poll Is drop catching ethical?

You seem to be mixing two things here.
Is drop catching ethical? Yes imho
Are drop catching services ethical? I'd like to say no, because it makes it hard for me to catch names.

There is a related point - is it ethical for registrars to hang on to expired names and auction them before they drop. and a much more questionable practice - should a registrar seize an inactive name before it expires, and offer it for public auction.

Itself - it is ethical definitely...
But the fake bidders are everywhere... incl. DC-services...

p.s. API is my 1st choice, where it can be enough...

I have never bothered to think it all the way thru but the best analogy may be foreclosures or repossessions in the non digital world.Thinking it thru now...

I don't think it's comparable to a foreclosure. It's more like scavenging though the council rubbish dump after the council workers have taken the best stuff. There is always the chance of finding a diamond ring, but a month old half-eaten McDonalds burger is more likely.

Well of course the truth is that we never actually own a domain, we are just leasing. Once payments on that lease are delinquent (upon expiration) the domain is repossessed by the registrar which at the outset had leased the domain itself from the registry.

The first question I would have would be why the registrar (who is also just leasing the domain from the registry) has more rights (to auction the domain upon expiration etc...) than the end user that registered the domain with them at retail prices (to their profit)...still just thinking out loud

I dropcatch every day..
is it unethical?
which ethic do you refer to?

Kuffy said:

There is a related point - is it ethical for registrars to hang on to expired names and auction them before they drop. and a much more questionable practice - should a registrar seize an inactive name before it expires, and offer it for public auction.

Click to expand...

This one I would definitely say no to.

Everything can be ethical or unethical depending on the case, if you are just a user for the service and you are FORCED to use it to catch a dropping domain then nothing is unethical from your part, but once a domain drops it should be available equally for everyone to register which isn't happening because of the giant drop catching companies which I don't think its ethical work to catch as many dropping domains as they like and sell them for big money!

domain drop catching, also called domain sniping, is the practice of registering a domain name once registration has lapsed, at once after expiry.

Drop catching is completely ethical.

About the only form of drop catching I would say is unethical is purposely targeting accidental drops of a company and then "holding the domain hostage." Technically you would not have to drop catch these types of names if others didn't target them - and you could hand reg. So this shouldn't count as a mark against Drop Catching.

But from a legal, and generally an ethical point of view - The domain was not paid for and the legal time-frame to recover the domain after nonpayment has has ended. At the time of a drop-catch - that domain name is technically up for re-registration, which makes it free and clear minus any valid existing trademark or "bad intent" of the new owner.

The only difference between hand regging a name and drop catching is that in drop catching the name is "hand-regged" as soon as possible after the domain goes back into the pool of available domains.