[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.