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I don't think it's difficult to draw a line between a dude keeping a list of movies he watched and a "This domain may be for sale, meanwhile search for shoes and mortgages" clone page.

We shouldn't be afraid to call things out for what they are. The dude with the movie list is doing it because he enjoys it, so what if only a handful of people in the world ever read it. The clone squatter page on the other hand, provides nothing of interest to anyone and exists solely as a means to extort money.



Except for one thing.

The "dude" with the movie page could be someone who fully intends to actually sell the domain when the right buyer comes along. People already do this type of thing. Put up a "kinda sorta page" that looks and quacks like a duck.

Once again, how are you expecting this is going to get enforced exactly?

As an aside buying and selling domain names is a valid business model and has been around for quite some time.

People who managed to register domains back in the beginning were confronted with almost unlimited inventory and had to decide what to register at the time at what was $100 per domain (for two years later lowered to $70 for two years). [1]There was no guarantee they would be able to sell the domains that they registered. If there was they would have registered more than they did. Later once the top names were grabbed others took advantage and actually spent real money to buy them with the hopes of reselling (say buying something for $50,000 and hoping to wait a number of years and sell it for $300,000). Some of those people have made money and some are still sitting on those domains.

[1] And of course prior to that domains were free but they actually vetted the applications so there was somewhat of a constraint on what you could register. Additionally the utility wasn't as obvious as it was even a year or two later when Network Solutions (the sole bidder on the contract) asked to be able to charge because of the amount of domains registered exceeded the original intent (or whatever) of the contract.


Most everybody here has likely had some kind of issue with domain squatters. Don't pretend it's a desirable business model.

Squatting is a valid business model, but so is selling child pornography, heroin, or human body parts.


>I don't think it's difficult to draw a line between a dude keeping a list of movies he watched and a "This domain may be for sale, meanwhile search for shoes and mortgages" clone page.

For a human, it's not that difficult. But if you pay that human $15/hour and he does a site every two minutes, it costs you 50 cents to check each website.




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