[deniszgonjanin]

I think we should institute a Homesteading Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_principle) for domains. You can claim a domain as long as you use it for a legitimate purpose instead of just parking on it. There would be details to hash out for sure, but in the end I think we would have a much better system in place.

[Dramatize]

That's a terrible idea. People would just create fake purposes for the websites.. and then who would be responsible to decide if a purpose is legitimate or not?

[rachelbythebay]

Wouldn't it just be a return to the days when domains were free? Back in the mid-'90s, when people I knew registered vanity domains, they tended to come up with some ridiculous expansion of the name to make it look official. Nobody ever checked that "foo" really meant "fraternal otter organization" (or whatever), so those would become the top line in whois.

[eli]

Was that before Network Solutions? I bought a domain in maybe 1996 or 1997 and it was decidedly not free

[rachelbythebay]

Yep. Then it jumped to $100/2 years before competition brought the prices down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Solutions#Registry_and_...

IP space used to be free, too, as long as you could justify it. What times those were.

[elliotanderson]

Easily worked around: set up MX records and claim the domain is for email. Website not required

[alastairpat]

I'm pretty sure for .au domains you need to have a connexion with the domain (either it being your name or the name of a registered business you own.)

[patrickk]

Probably the same for many other country domain suffixes. It's the same for .ie (Ireland) for example, you have to have a connection to the country as well as the domain name itself. Typical examples would be your own name or business name.