[DonHopkins]

It reminds me of Justin Hall's story about holding out and refusing to sell "bud.com" to Budweiser.

Instead he just hung onto it, and eventually used it for his own bud delivery company, once recreational cannabis was finally legalized.

He was much happier that great three-letter domain name be used for something he loves, strong kind bud, instead of something he hates, weak piss beer.

https://bud.com

https://bud.com/history-of-bud-com/

>In 1999 I was contacted by a lawyer Steven M. Weinberg, representing Anheuser-Busch, makers of Bud beer.

>We chatted by phone: “So, you’re a college student!”

>Actually I graduated the year before.

>He continued: “Well, how does $50,000 sound for bud.com?”

>I replied that $50k should be the interest generated by the money someone pays for bud.com. This is a three letter, actual word, dot com domain, and if I’m going to see it on every beer can you make forever, I should at least be well compensated. I remember reading that the marketing budget for Budweiser beer that quarter was $16.1 million. BUD was the company’s stock symbol.

>I wasn’t going to sell lightly, and they weren’t going to bid against themselves, so we didn’t get anywhere.

The story about his fight to register the four-letter domain name fuck.com is also hilarious:

https://www.links.net/webpub/fuck.com.html

[zamadatix]

I'm torn on this story. On one hand I'm really glad he got to keep using it personally out of the gate and eventually was able to later use it again for the intent it sounds like he gave when registering, couldn't ask for anything more for a short domain.

On the other his reasoning for not selling was really unrelated to any of that. His response was standard squatter logic - I registered it first and you have a lot of money + will actually use it heavily so I'm not selling unless it's for tens of thousands of times what I got it for. It wasn't like he responded "I think I will get more than 50k of use out of it" or "It's more than 50k of inconvenience for me to change my email" it was straight up "I replied that $50k should be the interest generated by the money someone pays for bud.com. This is a three letter, actual word, dot com domain, and if I’m going to see it on every beer can you make forever, I should at least be well compensated". Kind of ruins the inspiration when the thing he actually held out for was rent seeking.

On the third hand Budweiser is indeed really shit beer...

[bcrosby95]

I'm not torn. They were actively using the site. They weren't sitting on it simply to sell it. But of course, everything has a price... it was just significantly higher than $50k.

I have a story similar to this. My friends and I had a joke about some famous person in high school (in the 90s). We registered a domain with his name and used the domain extensively.

10 years later the guy tried to sue us for control of the domain. We were actively using it though and it was just an inside joke. Random internet people with no clue about the situation would have thought we were just squatters.

[zamadatix]

"famous person tried to sue me for a joke domain I was using but wouldn't sell because we liked using it" is a very different story than "guy says the reason he didn't sell is he knew they had a bigger marketing budget". Your story actually sounds awesome. His could have been if it were "I loved what I was doing with it more than 50k" instead of what he says it was. In the end it worked out to a similar outcome, kinda? That's where the torn piece comes in, it worked out but not for the inspiring reason it sounds like at first.

[genewitch]

I'm not sure why you care about annheiser-busch so much.

He knew that bud.com was worth more than $50k to Budweiser.

Bud.com would still be on every can and case of beer they produced.

Says they didn't like the beer, anyhow. If Budweiser came with a 15 million buyout offer I might see your point, but $50k is barely enough to buy a reliable car after taxes, registration, and insurance.

[zamadatix]

It's not about whether I care about Budweiser, who was trying to buy is irrelevant and like I said I don't even like their beer either. I'm just against the idea that registering a domain is something that entitles you to try to use it to make 15 million on transferring it because you were first and hoped someone with big pockets could buy it from you. It's one thing when your reason for not selling is your legitimate intent/action to actually use the domain but it's another when you blatantly say your reasoning is they have more money they could give you for it. It's not some crazy idea, modern policy at ICANN (who actually owns the domain anyways) agrees this is not how they want domains to be used either and most people in that position nowadays at least feign an attempt to say their reason for not selling was existing personal use even if internally they know it's about trying to get more money for the transfer as they know they'd be at risk of having their registration revoked otherwise.

Public resources like domains are tricky. We want them to be used not treated as a get-rich-quick opportunity where people who registered a bunch of generic things try to get millions for sitting on domains. I'm glad in the end this one actually got used but when the story from the source itself gives a completely different reason it's hard to be excited about it regardless how much you care about Budweiser in particular.

In comparison for example (though not specifically domains) "Dwarf Fortress" didn't sell rights to the name because they were actually using it, intended to continue using it, and didn't want to dilute the value they had actually put into the name that made others want to buy it. In the end they made millions of dollars with success of the game's newer launch off that brand identity they had built. That's an inspiring story of not selling a name.

[gfaregan]

Things have a price when the buyer and seller agree on a price. If only the seller thinks it's worth more than 50k, it's not really worth more than 50k.

[ipaddr]

Why does he have to give it away to the first corporation who throws money at him?

bud is probably worth 100,000s if not a million.

Corps will drop millions for celebrity endorsements. Why settle for less?

[zamadatix]

Who said anything about he should have had to give it away? All I said was the story was an uninspiring one about domain squatting for money not an inspiring one about someone who refused to sell because of their love/use for the domain. What they had to do at the time this was occuring was very unrestricted but these days it'd be governed by the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy where you really don't want to give something like that as your reason for not wanting to sell to a good offer. After all domains are not owned by you just because you are currently registered them, they are owned by ICANN.

[expazl]

That's not squatters logic any more than you're a squatter in your own home if you refuse to sell even if a generous offer comes along because you value your home a lot more than even an above market offer, but you'd still likely sell at 100 times valuation. Again, that doesn't make you a squatter, just someone holding on to something and saying "If you really want this, you're going to have to offer me something grand, and I know you can afford it, otherwise I'll hold on to it".

[zamadatix]

I mean there are a lot of differences here, primarily that you by definition don't own domains you lease them to use, but yes that'd also be its own flavor of extremely uninspiring story. Holding out to get the value something is actually worth to you before you give it up is great and interesting but that's not the reason they gave.

[quickthrower2]

Rich people buying homes and not living in them or renting them out is an issue for housing supply.

[Upvoter33]

It doesn't seem like a very similar story at all. One is a story of hard work for many years on something one loves; the other is cybersquatting eventually (kind of) turning into a business?

[msla]

I'm surprised WIPO didn't perform some dispute resolution by taking bud.com away from him and giving it to Budweiser.