The Man Squatting On Millions of Dollars Worth of Domain Names 175
Jason Koebler writes For the last 21 years, Gary Millin and his colleagues at World Accelerator have been slowly accumulating a veritable treasure trove of seemingly premium generic domain names. For instance, Millin owns, has sold, or has bartered away world.com, usa.com, doctor.com, lawyer.com, comic.com, email.com, cyberservices.com, and more than 1,000 other domain names that can be yours (including yours.com, which he owns), as long as you've got the startup idea to back it up. Millin doesn't sell domain names anymore, instead, he trades them to startups in exchange for a stake in the company.
IOW, he's a rentseeker. (Score:3, Insightful)
What has he created? What has his labor produced? Or is he just a landlord?
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What has he created? What has his labor produced? Or is he just a landlord?
How many people in the late 90's were anticipating that .com rush? So the guy may not have created much, but at least he did something hazardous at the time you didn't see coming.
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Cite please? I've never seen "free" .coms that didn't have huge gimmick terms attached to them.
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Re:IOW, he's a rentseeker. (Score:5, Informative)
He's not an investor - he's a squatter who just claimed a generic name before anyone else needed it. He doesn't need it either, he just holds it ransom.
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We've been through this for 20+ years. The counterargument is people can use these name now that otherwise wouldn't be able to. Long term it's a wash.
I met Gary 20 years go, he's a decent guy. Although I haven't talked to him in over a decade he was always a man of his word.
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The only real counter argument that I've seen is that there have been very few good suggestions for an alternative system. Although there have been some, they tend to get pushed aside for the sake of maintaining status quo.
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I strongly question that idea. His business plan is to essentiality only allow people to earn a living if they keep giving him a cut of their income. That is morally at the same level as a protection racket, as in they won't cause you harm and allow you to earn a living, if you keep giving them money.
And no, thats not the same as a lot of other businesses, because a racket is defined as: "a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem"
In fact your argument he is a decent
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I strongly question that idea. His business plan is to essentiality only allow people to earn a living if they keep giving him a cut of their income. That is morally at the same level as a protection racket, as in they won't cause you harm and allow you to earn a living, if you keep giving them money.
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about him squatting on domain names. One one hand he had the foresight to invest his money in something that may not have amounted to anything. It's really no different than a person buying a commodity when it's cheap and plentiful, then selling it when the price goes up. But I also see the other side of the argument too. The internet has become ubiquitous.
However you are being a drama queen. You don't need a specific web address in order to be in business. It is noth
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You sound like you're trying to defend the cybersquatter, but all you're really doing is condemning boards of directors too.
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What's wrong with being a landlord?
It's not edgy, disruptive and agile.
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Your a snivelling anonymous coward so shut up.
New TLDs will hopefully end this practice (Score:5, Insightful)
I really hope that all the new TLDs will end this domain squatting pest and diminish domain names. Squatters add nothing of value. Only transaction costs to online businesses.
Re:New TLDs will hopefully end this practice (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter. The domain names are only worth whatever someone will pay for them. Sure, he's made millions in the past with some high profile sales. But that's in the past.
How much do you think gouda.com is worth?
What kind of startup would trade part of themselves for gouda.com?
I looked through my bookmarks and I didn't find a single instance that would be considered "generic". The closest was amazon. Which has nothing to do with the Amazon or Amazons.
Re:New TLDs will hopefully end this practice (Score:5, Funny)
oh gosh! mixlebin.com is still available. i better get it!
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The practice is so widespread, new software can never be named something practical and descriptive. It's always gotta be some name from left field. I came across one recently that was so bad, the website didn't even say what the software did! All it says are buzzwords with a link on how to install. They want you to install the software before you know what it does.
Sigh ... Millennials.
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Mixelbin?!?! C'mon man, get with the times!!! All the kewl kids are dropping vowels like a bad habit.
Much better to go for mxlbn, it's way cooler.
Ironically (I believe that is the correct use of the term), mxlbn.com is actually available as a domain name as well. At least as of 4:18pm P.S.T.
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Unless the name ends in an "r" without a vowel immediately proceeding it, nobody cares.
Re: New TLDs will hopefully end this practice (Score:2)
"And what exactly does Gryzzl do? Itâ(TM)s a cloud for your cloud. I have no idea."
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It doesn't matter. The domain names are only worth whatever someone will pay for them. Sure, he's made millions in the past with some high profile sales. But that's in the past.
