Negative view of domaining - discuss

[marcorandazza]

I hate domain names. The secondary domain name industry exists purely to squeeze profit from consumer confusion, artificial scarcity, and literal extortion. No actual value has been added to the universe, just a redistribution of money from people who have a valid use for a clear domain to people who registered that clear domain first.

Source: http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/07/29...domain-insane/

[Carter]

Originally Posted by marcorandazza

Source: http://blog.dreamhost.com/2008/07/29...domain-insane/

They jealous of the money we make

[PapaStiz]

Originally Posted by Carter

They jealous of the money we make

Bingo!

[raoul]

Josh Jones is right, most "domainers" are waiting on their golden egg. Why, in general people will look in google to find a site, and not type in?

Because only dissapointment came - only parked pages. (or recent hit = "minisites" pffff awefull nothing/noone will actually use/read it)

so just keep sitting some more years on the "high value keywords" your typeinss will dissappear over time, making you lose 1000's on their "current value"


Iam already 10 years on the internet, and only recently I started to buy some so called "good keyword domains" my niche is GSM -phone simlocks, I own simlock(.)com since 2007 but this name makes not even 5% on what i make on my other sites wich are names that yuo guys would give 1$ for

[biggedon]

this looks more like a promotional plug for a blog, than a legal issue.

[marcorandazza]

I'm certainly not trying to "promote" the blog where I found the post. Given that the root of most domain disputes comes from allegations of cybersquatting, I thought a discussion on the theory would be enlightening.

Unfortunately, the attempt to start a discussion seems to have fallen flat. I tried.

[aZooZa]

Originally Posted by biggedon

this looks more like a promotional plug for a blog, than a legal issue.

Plus it contains a reference to that ridiculous inference that Godaddy and AMD were playing foul at auction...

[dvdrip]

Anything above what he can afford is cybersquatting.
What a moron.

[biggedon]

Originally Posted by marcorandazza

I'm certainly not trying to "promote" the blog where I found the post. Given that the root of most domain disputes comes from allegations of cybersquatting, I thought a discussion on the theory would be enlightening.

Unfortunately, the attempt to start a discussion seems to have fallen flat. I tried.

Hi

if you want to discuss your opinions of allegations of cybersquatting and what the term means and theories associated with it are and the effect it has on domaining.

then i'm all eyes

[jberryhill]

I heard this great joke the other day, but I can't remember the punchline.

A lawyer walks into a domain forum and says, "Hey, you guys have a really bad reputation."

Can someone remind me how the rest of that joke goes...

[Focus]

I think it ends "....take that shit to trial"

[biggedon]

Originally Posted by jberryhill

I heard this great joke the other day, but I can't remember the punchline.

A lawyer walks into a domain forum and says, "Hey, you guys have a really bad reputation."

Can someone remind me how the rest of that joke goes...

lol


i can't finish the line, but the way you put it....i think the joke would be on the lawyer

[Focus]

Luckily we have a lawyer (one of the best) on our side

Right JB?

[marcorandazza]

if you want to discuss your opinions of allegations of cybersquatting and what the term means and theories associated with it are and the effect it has on domaining.

I was more interested in critiques and criticisms of the post that I quoted.

I was kind of hoping for some intelligent economic theories. Wrong room? I guess so.

[dvdrip]

Some guy lost in an auction and is angry. Is this worth of some intelligent economic theories? I guess not.

[pcproffenno]

Back in January, my wife was starting a floral design business, and had decided upon a name for it. Unfortunately, the obviously best domain name for her website was already taken, and being used by a squatter on sedo.com. Rather than dealing with them, she just registered a slightly longer variation that was still available.

Well, her birthday was coming up, so I decided to see what it’d cost to get that “best” domain. I went to the site, clicked the link to “make an offer”, and entered $100.

Immediately my bid was rejected!

It said the minimum offer the owner of this domain would accept was $777! Highway robbery!

After thinking about it for a little while, I figured, what the hey, it’s a birthday present, and I want to see how this thing works, so I made a (completely insane) bid for $777.

Automatically the system responded saying the owner had made a “counter-offer” back… $7770!!!

(How iiiiiiiiiiiiiiinteresting… sedo has a completely automated system for domain owners to counter-bid on domains.)

