Re: Petition against DNS squatting

What you are describing is domain speculation.

In domain speculation, the domains are bought from domain registrars,
and then later resold to others who want to use the domain for some
reason of their own--perhaps even for speculation. There is no way to
say that companies that reserve domain names in anticipation of selling
the domain later are any different from land speculators who buy land in
anticipation that it might rise, or grain speculators who buy grain in
anticipation that the current price is too low and will rise later. The
speculator takes a risk that the domain/land/grain/whatever will be more
valuable in the future.  Sometimes they lose that bet; sometimes they
don't.

The economics of speculation, whether it be in stocks, land, grain, or
domains, is to increase the amount of capital in the market, improve
market liquidity and to moderate market fluctuations.  Despite the
occasional cries of farmers, investors, etc about speculation, it is a
fact that speculation is an economic benefit to the market that they
depend on and is benefit to all the market players.

The only thing that would bother me is if a domain registrar engages
some kind of speculation activity. This would seem to be an unfair trade
issue, since in that particular case, the activity boils down to
changing the prices of domain registration on a per-case basis, and
would be an unfair advantage against other speculators who have to pay
cash for the domains they speculate on. I don't think that is happening,
however.

I note that I am not a domain speculator, but do have domains that
people have offered to buy. I haven't sold; my grandmother used to say
"if it's worth that to them, it's worth that to me."  I also come from a
farm background and am heir to a fair amount of farmland and grain,
whose prices rise and fall partly by the activity of speculators.  When
buying and the price is high, farmers damn the speculators. When selling
and the price is low, farmers seek out speculators.

Moral: Don't get too caught up in the 'damning' of speculators. They
aren't always bad; it depends on the conditions and which side of the
trade you are on.

		--Dean


On Mon, 22 Sep 2008, Hugo Monteiro wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> First of all my apologies for such OT message, but i've come to a point 
> that i can no longer keep quiet about the subject.
> 
> I'm only sending this to the list because i'm sure there are others that 
> share the same anger and frustrations on the matter.
> 
> I'll spare you about the details about the DNS squatting phenomena, as 
> i'm sure you all know it very well. The brief text is available here 
> http://www.petitiononline.com/DNSquatt/petition.html
> 
> Thank you all for you patience, and again my respectful apologies for 
> such off topic message.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Hugo Monteiro.
> 
> 

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