At best, domain squatters are exacerbating the problem of shitty naming of open source projects. That is literally the best possible case, the least possible damage they could be doing. Isn't that alone worthy of stringing them up by their entrails?
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What's gouda worth .... that's a good question so let's run some quick math just to see what it might be worth. I'll use a name that i owned for a while.
first, it's a solid fun name, I happen also to have a fun and solid domain name
that's 48000 visitors for year, of which I got about 9000 visitors to click google paid about 650.00
that level has been consistent for years.
so 650 x 10 = low end is about 6500
I get offers all the time, best do far is about 18,000.00
gouda is much more fun sounding so it's got to
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A friend of mine is in the generic domain name business. The point wasn't to get a generic domain name for your company. The point was that a surprisingly large number of people would type their search phrase into the URL bar of the browser, instead of into the search field or going to Google or Yahoo and typing it there. So a large nu
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UK domains tend to be [name].co.uk, and there's a tidy business for the people running *.uk.co
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How much do you think gouda.com is worth? What kind of startup would trade part of themselves for gouda.com?
Plenty of people out there want to buy names like these for commercial purposes: rockingchairs.com, hammocks.com, www.wine.com, www.petfood.com
Re:New TLDs will hopefully end this practice (Score:4, Interesting)
What kind of startup would trade part of themselves for gouda.com?
A cheese wholesaler?
If I wanted cheese, I wouldn't type in "gouda.com" in the hope that it took me somewhere, and I am not sure I would trust the result if I did; I'd Google for "cheese".
...... the value in simple generic names is not in bookmarks it is people type them in and try them and they are easy to remember
I never bother to remember website names. They don't mean shit, especially with all the new TLDs. Having found a website by Googling I bookmark it (with a name of my choice) to find it again. Eg, I frequently go to a website of a certain local builders merchant to order stuff, and do you know what - I havn't got a clue what the name of their website is, never even glanced at it. Might as well be called 123.456.321.654 for all I care.
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My guess is that the value of 'generic' domain names dropped considerably when search engines matured. Does anyone actually type a generic domain name before doing a search and is there any search engine value to a generic name?
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My guess is that the value of 'generic' domain names dropped considerably when search engines matured. Does anyone actually type a generic domain name before doing a search and is there any search engine value to a generic name?
No, but I do look at the domain name before I click the link in the search results. It can help spot malware sites, etc.
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When you want to get groceries, do you drive around randomly looking for signs that say "grocery store" or do you go straight to the street address of the local H-E-B, Kroger, Publix, or whatever?
The same applies to web sites. When you want to order a laptop, you check the sites of businesses you know that sell laptops (Dell, HP, Amazon, NewE
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If I wanted cheese, I wouldn't type in "gouda.com" in the hope that it took me somewhere, and I am not sure I would trust the result if I did; I'd Google for "cheese".
If you wanted cheese, you wouldn't look for a gouda.
Re: New TLDs will hopefully end this practice (Score:2)
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I know no .biz anywhere. Some other new TLD, like .info, but no .biz.
Re: New TLDs will hopefully end this practice (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a well established way to deal with this problem in the case of real estate: property taxes based on assed value. This discourages people from holding onto something of value which they are not developing.
Explain, please, who has the relevant taxing authority for Internet 'property'?
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For all the country code top level domains the answer is obviously the appropriate country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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There is a well established way to deal with this problem in the case of real estate: property taxes based on assed value. This discourages people from holding onto something of value which they are not developing.
Explain, please, who has the relevant taxing authority for Internet 'property'?
The same organizations who control and sell the domains under the TLD to begin with. The problem isn't authority, it's valuation. It's really hard to assess the value of a domain.
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An interesting idea but I don't think it's practical.
Setting a pre-committed value for an asset like that is extremely difficult. Particularly if it's linked to a legitimate business that might grow rapidly in value.
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What about .io, .fm, .in, ...?
How to fuck this guy over (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Generate startup
2) Obtain domain name for stake in startup
3) Declare bankruptcy
4) Buy substantially all assets (including domain name) of startup.
5) Repeat
Re:How to fuck this guy over (Score:5, Insightful)
"You can no longer buy a domain name from Millin. Instead, he will work with your company (or your idea for a company) to build out a product, then he'll lease or lend you one of his domain names in exchange for partial ownership." (emphasis mine)
Um... (Score:2)
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Are you trying to imply he's doing anything other then rent seeking? If you are you're doing a terrible job at it. How much money is this guy putting up? If the answer isn't "enough to buy his share of partial ownership" then the only thing he brings are the domains he's squatting on. To wit: rent seeking.
