[jklinger410]

It is a complete state-sponsored racket. There's no way around it.

You pay an upfront fee to ICANN and probably some kind of recurring tax and you get to create a TLD. You then sell this TLD for higher prices than ICANN and run a very simple service that processes the transactions.

You then take anything lower than a 5 or 6 letter domain that is a word in the english language and define it as a "premium" domain and charge obscene prices for those domains. The fee you charge for the domain based on this system is recurring. So instead of buying milk.com for $10k and selling it for $12k you already own milk.blog by default and if someone wants to register it you charge $500 a year.

NOT TO MENTION this whole system is like a slap in the face to a certain kind of "domainers." People who buy domains based on their perceived value, park them, and then try and resell them for more money. There are many millions of dollars wrapped up in this other, also stupid racket. These companies got so bold as to get their domains "valued" and then bet on the value of their company based on their holdings like some type of stock filled with mortgages. This new system is like cutting directly into that strategy but I guess ICANN gets some of the money this way.

[nommm-nommm]

I have a last name that's extremely uncommon. MyLastName.com was available for many, many years. I thought about buying it a few times in the last 20 or so years but I don't have any use for it so I didn't. Two years ago it was bought by a domain squatter who was probably iterating through the white pages. Now that I can't have it I want it (I guess human nature) but they are asking like $2k for it. It seems somehow "unfair" that "my" last name is being "held hostage" by some faceless company that's just trying to make a quick buck.

[jeremymcanally]

Start a business with your name, trademark it in a certain domain, file a claim with ICANN. Long process, but might be cheaper. :)

[duskwuff]

Almost as expensive (UDRP claims start around $1500), and more importantly, it'll fail. WIPO isn't that dumb -- they can look up the registration date of your trademark, check WHOIS, and determine that the domain was registered before your trademark existed.

[grrowl]

> and determine that the domain was registered before your trademark existed

It's a shame they don't determine that the domain was squatted before your trademark existed. But it seems in their interest to give the benefit of the doubt to the one buying many, many domains yearly.

[eximius]

This is, in general, about as sleazy as the squatter.

[fapjacks]

Exactly. And definitely not guaranteed to work. Just pay a visit to nissan.com and read about the scumbag efforts of the car company to swipe that domain from some random dude who's owned it -- and isn't a squatter! -- for years and years.

[bradleyjg]

mylastname.com was already gone in 1999, so I had to settle for mylastname.net. Too bad it didn't occur to me to secure it in 1996.

If Tucows is willing to sell they certainly aren't publicizing it.

[guycook]

Spare a thought for us Cooks of the world. Four letters, a noun and a verb...

After the gTLD explosion I thought I could finally snare a decent one but they all went into the $1000+ category immediately, excepting niches like cook.republican, cook.accountant etc.

Luckily some did eventually come down, I managed to get cook.run for a more reasonable $50/year

[shavingspiders]

I managed to have a bit of fun with .party and .science.

firstname.party is great to have.

[SrslyJosh]

Welcome to rentier capitalism.

[hx87]

Sounds like ICANN needs to replace the fee + tax scheme with Dutch auctions.

[icebraining]

So the organization that provides an essential service to the internet gets decent funding and a bunch of squatters (sorry, "domainers") get shot down.

Sounds great to me.

[seoseokho]

There has got to be a hedge fund who buys up domains