"It's unconscionable that one can simply park domains wholesale"
"unconscionable"?
It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one.
"people wanting to create value are held to ransom by parasites"
And what if the someone "wanting to create value" got to the name first and has their idea of a site is not as good as your idea of a site. The name would also not be available for you to use.
This idea that if people weren't parking names they would be available when you wanted the name is simply not true. Someone else could have registered the name and used it to put up 3 picture of their cat. Then you'd have to approach and buy it from them.
That said I can certainly understand the frustration that people feel in trying to obtain names for their startups (as I consult with these people).
It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one.
Notice that your response in no way addresses the grandparent's complaint. Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person.
There are lots of things in this world that are technically legal to do, but make the world a worse place (domain squatting being a perfect example). There's also a type of individual that doesn't look beyond legality when determining right behavior. This is a good type of individual to be able to recognize, as it's a very good indicator of somebody with whom you never want to do business.
"Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person."
Bad person?
Well then in that case since you are being so absolute about that you might want to resolve the dns for a domain that you own that isn't going anywhere. Even to a parking page.
DNS server handling your query: localhost
DNS server's address: 127.0.0.1#53
server can't find TWIDDLA.ORG: SERVFAIL
DNS server handling your query: localhost
DNS server's address: 127.0.0.1#53
I'm sure that's an oversight on your part? And you feel totally entitled to that domain name since you own twiddla.com and of course nobody could possibly want the .org could they?
Parking a domain makes somebody a bad person? How is this any different than a speculator buying undeveloped parcels of land and waiting for a developer to come along and buy them for more money? Are they bad people, too?
It is annoying when you need to buy the domain you want from a reseller and have to pay more than if it wasnt registered, but saying it makes the reseller a bad person is going way, way too far.
You're seriously asking what the difference is between a domain name and a piece of land? It would be easier to list the ways in which they're similar.
Domain squatting makes the Web suck. It does. You can throw around all the analogies you want, but speculative investment does not have the same effect. The domain name system was not designed to be used that way. If there were a special squatter registration that cost an exorbitant amount per domain, then maybe I'd say it's fine because they would have to make an actual calculated purchase to justify the obscene prices. But as it is, they're abusing a vestigial weak spot in the Web's infrastructure.
To my mind a domain and a business premises are extremely similar in these respects - case in point, my city is suffering at the moment as there are huge gaps in the high-street with no open shops. High-street rentals are still massively high. There's very little way for even the big chains to make a profit off such high-street locations. But the rent won't go down because the owners consider that even if they're vacant it doesn't matter as the value of the premises has risen 100% over the last decade or so - eventually they can cash out if they want to, or eventually a business will want to move in paying full rent (they think; I think they're trying to cure a lame horse by hacking at it's good legs with an axe ...).
Both business real-estate and domains suffer the same problem here IMO; people want to acquire wealth without effort. Singling out domainers is unfair - but criticising the same sort of activity everywhere is something that won't pull a complaint from me ...
OK, I'll accept for the sake of argument that domain names and buildings are very similar. The thing is, nobody can afford to buy thousands of storefronts that they don't plan to use except to extort people who aren't as cynical. Domainers are exploiting the cheapness of domain names, which is not a weakness that physical property generally shares with the Web. If domain names cost, say, $500 per year, I suspect you'd wind up with an economy much more closely resembling a functioning real estate market.
>nobody can afford to buy thousands of storefronts //
For sure. But plenty of people (hidden behind corporations) have bought up 10s of store-fronts.
If domain names cost $500 per year to keep from the registry then this would find an equivalence in a piece of real-estate being taxed at around 40x the annual rent per year.
Those wealthy enough to be in real estate in my country have in many cases made more money sitting on their arses for a couple of years than I expect to make in my whole lifetime. You can literally sit on a piece of unwanted real estate if you have sufficient capital and wait to see if it accrues added "value". Sure you may have to pay some legal fees occasionally but all you really need do is be wealthy in the first place. You're buying a scarce resource that, provided you can take a long view and aren't forced to sell at a particular time, will almost certainly not decrease in value.
Now, domaining is the same. But here the scarcity is dubious as the registries can alter that whenever they want to print some more money for themselves. Buy-in is a lot less costly but predicting the upside appears to be concomitantly more difficult.
Most people domaining don't have sufficient capital to do it right or are to late to the market. But I don't see how this changes the underlying similarity. The same is true in real estate.