No, he's implying the OPs tactic for screwing him over wouldn't work (even if it were legal).
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the rentier economy...
There's always that guy (Score:5, Insightful)
aka the troll on the bridge, whenever a big new industry or platform comes into existence. Someone who's figured out how to seize ownership of an essential piece of the supply chain and then make a mint charging rents, or by selling all or parts of it for 100x what he paid.
Congrat Mr. Millin on being "that guy".
Re:There's always that guy (Score:4, Insightful)
You all do realize that most of the people who made money off of the various 'gold rushes' haven't been prospectors? They've been 'support' people. They guys who sold the food and mules, operated the boats and stores. The poor fools who bought the mules, food and transportation got to hack it out in the backcountry. A few struck it rich. The rest didn't.
Although not associated with automobiles, there is an analogy here.
Re:There's always that guy (Score:5, Insightful)
You all do realize that most of the people who made money off of the various 'gold rushes' haven't been prospectors? They've been 'support' people. They guys who sold the food and mules, operated the boats and stores.
Those guys provided a valuable service: they arranged (or paid) for the goods to be transported west. Domain squatters are interfering with a valuable service.
Although not associated with automobiles, there is an analogy here.
In your gold rush scenario, domain squatters would be people who bought out the stores of all their goods, then opened their own store with prices inflated by around 1,000 percent and up (judging by responses I've got from domain squatters when I've poked at them just to see what kind of assholes they were.) For example, a squatter owns cardot.com, which would obviously be a cool place to put slashcode (or something like it, of course, since slashcode HAHAHAHA) and talk about cars. Well, they want $19,000.00 for it. They've had it for a bunch of years, and they're calling it "CardOT.com" on their squatter page, as if that made any kind of sense whatsoever. So not only are they squatting on a domain that the community could be using, but they don't even know how to sell it because they're a bunch of fucking idiots.
Domain squatters provide nothing of value, and interfere with legitimate activity. They should be rounded up and offered the opportunity to repent before otherwise being fired into the sun.
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That's not how economics works. If you buy all the stores in the area and inflate the prices by 1000%, that presents a business opportunity for someone to open up a new store with prices inflated by 50
Re:There's always that guy (Score:4, Insightful)
You sound so clueless to how business works
No, I know precisely how rent-seeking works. A scarce resource is bought up by an actor working in ill faith, and thus artificially made more scarce for the purpose of driving up prices and thus value.
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That's a perfect analogy for modern day indie game development, too. I guess things stay the same, the names just change.
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"You can no longer buy a domain name from Millin. Instead, he will work with your company (or your idea for a company) to build out a product, then he'll lease or lend you one of his domain names in exchange for ....
....turds and cock
1) BlowMeDailyMillin.com
2) MillinEatMyTrollTurds.com
Millin4Millions.com is not for sale, no matter how much you beg and gobble....
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...except in his case, he realized the value of them, and realized that someone would rent seek them, so he grabbed them to give out to those he figured would use them for something useful.
His behavior is actually preventing the predatory practices that naturally grow out of the current domain registration racket.
And of course, any startup he gives one to can then turn around and sell it if they need the money.
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His behavior is actually preventing the predatory practices that naturally grow out of the current domain registration racket.
Well, no. His behavior is the predatory practice, because he's set himself up as arbiter of who is worthy, and at what price.
I don't hope very many people die in a fire these days, I guess I'm mellowing with age. But domain squatters are on my list, because they're a net drain on society. They contribute nothing of value and they stand in the way of actual accomplishments.
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My point here is that he's charging the same amount for the domains as a default registry charge -- $0. And while doing this, he IS preventing regular squatters from sucking up these domains and turning a profit off them.
But none of that matters much anymore, when you can register domains like nota.democrat if you pay the right registrar the right $$$....
I consider domain registrars for the most part to be a net drain on society. Let's just map unicode to IPv6 and be done with it. Use a search engine ins
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My point here is that he's charging the same amount for the domains as a default registry charge -- $0.
But you're lying. That's not what he's charging. Stop lying. Then you won't be so wrong.
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My point here is that he's charging the same amount for the domains as a default registry charge -- $0.
But you're lying. That's not what he's charging. Stop lying. Then you won't be so wrong.
