[larrys]

"I wish we had enacted policies against squatting back in the '90s."

What would your suggestion be as far as a policy that could have stopped domain squatting?

I can't think of a scenario that you could have that would allow someone to purchase a name but then not allow them to sell the name. So what you would end up with is names that are registered but have not found their way (through the free market) to the best possible use.

People tend to think that if the name they wanted wasn't owned by a squatter who was trying to sell it it would be available when they decided they wanted to use it. It would just be sitting there and not in the hands of someone else for a non squatting purpose.

As recently as 2001 I remember attorneys asking if they could use the domain law.com because "I type it in and nothing comes up". As if nobody thought of using that in the prior years or something (and this happened with many names actually).

I'd really like to know your thoughts on this.

[sneak]

> What would your suggestion be as far as a policy that could have stopped domain squatting?

I've often thought of this. I think $500/year or $1000/year is an entirely reasonable price for a .com domain, and would immediately clear out mountains of cruft. Even $50 or $100/year would get 50-75% of it.

[larrys]

True it would certainly cut down significantly on people registering domain names on speculation.

But it would also prevent many people from getting their own site because of the cost. I don't think you would have many people taking as many chances as has happened with the current pricing.

Lowering costs has helped the net even though there are undesirable consequences as with anything.

[sneak]

Sovereign countries would still be able to do whatever they wanted in their own gTLDs, so I doubt it would actually reduce the number of sites people have.

Some .ly domain works just as well as a .com, technically.

It would just get rid of all the noise in com/net/org.

[michaeldhopkins]

That would just reduce the pool of desirable names for both squatters and other users, so the problem would not be mitigated at all. Even if a domain cost a million a year, squatters would still exist in proportion to the demand for domains. Raising fees is not a solution at all.

[gridspy]

If it wasn't possible to sell a name, a domain that wasn't worth $10/yr to the current owner would have been released back into the market.

[larrys]

So then you are saying that if you start a business with a name (say a site selling something, even a pet rock) you can't sell that business with the name?

(See where this is going?)

[gridspy]

I didn't say that preventing domain sales was an ideal that was possible to enforce.