> Being legal doesn't change the fact that parking domains makes you a bad person.
Typically this is said by those that wished they had gotten in a bit earlier...
As for getting domain names: it doesn't matter what product or project I come up with it takes me 15 minutes to come up with a reasonably good domain name. I really don't see the 'shortage' as being anywhere near as bad as it is.
What you'd like to see is that you could take away domain names from their current registrants because you will be a 'better steward' of them. But who will stop that domain name being taken away from you? What do you propose will be a good standard for being developed? Should there be a time limit? Will you have to pay fair value for the domain? Should it go back to the registry and be re-registrable immediately and how will you make sure that only 'good persons' will get those domains?
Really, you make a pretty heavy accusation and I fail to see what you could do to either improve the situation or how you would avoid being a 'bad person' yourself if you had a good domain name you registered in the past that you currently have no use for.
I'm openly confirming here that I have upwards of 500 domains registered and have developed only a small fraction of those, but at the same time when I registered them I fully intended to use them in one way or another, the lack of time and hands to carry out all my wild ideas is what prompted me to put the larger chunk of them up for sale.
It seemed pretty clear to be that Jason was talking about squatters — that is, people who intentionally buy domain names just to exploit the low actual cost of a domain name for greedy purposes. If you buy a domain name and just have trouble getting around to using it, you're maybe a bit disorganized, but you're not intentionally screwing somebody over. But if you buy a domain name because you think it's likely somebody will be willing to pay a ridiculous price later and in the meantime you can park it and leech money from unsuspecting visitors, yeah, I find that morally questionable too.
It's like the difference between an old person getting lost and wandering into somebody's kitchen and a thug busting in with a gun and demanding money. Technically they're both invading the kitchen, but there is an important qualitative difference both in their actions and the effects they have on people.
(BTW, I accidentally downvoted you when I was trying to scroll. Sorry about that. Although I disagree with you, I do appreciate hearing your point of view.)
You think there is a similarity in some way shape or form to an illegal act like a thug invading someone's kitchen and someone who legally registered a domain name (even with the intent to sell it) a totally legal capitalistic move (which is similar to buying real estate in order to resell it or buying something off craigslist and reselling it on ebay for higher money) and breaking the law?
The law is very clearly defined with regards to filing a UDRP or a federal cybersquatting lawsuit in order to recover a domain name. Outside of the specific areas that are covered (by those) there has never been any intent to prevent anyone from registering a domain name who intends to profit from selling those domain names. Any more than there has ever been a law to prevent anyone from buying anything in order to resell at a higher price (providing it doesn't break any laws.)
I can't help but feel that you're ignoring what people are saying here.
Nobody is claiming it's illegal†; we're saying it's bad. You can repeat that the law is on your side till the cows come home, but it won't make a difference because nobody is arguing that. I agree that it's legal, but that doesn't mean it isn't harmful to the Web at large. Some forms of predatory lending are legal (and even more were legal in the past), but they are nonetheless seen as a slimy business. Nobody other than a prosecutor cares if a loan shark can legally justify what he does — people dislike loan sharks because they take advantage of others and act in a way that is generally harmful to society, not because the law happens to be against them at some particular point in time.
And to be clear, I am not trying to attack you or Jacques personally here. I know that even if you weren't doing it, there are plenty of others who still would. Regardless, I feel very strongly that this industry hurts the Web as a whole. It functions in a way that's reminiscent of a protection racket, or the kind of corruption that's endemic in the Chinese government.
† Granted, in the "thug with a gun" analogy, that act was illegal, but the point was that a confused old lady trespassing is also illegal. It's not the binary state of legal or illegal that makes the big difference there, but the ill intent and the harm done. The people being robbed wouldn't feel better if the thug with a gun were working for a loan shark who happened to be operating under a legal technicality.
"unconscionable"?
It's a business model and it's legal. There is no requirement to use a domain name and there never has been one.
"people wanting to create value are held to ransom by parasites"
And what if the someone "wanting to create value" got to the name first and has their idea of a site is not as good as your idea of a site. The name would also not be available for you to use.
This idea that if people weren't parking names they would be available when you wanted the name is simply not true. Someone else could have registered the name and used it to put up 3 picture of their cat. Then you'd have to approach and buy it from them.
That said I can certainly understand the frustration that people feel in trying to obtain names for their startups (as I consult with these people).