[mcnichol]

Imagine having 900 houses and renting them out to a community of like minded folks.

Whether it is at cost or slightly above, it is "rent seeking" in the sense they own, you borrow.

While it isn't rented, they are squatting on it.

[franciscop]

Rent seeking is NOT the same as renting, otherwise we would not need a new word for it. Rent seeking is particularly abusing the ownership position or power to obtain rent, not just rent:

> "Rent seeking: the fact or practice of manipulating public policy or economic conditions as a strategy for increasing profits."

[mcnichol]

Owning 900 domains hoping for them to be rented is "rent-seeking"

A simple test:

Would all of FolioHD's domains being rented benefit their business or not?

They are subsidizing the cost of buying those 900 domains into their overall pricing as a line item.

Now the registrar is trying to push out squatters. Sounds like the housing and renting markets. Insert surprise Pikachu face.

[close04]

That's not what "rent seeking" means. Imagine you have a bench on your property and people can just rest there. One day you start charging money for it but without offering anything extra, same old bench. That "squeezing for money with no justification" is "rent seeking".

[mcnichol]

You clearly do not understand.

They buy 900 domains. They hold 900 domains.

Anyone who wants that domain cannot use it but must rent through them (whom they rent through someone else)

This is textbook rent seeking behavior.

[grujicd]

It's not like that. They buy mcnichol.com on your behalf, when you request it. They're not registering it in advance and then blackmailing you to rent it through them. Domain is yours, you can move it elsewhere (they explicitly mention that).

It's same as any other domain registrar, except that have small markup (couple of dolars per year) but they provide additional service, i.e. customer doesn't have to deal with DNS.

[Operyl]

They buy the domain their customer _wants_ them to buy. That customer is free to transfer it out if they want to. What are you going on about?

[grujicd]

I don't think you understand what foliohd does. They're not squatting on hundreds of domains in advance. This is how it works, based on 1 minute glance of their site:

- you create portfolio, but it's by default served as a subdomain

- then you decide that you really want to use "mchichol.com". You register through them instead of buying it yourself.

That's it. It's customer's domain, not theirs. They also specify that domain is yours if you ever want to move your site elsewhere.

[barryrandall]

I suspect they're confusing domain speculators with domain registration resellers.