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Do you ever feel bad about being a domain squatter?

  • This poll is still running and the standings may change.
  • Yes - domain squatting is wrong

    votes
    5.1%
  • A little bit

    10 
    votes
    12.7%
  • Meh, not really

    votes
    6.3%
  • No - I'm an investor not a squatter

    60 
    votes
    75.9%
  • This poll is still running and the standings may change.

So I've been searching for a domain for myself (not for resell) a nice 3-letter acronym that is also be a surname.

I found around 50-ish names regged:
32 new TLDs - most aren't even resolving.
Main TLDs - .com is redirecting the rest is parked or "for sale"
ccTLDs - 10+ registered

Guess how many websites are there....
4 (cctlds)
Almost 50 domains registered and most of them is just sitting there, unused...

No wonder the rest of the world hates us. :'(

Don't get me wrong - I know I am a hypocrite. Just the other day I used a few GD coupons to catch some domains for resale.
Still - I'm guessing 99% of 2-3 letter names and probably 90%+ of other domains is just parked/for sale.
I hate seeing names I like wasted like that...
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Guess what? Most "end users" don't actually end up using their domains either and that includes the ones that pay premium dollars for them.

As far as feeling bad about it, if I thought there was something unethical or wrong about investing in domains, I wouldn't be doing it.
 
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I'm guessing you've never searched for a name for yourself and been pissed at all the registered but wasted names?. :)
 
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If you don't scoop up the domain someone else will. And, more than likely make money. So, why should you feel guilty? If you're not infringing on copyright or violating any laws, then you're good. Money feeds your family.
 
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But isn't it like reserving (in November) 99% seats in restaurants for a Valentine Day and trying to sell them for $xxxx?
Wouldn't you be pissed on a person like that?

It's not like he'll use them, they will just be empty...
 
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But isn't it like reserving (in November) 99% seats in restaurants for a Valentine Day and trying to sell them for $xxxx?
Wouldn't you be pissed on a person like that?

It's not like he'll use them, they will just be empty...
No, because they sound like a person who would also dump over $100,000 in .xyz.

Valentines Day doesn't have to be celebrated at one place, it can be done at a park, for free... like .xyz's were.

This is apples and oranges and I don't know if it borderlines legalities as scalping tickets does.

A bad analogy. We're not cyber squatters, we're domain investors. I guess the person down the road from me is a property squatter cause he owns some prime ocean front real-estate, but refuses to sell it to me at a fair market value.

Sure, someone taking or having a name you wanted parked can tick you off, but get over it. That's their business, focus on yours.
 
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It's called Capitalism.

Happens everywhere.

Whether it's a Justin Bieber concert, or a Floyd Mayweather fight, all front-row and premium seats get sold out WITHIN MINUTES. You would think the demand for them is so great. The truth is, ticket scalpers cleaned out all the premium seats, so they can resell them on eBay or around the street corner at jacked-up prices.
 
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But those same scalpers have mouths to feed and they are selling something someone wants that's willing to pay premium price.
 
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There is reason domaining is called online real estate; You can buy a property and flip it later for a profit. If you own the property, it's no one's business if you are using it for business or living there or not. If you are a real estate investor and you see a great deal, you are not going to sit there and say well maybe someone will want to live there so i'll let this property slide. Business in business. I remember during occupy wall street protest I had the opportunity to reg occupywallst.com among others, but i got sentimental and felt like i was doing something wrong. But someone from florida regged the names and occupywall street purchased it from that individual for over $8K. They are countless names i wish i owned but i don't and it sucks, but like all domainers we start from the bottom make mistakes until we can make consistent profits and purchase better quality names. People just have to recognize the value of domain names and realize that it is a real business. How can you squat if you own the property??? Tome squatting is if you take residence on someone else;s property. Like if you buy appleamazon.com, or microsoftjelly.com lol...If you own it you do what you want with it...I live in New York where it's hard to get quality and affordable housing, but a whole lot of apatments etc are empty, because billionaires and even people who live all the way in china own them and they are just sitting empty waiting to flip a profit. Nothing valuable is going to lay around and wait for someone.
 
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But those same scalpers have mouths to feed and they are selling something someone wants that's willing to pay premium price.
Buyers from scalpers are not happy to be willing to pay premium price. They simply have no choice. And they are paying ransom money, because scalpers held all tickets hostage.

I guess the issue here, is the morality of such business model. This is really a very old, repeating topic, here at Namepros. I already lost count on how many identical threads about this same topic were raised here before.
 
