? Did you get back your domain or is it still being squatted?
It's still being squatted. I own other TLDs for it we can operate the site off of. I'm hoping eventually they abandon the domain, since it's unlikely anyone else will want it.
Did you try complaining to ICANN about it via any means? An alternative is to throw a DMCA on them through Google, that's much faster (though its intended use is reporting of copyright violations, not sure how it'll work for reporting of squatting of domain names).
If I remember correctly, domains used to cost around $78 to register.
When the price dropped dramatically, there was discussion on Slashdot about the effects. Most thought it was great ("hey, I, a poor college student, can get a domain now!"), but there was speculation it would lead to more domain parking.
The best way to eliminate domain squatting is to make domains non-transferrable. If you own a domain you shouldn't be able to transfer it to anyone. The only way to "transfer" a domain should be to return it to the domain registry where it may be purchased by any interested party at market price determined by auction.
What if I register a domain with a shell corp and a straw "contact" who is an employee of Mossack Fonseca (or whatever)? If I want to transfer the domain I just sell the shell corp.
Then you have to pay an extra $50 or $100 a year to maintain your corporation per domain, which reduces the number of domains you can own with a fixed amount of expenses.
No, that would just cause a new form of corporation to arise in some jurisdiction that costs a dollar per year to maintain, that's limited to owning a single domain name.
Given the way transfers work, that would also mean you couldn't move a domain from one registrar to another. So if you had a domain that anyone else would want, and your registrar decided to raise their prices or change their policies, you'd be unable to leave without losing your domain.
Domain registrars that engaged in holding domains hostage and increasing prices would probably eventually go out of business.
Even if that ended up not being the case, we'd have to fix how domains are transferred between registrars - same as how telephone numbers can be transferred between telcos but you can't sell your telephone number to someone.
This topic is relevant to my interests. I've googled around a little bit on research on the topic of eliminating squatters, but haven't come up with much. I'd appreciate pointers to papers if anyone has them.
Coase theorem applies if there are a) zero or sufficiently low transaction costs and b) if parties are able to bargain.
If domains have to be returned back to the registrar b) doesn't apply. Auctions ensure that a) doesn't apply either.
Furthermore, adding a 7 day waiting period before returned domains become available will further ensure that parties cannot trade domains between each other but must purchase from the registrar which makes owning a domain and squatting on it for purposes of selling it pointless.
Right, but both (a) and (b) do apply to the existing system where domain names can be traded. What Coase theorem says is that the resulting allocation will be efficient, regardless of how you do the initial allocation. I.e. it's irrelevant whether people pay squatters to get the domain names they want or ICAAN directly via auctions.
I'll give you the names you want for free. But you have to change your DNS settings to point to my cache servers. Or follow my instructions how to set up your own root and cache and/or auth nameservers.
As someone who's personal domain is my own name, I highly dislike this idea. It hosts my email identity and personal cloud, and would be a pain (and insult) to give up.
And I've had requests for it. Quite a lot of requests, even though it's not a very common name. What would follow, $100 moving to $1000, $1000 moving to $10000? Offer me $100k and I'll not give it up. For companies that own a trademark, this would also be an issue, because trademarks are not general, but product specific, see nissan.com
Too bad, the owner of Nissan Computers had to go through a lot of hardships[1], just because his family name happened to be the same as that of a crony capitalist.
Such stories make me sad, especially since there are extremely few who could empathize with those who suffered and even understand the problem faced by them. I really hope there are people in the US who would support Mr. Uzi Nissan.
I think the best argument is that I don't often have trouble finding domain names available for normal registration. Raising the price only benefits richer people with less imagination.
> An idea I've been tossing around: What if domains cost $100 if more than one person wants it? The idea here is to squeeze the squatters with 000s of domains.
So they dump all their crap, no resale value names that don't bring in more than $100 per year, as opposed to ones that don't make more than $10 per year.
As for non-"domain squatters", it seems like a great way to fuck with someone; just claim you want their domain and force them to cough up $100 or lose it.
This idea - which seems to be based on nothing more than bitterness that everyone in the world didn't sit back and wait for you to have first pick of names - is so transparently nonsensical that I find it hard to believe you are serious.
> Whenever I want a domain, most of the ones I want are taken.
You should have bought them first then, shouldn't you.
> Not by people who are making use of it, but by people who are squatting in hopes of extorting anyone who would actually use the domain to produce value.
Who are you to define value? Where people own 1000s of domains, they are always parked and bringing in money for the owner. Their profitability is the reason they are registered.
Who are you to decide that's not a valid way to make a living from domains? At least they're not spamming.
> I'd actually be happy if Verisign or any other private company or any government extracted such an unfair price
I'm sure you would, because you imagine you'd be a winner in such a situation, unfairly appropriating someone else's property.
> free up so many more useful domains for use.
There are literally millions of possible domain names that are unregistered. If your first preference is taken, do what everyone else does without complaint and think of another name, or pick a different extension, of which there are hundreds now.
Whenever I want a domain, most of the ones I want are taken. Not by people who are making use of it, but by people who are squatting in hopes of extorting anyone who would actually use the domain to produce value.
I'd actually be happy if Verisign or any other private company or any government extracted such an unfair price for useful domains because it would free up so many more useful domains for use.
Edit: I'd love to hear good arguments against this, I'm partly throwing this out there to see others thoughts.