[qq66]

The much simpler way to avoid squatting is to make .com domains cost $200 a year. This will instantly end the vast majority of domain squatting on the .com TLD and if people can easily get the .com they need for their business then the other TLDs are not going to have much squatting activity.

[oarsinsync]

> The much simpler way to avoid squatting is to make .com domains cost $200 a year

A monopolist hiking prices to this extent will likely see legal action against them. That's a 20x increase you're proposing.

It's also unlikely to have a material effect. .com used to cost $75 a year back in the day, and that didn't stop squatters, and high value domain transfer sales. $75 in 1990s dollars is about $150-$190 today.

[creeble]

Source needed: .com domains never cost more than $100/2 years, IIRC.

[oarsinsync]

You're right, I'm confusing it for $70 to register, which registered the domain for 2 years.

[zelphirkalt]

How does this lend itself to self-hosting then? I think few people will pay that much to self host.

[schrodinger]

I don't get it. How do you handle 10k people wanting, say, garden.com, without a free market?

[mfru]

the most fair distribution for limited sought-after resources that are inconsequential (like domain names) are raffles. let people apply in a 4-week window and then randomly assign it to one of the applicants.

then don't allow reselling, just allow giving it back and do a raffle again

[prmoustache]

first served or random from a waitlist are other options.

[schrodinger]

First come first served is capitalism in disguise. Someone will automate a tool that watches for these and jumps on them, and the person with the most resources, can get a close network connection, etc will "buy" it.

Same with waitlists.

It's impossible to avoid capitalism!

[markhahn]

how about make it round-robin, so all 10k of them get a fair slice of traffic? ;)