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Morals will keep you broke or in dreamland. If one can't sleep at night due to lets say, domain squatting, then you're caught up in your feelings too much.
 
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Buyers from scalpers are not happy to be willing to pay premium price. They simply have no choice. And they are paying ransom money, because scalpers held all tickets hostage.

I guess the issue here, is the morality of such business model. This is really a very old, repeating topic, here at Namepros. I already lost count on how many identical threads about this same topic were raised here before.

Eh, sorry, I know it's probably 999th thread on this topic :) but as a end users I always hate seeing all those parked/for sale pages.
And feel bad for poor developers who can't have a cool name for they startup because all cool names are regged (and parked) and cost thousands.


I guess it's less about domaining as a whole more about only seeing 4 websites (about of 50+ domains registered)
Such a monumental waste...
I bet if I contacted the owners they would want $xxx+... for the names they aren't even using...
 
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In that sense, a farmer who grows peaches because he knows they have value to other people, while he can't consume them all, is a peach-squatter ?

Or, to put it another way, if I was to sell my working car for just $50, would any man in his right mind not buy it, despite owning their own car ?
 
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As long as you are fair and honest in all your business dealings, who cares?
 
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My friend and his wife have a nail salon in Florida. There is a nail salon in Los Angeles with the same name or with similarities. He wanted the name of his business .com .. The brokerage place wanted $10,000.00 for that name because they assumed the Los Angeles company would probably buy it. Well... We just bought him the name with an added SPA at the end and it's as good as gold because it's a developed website. They e-mail him every week asking if he's interested...
 
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In that sense, a farmer who grows peaches because he knows they have value to other people, while he can't consume them all, is a peach-squatter ?
I think better analogy would be - buying all the best land (and not growing anything, ever) and selling it for 1000x of the value...
Or investors reselling land among themselves (again, never developing it) while poor farmers have to use bad quality soil...
 
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I do not squat on domains, I invest in them.
 
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In a free market capitalism, they put policy controls to regulate how much exploitation an opportunist can do.

For example, they can impose price controls, so you cannot resell goods above a certain imposed limits.
They can also create anti-hoarding laws, to make it illegal for opportunists to hoard goods like sugar and create unnecessary shortage of supply.

It just so happens that with internet domains, no laws or rules have yet been created to restrict the number of domains you can own, or how much price you can ask that can border in the level of extortion.

One control i can possibly see, is to make domains very expensive to hoard. Like for example, a .ENERGY extension costs $110 to register. Who can afford to hoard and speculate on a portfolio of 100 domains in the .ENERGY extension and keep renewing them annually ??
 
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I'm guessing you've never searched for a name for yourself and been pissed at all the registered but wasted names?. :)

Actually I have had to search for domains for myself and it's a time intensive process, but no I didn't get pissed and I didn't really care much about whether the taken domains were being used or not. I don't tend to waste a lot of energy on resentment.
 
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You said it in your first post. You are a hypocrite.
 
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No I don't feel bad at all really. Does mcdonalds feel bad for selling food that can lead to the aid of your death? Nope.
 
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So the consensus is - "as long as it makes me $$$ who cares about other people" ? :)
 
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So the consensus is - "as long as it makes me $$$ who cares about other people" ? :)

No, I think the consensus is that people don't have an obligation to pass up on investment opportunities just to spare other people the inconvenience of having to do some legwork. Quite frankly your comment suggests a high degree of entitlement.
 
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So the consensus is - "as long as it makes me $$$ who cares about other people" ? :)
That's taking everyone's statement way out of context as that could mean, "Well, a hit man makes $500,000 a hit... I suppose that's legit."

Stick to the domain industry specifically and don't reach for poor analogies trying to connect them. Scalping is scalping and domain speculating is a form of investing.

Yes, I have to admit while I served during a time of war, I shifted funds around to high risk funds and other areas due to different press releases because I knew they were backing the manufacturing of munitions, etc. that made a lot of people take sand naps. I ended up investing only 1% of my income and walking away with a lot more. Should I feel guilty? O.o
 
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Yes, I have to admit while I served during a time of war, I shifted funds around to high risk funds and other areas due to different press releases because I knew they were backing the manufacturing of munitions, etc. that made a lot of people take sand naps. I ended up investing only 1% of my income and walking away with a lot more. Should I feel guilty? O.o

I'm going to have to part company with you on this one.
 
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