A lot of people do that, but it is cybersquatting. Just like if you know there is a business starting up, you hear what they plan to call their business... so you rush to grab that domain name in hopes that their company will become large in the future and will offer you a lot of cash for the name. It's classic cybersquatting.
The only difference is that it is with an individual's name... you hope they will become famous and rich in the future, and will pay you a lot of money to buy their name.
This used to be done back in the early days of domaining, before domain law/ethics became the entity it is now, and people made a lot of money off this kind of cybersquatting.
People still do it; you have to decide the ethics of it yourself. And legally, if you grab another person's name in domain form to 'beat them to it', and try to make money off it, they will have a legal case against you.
I run across these kinds of names all the time, of up-and-coming sports/TV/movie figures. Some of them have high searches, wordtracker, google, etc., but I still don't touch them.
I ran across MieHama.com (a Japanese star) as an available name awhile back and posted it on my Bannen's Best list but didn't reg it; another NP member did, but I think it was a safe reg since Mie Hama is deceased and her estate doesn't seem to be active in any way. I think Miehama.com was valued by estibot at over $3000.
But I also posted CallumBlue.com as available, an no one has taken that yet. If you google Callum Blue you'll see he's already on the road to movie stardom, but the fact that his name remains unregged shows you just how careful domainers are these days about regging celebrities' names.
Hope that's given you a little more insight
