As I was brainstorming a new website concept, I started to research possible names. I thought of many good names, but the .com domain names were already taken for all of them. Not surprised? It’s getting to a point where even ridiculous combinations of words and random combinations of characters are registered by people for no other reason than to own the domain names. Who wants to settle for an inferior domain name when you could be using this one?
What annoys me is that most of these great potential domain names are parked at the registrar doing nothing. Domain name squatters are just waiting for desperate buyers to show up and hand over large sums of money for their catch. Owning a domain name should not be a right but a privilege. Why should you be able to own a domain name without adding some value to the internet?
Yesterday I posted a Youtube music video about the inevitable burst of the web 2.0 bubble. Parked domain names, adsense arbitrage websites, and scammy affiliate landing pages are what we will see crashing down in the near future. By the theory of darwinism, these sites should naturally drop out of sight because their value to the internet is negative.
Greedy domainers are taking over all the property on the internet and we have to put a stop to it. We can do this in two ways. The current domain name system of blahblah.com resolving to a server somewhere can be improved with a totally new approach. However, a new system would flip the entire internet infrastructure on its head and would be time-consuming and expensive to implement. So we can start cleaning up the internet by placing stricter rules on buying and owning domain names.
Why don’t we start by forming an international regulatory commission that monitors the domain name marketplace? Or we could relegate the responsibility to each country for their respective domain name extensions. There would be rules that penalize domain names that are left latent without content for over a certain period of time. Also, domain name owners would be held accountable for their actions by enforcing stricter registration rules with higher transaction costs for the registration process. Although it sure is convenient, it is pretty absurd that I can register a domain name within 3 minutes on a site like GoDaddy. How about actually checking my identity to see if it is valid before it goes on the WHOIS information?
Domain names are certain to experience a market correction along with the web 2.0 bubble burst. A site’s name is an important factor to its success, and too many domain names are being held hostage by professional buyers and traders. Let’s hope that this issue is fixed soon for the next generation of the internet
The Conversation {1 comments}
I completely agree. I recently went to register http://www.SOMENAME.com and found it was taken, no problem. I looked up the page and it was just some squatter landing page. So I tried a WHOIS lookup to get in touch with the owner and arrange a purchase (that’s what squatters do right?). Anyway the email listed was fake, the landing page is bogus and now I’m forced to find another domain as the internet space I wish to occupy is left to waste.
I too hope a solution can be found soon!
Leave Your Own Comment
You can follow any responses to this entry via its RSS comments feed. You can also leave a trackback if the inclination is there.