I kind of want the price to increase, to combat domain squatting. That said, I'd much prefer it if the money went to some charity instead of the ICANN.
Squatting can be easily prevented by reclaiming domain names without refund when the domain names have not been used or used illegitimately for more than a fixed threshold period of time.
Parking pages or any other use that intends to work around the restriction can be deemed illegitimate use.
> Parking pages or any other use that intends to work around the restriction can be deemed illegitimate use.
My personal domain doesn't even have an A record in the DNS, only an MX record because use it for all my email. By your definition that would be an "illegitimate use" and I should lose my domain...
Would it be an undue burden to require people like you to put up a page saying, "This is my personal domain which I use primarily for email."?
Can we just agree that nobody is posting the full proposed set of rules on HN, and nobody is trying to take away your domain?
Every time this solution to domain squatting is proposed, someone counters with your objection as if it's a huge problem with the idea, but it just isn't. Surely you can imagine a set of rules that shuts down a large number of domain squatters but allows your use case.
How do you write rules that allow "this is my personal domain that I use for email" and not squatting? Can't the squatters just say something along those lines?
And if they are a big company that owns hundreds of thousands of unrelated domains with no apparent email traffic, it would be pretty obvious that it's untrue.
So sure, a lot of small bad actors would get away with it. But it would could potentially take out the biggest bad actors.
If the squatters have to do that, then their squatting has no value to them. The point of squatters is to eventually sell the domain and if all the domains look "in use" (so no parking allowed), the amount of people sending offers will fall.
I hate to say it, but "domain squatters" pay for domains like everyone else. You have to take the shit with the sugar in a free society, not shit on everyone's personal liberties with Code of Conducts or "occupation" requirements. There's no perfect policy or "solution" that can fix every moral panic without causing other problems. And not every moral panic needs to be fixed either. That's life, sorry.
The fact that they can pay for it doesn't mean they're entitled to it as a logical matter.
I'm not saying a fix is or isn't needed, but there are all kinds of things we restrict despite ability to pay. For example, you can't buy a social security number without a person or a physical address without physical land to tie it to.
Yep. Busy bodies and control freaks shouldn't be allowed anywhere near power because they will abuse it and subject others to their fascist views. People should be allowed to do whatever they legally please with their domains.. it's their property, so long as they continue "leasing" them.
Domain names are a limited resource and some are more valuable than others. They should be treated more like the way we treat land, where highly valuable land is heavily taxed to incentivize people to actually use it or sell it.
You come across as possibly stuck in a scarcity and/or entitlement mindset too. There are effectively an unlimited supply of domains, and you're perfectly free to pick another one. If you want the right to register as many unregistered domains as you wish, bid on registered ones and generally live in a free society, you must accept that there are some unpreventable problems that come with it: like suicidal idiots with knifes, jerks who cut you off in traffic and "domain squatters." Aren't there bigger things to worry about, rather than worrying about what other people are doing with their property? It's not yours, after all, just because you covet it like Golum.
How hard do you think it would be for those people to automate setting up basic template websites for all of domains they are hoarding?
If we were to apply this, as with any poorly thought-out rule, only legitimate users will be affected. Anyone proposing an "easy" solution to a complex problem should think twice before speaking.
This is a very myopic view of what domains are used for. Putting up web pages is certainly a huge use-case, but it’s not the only one (email, server naming, iot naming, network infra naming, etc).
No the solution is to drop the price by an order of magnitude. Every domain will be squatted, but due to naturally intense competition, they will cost $2. Make squatting unprofitable again.
(There is nothing inherently wrong with squatting)
The term "domain squatting" is a dishonest pejorative; they're not squatting if they're paying for it, like everyone else. In most countries, people are free to buy houses and then not occupy them. Telling other people what they can or can't do with their property isn't democratic, it's fascist. If you can offer someone enough money to sell you an underutilized domain, that's fine too; if they ignore you, that's their prerogative also. People are free to buy as many properties as they can afford; it's called freedom. Try it sometime. :)
While it's true that in many countries it's legal to buy houses and not occupy them, the locals tend to look unfavorably upon this practice, and some municipalities will charge additional taxes for unoccupied properties.
That's irrelevant. Local control doesn't apply to a global, shared resource. And, that mismatched metaphor describes infringement on individual property rights because you can't have it both ways.
There can be only one internet namespace if it's to operate correctly, and it can't be controlled by corporations or greedy individuals who think they should get things other people had, and paid for, before them.
If you want a freedom, you must give everyone the same freedom, even if they misuse it. That's the definition of a free society. An unfree society digs into peoples lives and makes value judgements about them and tries to control them to their views.
It becomes a "tragedy of the commons" situation unless there is some regulation of this one shared namespace. Even the FCC has "use it or lose it" rules in place for the limited wireless spectrum.
I mean, isn't that what's happening with property in real life? The ones that can afford to do so keep buying it up, and renting it out, and perpetuating the cycle of inequity?