But I'm not -- he does have other conditions to transfers, but so do the registrars themselves. It's one thing to say I'm incorrect and point at some evidence that shows this (for example, is he also waiting for domains to expire and then gobbling them up, posting them as "for sale" for exorbitant prices? If so, that's a valid point), but it's another to just say I'm intentionally misleading people about it.
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Before you go too harsh on this guy, remember google's several hundred billion dollar market capital is based entirely charging huge per-click ad fees for certain search keywords like "insurance", "hotel" and "doctor." I think it's just supply and demand of marketing
Re:There's always that guy (Score:5, Insightful)
remember google's several hundred billion dollar market capital is based entirely charging huge per-click ad fees for certain search keywords like "insurance", "hotel" and "doctor."
They built the stadium, they get to decide who plays in it and under what terms. But domain squatters didn't build anything. They're just taking advantage of a weakness in the system, to the detriment of everyone else. Google, on the other hand, makes the web useful. There are more sites on the web today than there would be if Google didn't exist. There are less sites on the web today than there would be if domain squatters didn't exist. Therefore, they can FOAD.
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There are less sites on the web today than there would be if domain squatters didn't exist.
A: This sounds like a feature, not a bug.
B: People act like having to pay a couple grand for a desirable domain name is such a travesty. If you're a legitimate business and you can't scrape a chunk of your advertising budget to buy the name you want, you should probably just stick to your brick and mortar.
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A: This sounds like a feature, not a bug.
So you're anti-choice? You're part of the problem.
B: People act like having to pay a couple grand for a desirable domain name is such a travesty.
Yes, and it is. It's bullshit.
If you're a legitimate business and you can't scrape a chunk of your advertising budget to buy the name you want,
Ah yes, the old "the market can bear this malfeasance" argument. It's always shitty, and always used to excuse bad behavior.
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Who cares? They both point potential customers, who use generic keywords, to a vendor. And they both cost millions of dollars. Why is one a ripoff (generic keyword URL seller) and the other completely okay (google)?
You think only builders should get value? What about owners, shouldn't they get something for the valuable assets they have invested in? You should inform landlords around t
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You think only builders should get value? What about owners, shouldn't they get something for the valuable assets they have invested in?
Investors in a building (to use your inept example) are providing the capital that enables the building to be built. But people who buy domain names don't cause the domain names to be built, because domain names aren't built. Obviously, there is no parallel here. These people are not really investors, because they're not investing. They're just buying. They're speculators. And what we know about speculators is that they cause artificial activity in markets which has real-world negative consequences.
Now, tell me what legal or ethical crime the URL owner has committed in wanting millions for his asset?
They are
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That seems wildly unenforceable.
Make the domains per-snailmail-address, and mail a code necessary for use of the domain to whoever registers it. Yeah, ugh. Snail mail. But anyway. At least it makes it more of a PITA to squat, though not impossible.
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So when I want to launch a new domain name, I have to wait for something to come in the mail? Are you fucking serious?
Only the first time. After that, you have a code associated with your address, and any additional domain registrations can be done with that code. When you compare it to having to wait possibly days for a domain squatter to get back to you and then having them make an insulting offer of thousands of dollars for a domain they've literally been sitting on for years and thus it's been costing them money and earning them nothing it seems positively efficient. It also gets out of having to positively confirm you
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USA.com? (Score:2)
A start-up called "usa.com"? It must be for lobbyists: the country is for sale.
Money in them urls (Score:3)
Insurance.com went with some other minor assets for over $35 million in 2010.
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Medicare.com went for just under US $5 million last year. Sex.com and Bet.com were million dollar hits.
Insurance.com went with some other minor assets for over $35 million in 2010.
It figures. Medicare, Porn, Gambling, and the Protection Racket can all afford to pay ridiculous ransoms because its what they do best... take your money!
should be illegal (Score:1)
It should be illegal just like huge domains. If your not using it and don't have a company related you shouldn't be able to own it. They buy them for prices ranging from 99 cents to 7 dollars and then ask hundreds to hundreds of thousands for them Thankfully you can at least get it if you hold the trademark. They held one of my friends domains hostage, the hit counter showed 3 visits since they bought it and are asking 3 grand cuz its his companies name. Records show they bought it for 99 cents, he's cu
should be illegal (Score:1)
They held one of my friends domains hostage, the hit counter showed 3 visits since they bought it and are asking 3 grand cuz its his companies name. Records show they bought it for 99 cents, he's currently in the trademark process.
