[larrys]

"are just charging you a fee solely because they thought of it first."

For some domains, true. In other cases considering that back in the day there were an infinite number of domains that you could register (and by the way they cost $70.00 after they were initially free) and $35 per year (until ICANN and competition dropped the price) I wouldn't say it was simply "thinking of it first".

As somebody who spent much time programming algorithms to figure out which domains to, um, SQUAT on, I would hardly say I own names just because "I merely thought of it". It seems like that way now because now value has been established and it's obvious.

Do you think it was obvious back then? It wasn't. I was there.

[phillmv]

I don't understand why anything you just said invalidates anything I just said – but I would be glad if you took another stab at explaining it to me.

[larrys]

There is a transfer of wealth here simply because the person who gets the name had the knowledge to get the name. (As Zuckerberg said to the Winklevi). And knowledge it took.

It's not something anyone I knew did. I didn't get the idea from anyone or even read about anyone doing this type of thing. It was totally organic.

And it wasn't something my sister or her uncle had either the knowledge or the skills to do. I knew perl and shell scripting and had worked with Unix for some time. (Back before the Internet with 1 or two books on a machine that costs $40,000 that I paid for in 1980's dollars. Meaning $40,000 in 1985 for an AT&T 3b2-400 back when that was simply not done at a company that size at that time.) My point being that I didn't just wake up in the morning and buy a pack of gum and make money.

It's not like patent trolls because there are many possible names that someone can use for their business. And if they have a trademark for a particular term then this is a non issue because there are procedures for getting that domain name (UDRP and other legal procedures). Which by the way are slanted against domainers. (And domainers know this by the way and take it into account in their dealings if they are smart.)