A Fair Proposal to Domain Squatters
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Before I registered eddieringle.com, I intended on registering ringle.com, for the sake of keeping things short. (I suppose this blog’s URL would be Pirillo-style: eddie.ringle.com.) Unfortunately, like many domain names, ringle.com was bought up by a domain squatter who puts up standard pages filled with sponsored links. I have seen too many good domains be wasted like this, so yesterday I began to think of a solution. If the government would get involved and make this a law (I know, big stretch), then the Web will be a better place consisting of useful, content-filled pages, rather than pages of only advertisements.
Domain squatters do not want to lose money, but individuals and businesses should get a fair chance at a quality domain name. What if there was a law, that instead of just prohibiting domain squatting altogether (I believe a similar bill failed awhile back), domain squatters would be required to relinquish their ownership of that domain to any individual or business that asked for it, excluding other domain squatters of course. Domain squatters would also not be allowed to charge excessive prices for their domains (I emailed the company that squats on ringle.com, and they wanted tens of thousands of dollars for it!). They could only charge the person the price for which they registered the domain name, instead of valuing that domain higher than it really is.
I’ll state the reason I believe this should be a law once again. Everyone should have a fair shot at acquiring a quality domain name.
One Comment
Robert
June 29th, 2010
at 7:29pm
I encountered this when trying to set up a domain for a pirate game I host.
I recommend that they just increase the price of domains. Make a .com $20 a year, or $30 a year.
If a squatter tries to register 1000 domains for $5, that is only $5000 and can be made up with one sale. When the price goes up by a multiple, it makes the economics fall apart quickly.
I think ICANN makes a lot of money through registrations, and squatters are a great source of revenue. If they jacked up their price, only legitimate businesses would buy, and they would lose money.