Morality

[khalfani]

do you think its moral to take domain names that just expired so the site has to find a whole other name

 

[bmugford]

While some domains that expire were developed, the vast majority that expire are not developed.

Most domains drop because the original owner does not care enough to renew them for any number or reasons.

Brad

 

[Jawed]

Domain names are assigned to the domainers on a lease basis. They are called owners but legally there is no such relationship, only the exclusive right to use the domain name is transferred.

If an apartment is vacant, available for rent, I don't see any morality issue in renting it for my own use or further sub-letting it.

 

[ezcoms]

Is it dumb to mix morality with business? We are actually in this business to make money...Legally....

 

[wo]

If you don't pay your rent, your lease will be terminated, and don't be surprised when someone else moves in. It's the same thing with domains. If the owner doesn't care enough to renew, despite repeated emails from the registrar to notify them that the domain expired, then they don't care enough about that domain. If they did, they would have renewed on time, or paid the penalty if it's at a later stage. Owners are given 42 fking days to make up their minds if they care enough about this domain to renew it. Isn't that enough?

I don't understand why people wake up only after someone takes the domain, and then they cry and make it seem like it's the new owner's fault and all that bullshit about morality. Sounds like the only person who's being immoral is the guy who lost his domain, and now wants to put the blame on the new owner for showing more interest in the domain than him.

---------- Post added at 08:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:19 PM ----------

Is it dumb to mix morality with business? We are actually in this business to make money...Legally....

Actually ezcoms, it's OK to mix morality and business. This is why we have contracts, etc. Your answer should have been: there's nothing immoral about that, because the owner is the one who let his domain expire.

 

[alien51]

I'm surprised about the serious replies. lol.

So is it moral to use taxpayers' money to bail out wall street companies who made a wrong bet and went bankrupt?

Is it moral to use fabricated evidence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of another country and bringing down its government?

A lot of bigger moral issues around. Makes "domaining" a much lesser evil. lol

 

[DU]

Is it dumb to mix morality with business? We are actually in this business to make money...Legally....

Morality has no place in business? A lot of laws and regulations exist just because of this tired reasoning.

Lets legalize price fixing... Monopolies.. And relax child labor laws...

 

[Fonzie]

do you think its moral to take domain names that just expired so the site has to find a whole other name

Of course it is "moral".
The domain name expired.
The previous owner forfeited 100% of their interests in that domain name via an elaborate series of grace and redemption periods, no different than an owner who refuses or "neglects" to pay their property taxes on a plot of land will eventually forfeit their rights to that plot of land and it will be resold to someone who is willing to pay the taxes on it.

It's quite an elegant system, really.

I'm actually quite sympathetic to people who make mistakes and errors in judgement. We all do. It's human. It happens. What I have no sympathy for are people who try and lay off their own personal errors into some philosophical cloud of idealism whereby their own mistakes should be assuaged by a perfect world of men operating with a sense of mutual aid. Get real.

Shouldn't have ignored all those "Domain Expiration" emails.

 

[equity78]

Yes in a modern society there should be ethics and morality, and DU is right there are many laws about that, go back and study labor in business, people had to fight for an 8 hour work day, 16 hours was not unheard of in the 1800's and early 1900's. I don't think this example is really about that, the op did not give enough info to make any moral decision.

The same scenario with different variables can affect things in any scenario.

If I am walking down the street clearly see someone reach into their pocket to get their keys and a wad of money falls out of their pocket, and they keep going, I am picking that up and saying "Excuse me, you just dropped this" I think that is the right thing to do, someone else can feel differently but that does not involve me.

If I am walking down some dusty trail with no one around and see a wad of cash on the ground, morality does not play into this. There is literally no one on this trail, no business right outside of it, its just money on the ground. Picking that money up is not immoral.

So someone just regging a name out of the millions of names not knowing it was someone else's previous website is not making a moral decision, they just hand regged a name.

I have handregged a name and someone email me and explain it was their baby. They were out of the country for their day job and never renewed, they emailed me the original email when they regged the name years ago, same name and same address. I said I am not paying your renewal it was $8.50 send me that paypal and I will push you the name. They were overjoyed, thanked me, if ever in their state come for dinner, etc...

It was a handreg, it meant nothing to me a lot to him. IMO it was the right thing to do. I understand and don't look down on anyone wanting $1000 as an example, that's their business, and they have every right to ask what they want.

 

[Fonzie]

Lets legalize price fixing... Monopolies.. And relax child labor laws...

Of the three, only one is a pure-play related to 'morality'... and even that's debatable once you get outside the Anglosphere.