There is no tragedy of the commons here, its the opposite, people create value on previously worthless dns-land. There is no shortage of TLDs, instead an infinite supply, so its not a zero sum game. Of course demand and supply applies
Housing and spectrum are inherently limited so it makes sense to have ‘homesteading’ rules, especially when they are not even rented out
No one is arguing that it is illegal (at least at the moment), but it is a really shitty thing to do. As anyone with even a semi-common last name, it is basically impossible to find a TLD using it. Not because people are using them for anything, but because someone decided that they could extort money from people by registering it and just sitting on it until someone is crazy enough to pay the ransom.
Someone else has a personal page with my last name under .com. Squatter or not, I don’t get to use it. I don’t see how squatters make it any different.
Because one person is using it for it's legitimate intended purpose and one person is using it as a speculator (and blocking legitimate use without paying a toll).
Should someone be able to buy all existing insulin and then charge a toll to use it at a price closer to it's value to the consumer (multiples of the current price)?
If I owned “doctor.com” or “lawyer.com” and used that for my unrelated low effort personal website, would that be better for everyone than a domain squatter who’s willing to sell the domain to someone who’s actually going to do something useful with it? I don’t think so.
Isn't it odd that prices are going UP instead of down ,even though they flooded the market with tlds? The issue is obviously their monopoly, and it needs to be broken down. Petitions are petty
Actually what would be even better is if browsers started supporting ENS or some similar competing name system
Handshake[1] is another such similar competing name system that specifically is aimed at taking down ICANN's monopoly - which they've abused time and time again.
I’m not opposed to it if needed. This part is the one that convinced me it shouldn’t happen right now,
> $7.85 of your registration or renewal payment goes to Verisign. The actual cost to Verisign to provide the expensive infrastructure and the management of the registry has been estimated at between $2.50 to $2.90 per domain name per year. Other registries have said they can offer the same services for cheaper.
I’m wondering why the ICANN wouldn’t simply go to another company that would provide them the same service at that same rate. Is Verisign innovating somehow?
I'm not a fan of government-style lowest-bidder procurement for something as critical as .com. Among other things, I assume this involves operating the .com DNS servers, and it seems like the current operators are probably uniquely positioned to understand what makes that different from operating e.g. .party or .racing, what weird load patterns it sees, maybe even how much to pay the folks who know the hard parts to keep doing this, etc. Obviously it would be better for the world if Verisign were transparent about their operations and it could be moved, but for potentially $5/domain name/year, forcing the change doesn't seem valuable. (If it were $50, sure, it'd be worth thinking about.)
Not that I disagree, but wouldn't that require increasing the price even more so you could pay both companies?
I don't think the argument for "We're paying Verisign too much to be a single point of failure, so let's pay someone else who's never done it less to be a different single point of failure" really holds up.
> I’m wondering why the ICANN wouldn’t simply go to another company
Do also consider the cost of change. I don't know if it's worth it, and it might be worth it just for keeping the 'market' competitive, but this is another factor.
> No one likes a price increase, but 30% increase to ~$10/year over four years is not making my blood boil.
We're talking about something which has become a central piece of the modern internet largely by being perceived as a well governed non-profit organization.
Unreasonable price-hikes undermines that position and seems like a clear violation of the natural monopoly they have obtained through good will so far.
Maybe the internet just needs to learn a lesson or two, once again, about the problems with centralization.
Since domain names are finite, like real estate, why not charge based on demand? In this scenario, in-demand domain names (mostly based on length) would have higher renewal fees than undesirable ones. Perhaps add an order of magnitude in pricing for each character under 7?
Domains are the virtual realestate on the web and we are all just tennants and not owners. So there need to regulation for this "market" against domain hoarding and price hikes. Sadly the US government doesn't care.
Alternative DNS roots seem like the Internet equivalent of being a sovereign citizen. Sure, there are lots of things wrong with the government that everyone believes to be in power, but simply believing it to not be in power solves none of those problems, neither for yourself nor anyone else. You still need to interact with a world that believes in the government you don't believe in (or worse, believes in their own alternative vision of government).
There has to be a common namespace, even if it's controlled by a different entity that's transparent, fair and non-profit. Fragmentation of the namespace breaks the internet. Starting a parallel namespace doesn't address the core problem: the privitization/commercialization of names, registrars and the meta-registrar were all extremely bad ideas because publicly-traded companies are selfish, omnicidal and suicidal. All non-country TLDs should be run at actual cost by one entity that is a nonprofit. No more commercial registrars or meta-registrars; per-country registrars can do whatever they want. If people want to auction-off, buy or sell domains in a marketplace, that's their business. Let's not not solve the problem by avoiding it with phony solutions that cause more problems. Petitions won't work either.
Handshake isn’t parallel, but instead, it’s a drop in replacement for ICANN that is controlled by the people. All existing TLDs continue to function as they did prior.