How did they buy it if it was already registered to your friend?
Or did you mean it wasn't actually 'his', but a domain he wanted?
Re: should be illegal (Score:4, Interesting)
They seen a company had the same name (he didn't have a website) and bought it. They said because it had a popular "key word", which is the loop hole they use to get away with it. This way they can say its not their intentions even though it is. Then they used a shell company to send him emails to try to get his company to buy it where they "the register" is not connected. No other company on all of the inernet is named the same as his (very unique name) which makes it 100% clear they targeted them.
I have something similar happen to me, when I started the trademark process for a company that I founded. Within a week after filing, I was contacted by several "representatives" for obscure TLDs primarily in Asia, who informed me that someone had tried to register $companyname.asia and other TLDs. Being the rightful owner, I was allowed to supersede that registration. For a fee, of course. The initial mail was:
Dear Sir,
We are the department of Asian Domain Registration Service in China. I have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on April 11, 2014 that a company which self-styled "Paest Investment Co. Ltd". were applying to register some Asian countries top-level domain names.
Now we are handling this registration, and after our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company's, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better.
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Hugedomains did the same to me. Managed to get it back off them for $1k. Sneaked on their site (don't keep hitting their whois server/keyword search or the price goes up) and nabbed it when I saw it wasn't too crazy a price. If you wait a while the price drops as well as they calculate the offer price based on whois hits.
It sucks but that's pretty much how a lot of business works. Once you get out of the safe haven of employment law and into the cock-fighting pit that is business to business it is pretty na
Re: should be illegal (Score:4, Informative)
Lot of complaining but no solutions (Score:1)
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Ad block is only a minor annoyance at the moment. When it reaches critical mass, sites will find ways to block the adblock users.
If I'd had a few bucks and no scruples... (Score:2)
Having a bunch of domain names is no sign of "investment" or "savvy" -- it's having a few bucks at the right time.
Not sure if these people have to pay the wholesale renewal price of $15 or not, but it seems to me that you shouldn't be able to squat on names of websites not in use, or vaguely sounding like a website you have in use. I can understand "donaldtrumpbadhair" as a domain Donald Trump might reserve.
I predict we will soon have intelligent agents who take care of our internet connections, and the nam
People Look At Domain Names? (Score:2)
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I don't believe that [keyword].com gives you the guaranteed 1st page Google results position it used to.
Google did a shake down a few years ago in one of their updates.
If they thought you could pay them for the traffic they gave you for free organically they'd drop your ranking to make you pay for it.
("Don't be Evil"... yeah, right..)
Web users will type in the noun of what they are looking for appending .com instead of going via search. .com there is sex.com
That's the value in arguably the most valuable
The
are all treasure troves "veritable" (Score:1)
just sayin
A Solution (Score:1)
One way to check such abuses would be to mandate that only the registrars can sell domain names. An individual can buy as many domains as he pleases but would not be permitted to legally resell them. An individual could divest himself of domain names only through expiration or a direct return to the registrar.
If a company called Acme Foods desired the domain acmefoods.com but the domain was already held then that company would be forever out of luck unless the holder allowed the domain to expire or return
Looking at it more positively.... (Score:2)
You want that beach front property but can't afford the section with the view to build on.
The land owner says "I'll lease you the land if I get to use the property on the weekends you aren't using it".
What's not to like?
What this guy is offering seems like a fairly good idea and not a bad deal to me, so why all the hate?
It's just a new spin on raising VC or Angel money.
So taking money is ok but not renting a domain name? That doesn't make sense.
The new TLD's aren't yet bestowing the branding power that the
Eww (Score:2)
The Man Squatting On Millions of Dollars
Sounds like the title of this year's Turner Prize winner. Bloody modern art.
Some of you better be trolling... (Score:1)
He is a slumlord! (Score:2)
Clickbait (Score:2)
HE'S the guy that puts up all those web sites that have nothing on them except links that are designed to get unsuspecting people to click on them, for the ad revenue.
Asshole (Score:2)
Domain grabbing should be illegal
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Domain grabbing should be illegal
What harm is being done to society? Even if he just sits on those domains forever, who cares if "email.com" doesn't point to something useful?
Treat domains like foreclosed homes or trademarks (Score:2)
If the rent-seeker doesn't use it, they lose it. [baynews9.com]
Well, it's a good business model (Score:1)
There should be a larger annual fee for domains (Score:2)