[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.