 

[alien51]

Considering "pure-play morality", the entire Domaining stuff is a morality issue per se.

Domains are intended for End-Users, to use them for building websites that could benefit mankind.

So what's the moral issue in regging a domain, because at the back of your mind you know some end-user out there would need it, and you are going to resell it to him (with no value added) at an inflated price tag?

If this cannot be considered a pure-play morality issue, then the best thing to do is just leave the domains alone unregistered if you don't need it.

 

[Fonzie]

Because general speculation* isn't necessarily immoral. It's at least amoral.

* General speculation is very different from squatting/speculative terrorism. General speculation involves the idea that what you buy might be worth more in the future. Squatting involves a specific face in mind, as far as who you anticipate the buyer will most likely be.

If I buy land in West Palm Beach, Florida because I think it's a bargain, there are no credible moral issues with that.

If I hurriedly buy a small, interior building lot out from the last available large parcel that could've met with Wal Mart's zoning requirements once my law firm gets inside knowledge that they're hot to put a store in town, that's entirely different.

If I buy Guitars.com because I want to pursue the guitars vertical, I am in the guitars business and I want that name to give my business a competitive advantage online or I've decided to invest in .com domain names and that's the one I want to go with, there's nothing wrong with that.

If I buy Fender.com, throw up a minisite about automotive bumpers but tell the guitar company that I may be interested 'for the right price', that's something very different'.

As with everything, details matter. A lot. People trying to make excuses for shady behaviors like to dabble in shades of gray but things are usually pretty clear-cut when the facts are pointed out for what they clearly are.

 

[lincolndsp]

it meant nothing to me

that's the whole point. doing the same with 'creditcards.com' - type domain would prove a lot more

btw, had similar things too, parted with names i have no interest in myself for a nominal renewal fee as well, but no way if the domain has big value for me

 

[equity78]

Right but big value domains are usually not getting hand regged for $8.

 

[ezcoms]

I'm surprised about the serious replies. lol.

So is it moral to use taxpayers' money to bail out wall street companies who made a wrong bet and went bankrupt?

Is it moral to use fabricated evidence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of another country and bringing down its government?

A lot of bigger moral issues around. Makes "domaining" a much lesser evil. lol

How do you know there were no weapons of mass destruction? Just because CNN and the liberal media didn't see nukes sitting around doesn't mean there wasn't. Saddam talk or domain talk??

 

[alien51]

How do you know there were no weapons of mass destruction? Just because CNN and the liberal media didn't see nukes sitting around doesn't mean there wasn't. Saddam talk or domain talk??

Came from the mouth of Colin Powell, after he left the White House.

"I was duped!", he said.

 

[DU]

Of the three, only one is a pure-play related to 'morality'... and even that's debatable once you get outside the Anglosphere.

True. I didn't want to get into the specifics of morality plays within the generalizations that I've provided.

While being a monopoly is not a moral/immoral issue in and of itself - it can be a precursor to/or the result of some immoral behaviour.

Price fixing can be done for positive or negative - I was talking specifically about prices that were fixed in crisis or relative to need. (For example, raising the price of medicine to beyond what one would consider reasonable remuneration when an illness was spreading).

Child labor laws are interesting because the morality is a matter of perspective. I'm talking here about using cheap child labor in an exploitative system. Morality is usually in the eye of the beholder - the west (myself included) look at it generally from an economic standpoint and not an overal general welfare standpoint which means that we can force changes from "bad" to "worse". Some people aren't fortunate enough to be able to make such simple generalizations.

My point was more general. A world can't be based on business without morality. Money can't be the be all and end all of a moral society.

You're intelligent and I'm sure can rip these arguments to pieces but I'm just trying to make simple and generic points in a complicated field.

---------- Post added at 12:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:08 PM ----------

Came from the mouth of Colin Powell, after he left the White House.

"I was duped!", he said.

Maybe they're just really good at hiding the weapons...

---------- Post added at 12:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:10 PM ----------

that's the whole point. doing the same with 'creditcards.com' - type domain would prove a lot more

Not really - with the number of people who think doing that was stupid (there are many threads here). Some people think that the answer is "$500 to prove that they really want it" etc.

The act is as meaningful regardless of the underlying asset (though maybe harder to do for some). How hard it is doesn't change that much, imho.

Clearly Ray is a stand up guy... but some of us already knew that.

 

[ezcoms]

You guys write very well... I'm not stroking egos here..

 

[alien51]

speculative terrorism.

