
Should the ICANN do something about domain squatting? - cyborgx7
I&#x27;m aware of the possibility of filing UDRP [1], but that option is only available if a specific trademark is being infringed upon. But the problem of domain squatting goes farther than that. An incredible amount of short, descriptive and potentially useful domains are being squatted and rendered unusable to anybody who isn&#x27;t willing to take the risk of making a substantial investment in the domain name.<p>Some will probably argue this is a good way to determine the value of those domains, but its actual effect is that, what is probably a majority of useful domain names, are completely unused for any kind of productive or otherwise valuable purpose.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.icann.org&#x2F;resources&#x2F;pages&#x2F;filing-udrp-2013-05-21-en
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adventured
At this point, no.

We have a vast number of potential TLDs now.

It doesn't matter if .com domains (by far the most lucrative squatting target)
are being supposedly used for something productive or ... "valuable" (who
determines what is valuable? a panel of clowns?).

If there was a good time to do something about domain squatting, it was 20-25
years ago, when we had few TLDs choices and the impact would have been far
less due to fewer domain owners. Changing the system now would be a
belligerent action against a very large number of existing domain owners.
Someone has owned a domain for 22 years and they change the rules now - that's
entirely unfair. The deal is, they pay the fee, the domain is theirs; then
ICANN is going to change the deal? Letting bureaucrats begin arbitrarily
changing the rules is about the worst thing you can ever do. Once you let the
weasels in to change the rules in a big way, they'll keep doing it and you
will not like the inevitable nightmare it creates.

The lack of supposedly useful domain names is not holding back the Web in any
regard what-so-ever. If the domain is the big problem, in reality it's your
product or service that is the problem. Owning Jump.com instead of JumpApp.com
(made up example) is not the problem, it's the shitty product that nobody
wants to use.

Domains are like ideas, it's not where the value is at in a service. Most of
the value is in the execution of the thing. Tesla was at TeslaMotors.com in
the beginning, it wasn't a problem for marketing. It's the same reason
Business.com - after decades - has never turned into a $187 billion company
like Salesforce.com, or a $42 billion company like Atlassian, despite such a
tremendous name.

Why did I mention Jump.com? Microsoft acquired Jump.com in 1999, shut down the
service, and then sat on the domain for the better part of two decades (now
living as a redirect for Lime):

[https://news.microsoft.com/1999/04/26/microsoft-acquires-
lea...](https://news.microsoft.com/1999/04/26/microsoft-acquires-leading-web-
based-calendar-company-jump-networks/)

Does it matter that Jump.com hasn't been used for anything meaningful in 20
years? Nope. It doesn't matter even in the slightest.

~~~
fakegermano
should we fix a problem? "nah it's too much of a hassle and it will anger rich
people" ok.....

~~~
danlugo92
That's.... completely different to what he said.

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prirun
A major problem I dislike about the current system is that when a domain
expires, the domain _registrar_ has the option to keep the domain name
practically free (18 cents/year):

[https://www.namecheap.com/legal/domains/icann-
fee/](https://www.namecheap.com/legal/domains/icann-fee/)

The registrars usually keep expired domain names and put them in an auction.
If it's a "good/valuable" domain name, the registrar will keep it locked up
indefinitely at a high price since it's only costing them 18 cents/year.

If a domain registrar wants to conduct domain auctions on behalf of its users
and take a cut of the selling price, I'd be fine with that: users would still
have to pay the annual registration fee while it is being auctioned.

Registrars should not be allowed to hold expired domains longer than 60 days -
long enough to make sure the previous owner doesn't want it.

Not saying this would fix all issues, but I do think this one is a major wart
that should be fixed.

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BitwiseFool
Domain Squatting has a specific legal definition, so I think very little can
be done about that. "using an Internet domain name with bad faith intent to
profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else".
Essentially, this is only something you can enforce if you trademark something
and someone takes a domain name _after_ you trademarked it.

