[cfitz]

Perspectives like this and others are one of the many reasons I greatly enjoy HN. I didn’t even consider the situation in this way, yet is makes much more sense than what I constructed in my head. Thank you for that.

What a persona this paints of the seller.

Would like to add that I also share your wonder. To me, this needs to evolve to anecessity for them (ICANN, in terms of ability) rather than just an “if”.

Please forgive me my lack of context surrounding this, but would love to learn more about why Corp.com is being sent various data (some sensitive, as mentioned in the article) from various parties in the first place. Did it use to serve a purpose for MS or other?

[ryanlol]

> What a persona this paints of the seller.

Yeah! How dare he care about his own livelihood rather than “security”?!? What an asshole!

[013a]

If your livelihood is based on squatting domains you bought in 1992, you won't find me crying tears of sorrow for your loss when you only make a couple million dollars instead of whatever number you think you're owed for adding zero productive value to the world.

Scratch that; domain "investing" actually removes productive value from the world. Someone else might own that domain and actually do something incredible with it. Microsoft clearly could have; they use it all over their documentation (and they're idiots for doing so, but what's done is done).

[FDSGSG]

> domain "investing" actually removes productive value from the world

Does it? These domains are available for those who want them at fair prices. Why is the current situation any worse than one in which these domains would be snapped up for low effort personal sites?

> Someone else might own that domain and actually do something incredible with it.

Why? What would be an example of "something incredible" that'd require a very specific domain name like this?

[shawnz]

It's hard for me to have sympathy for him "protecting his livelihood" when we are talking about a lucky gamble that appreciated by 140000x, he's already successfully sold several of them, and almost the entire value is driven by scamming opportunities

[ryanlol]

> and almost the entire value is driven by scamming opportunities

That’s a bizarre claim. Maybe you should read up on previous high value domain name sales before making such statements.

The asking price is perfectly reasonable even if you disregard all the “scamming opportunities”.

[crooked-v]

Pretty much any four-letter .com domain (even gibberish) would sell for upwards of a million dollars these days, too. $1.7 million for a recognizable four-letter domain is if anything substantially lowballing it.

[goblin89]

The whole affair seems bordering on blackmail: “pay me, MS, or your customers will get hacked”.

If you were truly concerned about security, you’d have just transferred the domain over. If you want to make a good profit off of that, though, please—don’t make a theater.

If you are both genuinely concerned about security but also desperately need money, what you would effectively end up doing is a reverse auction—start high and go lower until the one buyer you want agrees.

[crooked-v]

> please—don’t make a theater

Why not? If Microsoft is unwilling to pay a reasonable amount for the domain, the logical action to take is to publicize the flaw in their system.