That's an interesting term. I can almost picture out an End-User sweating marbles, as every negotiation hour that passes raises the price tag by $300. LOL

 

[wo]

That's an interesting term. I can almost picture out an End-User sweating marbles, as every negotiation hour that passes raises the price tag by $300. LOL

:lol:

 

[officevalue]

Price fixing can be done for positive or negative - I was talking specifically about prices that were fixed in crisis or relative to need. (For example, raising the price of medicine to beyond what one would consider reasonable remuneration when an illness was spreading).

This is called gauging and is generally illegal. People don't need a domain to live but it is generally considered quite immoral to refuse to sell a person dying of thirst water for less than say $100 because a hurricane wiped out all of the fresh water.

Child labor laws are interesting because the morality is a matter of perspective. I'm talking here about using cheap child labor in an exploitative system. Morality is usually in the eye of the beholder - the west (myself included) look at it generally from an economic standpoint and not an overal general welfare standpoint which means that we can force changes from "bad" to "worse".

I am not following you here. Child labor laws and many other protection laws were not implemented from an economic standpoint (i.e. the economy will be better off if we eliminated exploitation of children) but that it was wrong to do so.

Also, if only economics were considered, slavery would probably have never been eliminated.

[snip]Not really - with the number of people who think doing that was stupid (there are many threads here). Some people think that the answer is "$500 to prove that they really want it" etc.

The act is as meaningful regardless of the underlying asset (though maybe harder to do for some). How hard it is doesn't change that much, imho.

Clearly Ray is a stand up guy... but some of us already knew that.

It sucks when you lose a domain regardless of who's fault it is and it is not generally immoral for the person who gains it to do so.

One of my domains was lost due to having used hotpop for email after having in the late 90s, early 00s gone through several dial-up ISPs due to changes in the pricing and caps on usage, so I started using hotpop for email forwarding.

Well, hotpop all of the sudden stopped its service and I didn't get my renewal notices (partly my fault, partly my email provider's) and my name, a dotcom version of a username I use on many message boards (not officevalue but my name plus a geo) was snapped up by someone who put up a one-page site in Japanese about investing and bicycles or something. Didn't make any sense (and not due to a bad automated translation) but had several redirects to several online stores which I presume are owned by the site owner. Geo was for a place in the US.

Unfortunately, they recently renewed it so I will have to wait another year until it drops. It's not worth a lot more than regfee to me so I doubt I'd ever make an offer.

BTW, even Microsoft has screwed up twice with hotmail.

Good Samaritan squashes Hotmail lapse?

Microsoft Forgets To Renew Hotmail.co.uk

I guess the only way to be sure you get those domain notices is have your own domain for email.

 

[DU]

I am not following you here. Child labor laws and many other protection laws were not implemented from an economic standpoint (i.e. the economy will be better off if we eliminated exploitation of children) but that it was wrong to do so.

I didn't phrase it well. For wealthy countries child labor laws are an economic luxury. We can look at child labor and say it's exploitative and therefore immoral and should not be allowed.

For some nations it's not that simple. Children working is something that was needed to help provide for the family. Simply taking that income away has proved to be not as beneficial to them as it is for us. Many families faced with further economic hardship have reverted to the children prostituting themselves.

UNICEF has criticized some of the child labor laws that impose bans on imports (from Bangladesh etc) as simply protectionist measures - which IS an economic based consideration.

Obviously exploitation is bad - but many times we're so far removed from the results of our actions that we can't see what's actually happening. This is what's so scary about the attempts to roll democracy across the world - we're unable to see the effects from our ivory towers.

 

[alien51]

Exploitation, is taking advantage of someone's predicament... for profit or personal gain; which makes it, immoral.

But if the other party to this transaction is happy consummating the deal/transaction, then it's not exploitation... but business.

For example, Prostitution can be exploitation if the prostitute is doing it to alleviate a personal misery (e.g. poverty). But it is not exploitation, if the prostitute has willfully accepted prostitution as easy money and a legal job.

So going back to Domaining, exploitation would be taking advantage of someone's desperate situation for "exorbitant" financial gain--- wherein the price of the domain is not tied to its practical inherent value, but on how desperate the buyer is.

 

[officevalue]

So going back to Domaining, exploitation would be taking advantage of someone's desperate situation for "exorbitant" financial gain--- wherein the price of the domain is not tied to its practical inherent value, but on how desperate the buyer is.

That's why you never want to seem to eager to buy when you're the buyer (or likewise to sell when you're the seller).

 

[ProSence]

There is no obligation if you registered an expired domain, it is a business and if you don't register other would register as well, however, those domain names which are not good for society we shouldn't register, whether they are new or expired.