I think we need a new term for what is going on - "Domain Scalping", wherein
speculators buy up countless domains hoping to resell them for hundreds or
thousands of dollars. Scalping is a better term because that's exactly what
they're doing - buying an address and preventing anyone else from using it
unless you pay them.

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ohashi
Let's talk about language and why it matters. Domain Squatting
(Cybersquatting) is a very specific thing, which you touch on. It's infringing
on someone's trademark in bad faith. This is entirely separate from
descriptive domains you mention in your next sentence. To use the Jump.com
example, that's not being squatted because it's not being used to infringe on
someone's TM.

I think it's impossible and unfair to change the rules now. Some of the
largest portfolio holders are big corps. Look at P&G who own Clean.com and
just redirect it to Tide.com. Going to have a hard time prying that away.

I know a lot of people feel like people who are holding domains are unfairly
profitting, but I'm still waiting for a better system to be described that
could pragmatically be implemented as well. I know there is a boogeyman of
domain investors at ICANN that a lot of people (who seem very connected to
registry interests) use as a way to push for their agenda because domain
investor interests tend to align better with consumers at large (eg. price
increases, registrant rights, etc).

Finally, you have a bajilarillions of options for domain names at this point.
Hundreds of TLDs, I think 63 characters. Just using a-z0-9- we're talking
3,763,572,874,813,444,727,106,020,660,762,327,844,147,969,869,582,735,798,064,027,429,183
combinations in one TLD space. If you can't find an available domain name with
that, you're not creative enough to be running a business.

~~~
BitwiseFool
Citing the potential number of free domains isn't fair because random
gibberish as a URL is in no way useful. There's a reason why these scalpers
aren't buying up GUIDs as domain names - they're buying up permutations and
combinations of words because they know those are the 'good' domains people
actually want.

~~~
ohashi
And not figuring out a way to make a memorable name in a space that
addressable is bullshit. I've been able to find plenty of two word .coms and
built companies on them. Or startups have gone with .ly or removed vowels or a
number of other creative ways to create brands when there is false scarcity.

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stakkur
I'm not a fan of squatters, but it's a complex problem. I'm not sure we can
ban 'squatting' or 'scalping' per se.

What we _could_ do, however, is limit the maximum price a domain can be bought
and sold for (say, $100). This would eliminate most incentives.

The meta solution, of course, would be to eliminate the necessity of TLDs
altogether.

~~~
waste_monk
>The meta solution, of course, would be to eliminate the necessity of TLDs
altogether.

Would you care to elaborate on this?

Say we have no TLDs - everyone is now sharing the same address space, every
company now has to compete for domains (who gets the most desirable domains
e.g. "shop" or "bank"? do bank.com and bank.net have equal claim over it
(assuming they're seperate entities) or does one former TLD have precedence
for existing domains? who arbitrates disputes?), there's no separation for
government or educational services (anyone who wants to offer free services to
people with an academic email address can no longer validate on e.g. .edu or
.edu.tld addressing, you have to maintain a list of every educational
institution), different countries are now competing for domains... it would be
chaos.

The other option would be to have a public key thumbprint, similar to Tor, but
then you have the problem of remembering the address - so you'd need something
like DNS to convert memorable names to thumbprints, and then a means to find
out what IP address holds what services and pubkeys...

~~~
stakkur
I agree, it's a difficult problem. I don't have a brilliant alternative.

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rshnotsecure
The number of TLDs should not have been expanded so greatly I think. The
decision to do this in 2012/2013 makes enforcement very difficult at best.

Great example is [https://aal.army](https://aal.army)

Is it an official US Army site? I've inquired in the past. No one knows...

~~~
detaro
one step up the hierarchy, is _this_ an official US Army website:
[https://armyfuturescommand.com/](https://armyfuturescommand.com/) ?

Outside of special purpose TLDs/subdomains, the number of TLDs doesn't change
that much in that regard IMHO.