Well, harrumph. I raised my offer to $800. Immediately I got a “response” from the seller staying firm at $7770, and that was their final offer!

At this point I was curious… would they lower their price at all? So, I countered back with what I pretty much figured was the most I’d spend for this (completely of no value to anybody but my wife) domain, $1150.

What happened next really surprised me… I got another automated message stating that I had surpassed some secret minimum offer the seller had set at which they were, no not willing to actually sell the domain for, but at which they were okay with automatically putting it up for a seven-day auction on the front page of sedo.com… and my offer was the starting “bid”!

Gee thanks!

That explained why there are so many domains on that page with just one bid yet really high prices!

Well, at that point I figured I’d just sit and wait… nobody else was going to be bidding more than $1150 for this obscure domain name! And, the auction was ending the day before my wife’s birthday anyway, so the timing worked out.

I waited the whole week, and of course, nothing happened. The auction was going to end at 8:04 AM on a Saturday, but I didn’t even plan on waking up to watch the end.

Whoops. When I did wake up, at 8:12 AM, I (sneakily) immediately checked on the auction… only to find that somebody else had won; with a bid of $1175 at 7:56 AM!

I wasn’t horribly upset; after all $1150 was an order of magnitude more than I’d intended to pay. But I just knew in my gut of guts (I have four) that the winning bidder was either the original seller, somebody working for sedo.com, or somebody who figured I’d pay even more to buy it from them later! One thing I knew it wasn’t was anybody intending to actually use the domain.

By reading his short little story I see that he has no idea whatsoever how Sedo works and absolutely no idea about anything in life at all. Plus, he got owned.

[marcorandazza]

Because I'm a glutton for punishment... and I'm up at this hour.... lets try this a different way:

This guy has a very negative view. Perhaps it comes from him being mad about an auction. Perhaps he is simply insane. Great. That gets you nowhere.

Whether you want to make personal attacks on him or not, it doesn't get to the core issue. The core issue is the excerpt I posted -- which is not the first time I've seen or heard such a statement.

Lets pretend that Olympia Snowe gets a letter that makes his same points. Lets pretend that she starts looking at this as an economic/trade issue.

What do you write in your letter to *your* senator telling him or her what *your* perspective is? Do you throw a tantrum, call the guy names, or intelligently set forth why domaining is not "purely to squeeze profit from consumer confusion, artificial scarcity, and literal extortion. No actual value has been added to the universe, just a redistribution of money from people who have a valid use for a clear domain to people who registered that clear domain first."

I guess I'm used to standing at the head of a law school class, where the Socratic method leads to elicitation of occasionally intelligent responses. If you don't think about how to deflect such attacks on your industry, or if you think that simply blaming it on the guy's personal issues will win the argument, you're wrong.

I didn't post it to praise it - nor to simply point at it and say "look at this asshole".

[denny007]

Domain owners are like land owners. I also would like some free vacant land in city centre, but I am too late. So either I buy it for a price the land owner is asking for OR I have to buy some land elsewhere.

[marcorandazza]

That's not a bad analogy. But, I'm not sure it would completely hold up. There are many differences between real estate and domains. First off, the scarcity of real estate is not artificial -- it is governed by the laws of nature. Even in the days when you could homestead land for free, you had to make use of it.

I've done a little research, and I'm surprised that nobody in the domaining community has actually written anything about how the industry does create value. I suppose a good argument could be made that domains do have a market-driven "value" that is artificially suppressed by ICANN's rules, and the domain aftermarket merely re-injects that natural market state into an unnaturally governed market.

[sdsinc]

Originally Posted by marcorandazza

I've done a little research, and I'm surprised that nobody in the domaining community has actually written anything about how the industry does create value.

It's a favorite among webmasters to say that domainers do not create value, therefore they are parasites.
I view my domaining activity as an investment.
The purpose of an investment is to make some money, not to benefit your neighbor (assuming you even owe them anything in the first place).

It's pretty simple. I own domains.
You want them, you pay for them.
If I don't want to sell, get over it.
If I want to park them I park them.
If I want to develop them I develop them.
If you don't like the content I put on them go away.

As usual those who missed the boat are whining and complaining.