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stukdog · Sep 4, 2005, 09:24 PM

Recently, my aunt asked me to help her market some domains that she bought. Personally, I never really thought that domain investing/squatting/sitting was a good practice. On the other hand, I guess it can be calling the market ahead of time, which is usually looked well at.

What is the general feeling toward domain sitters? (People who buy domains just so they can sell them later.)

DeathToWindows · Sep 4, 2005, 09:29 PM

Depends... if they've snapped up a previously-registered domain when it lapsed and are subsequently asking for money for it, that seem no different from extortion to me.

However, if they're just preemptively buying a domain and selling it reasonably it seems cool.

And if they're just buying domains that are linguistically similar to preexisting ones and directing them to craptastic search engine crap, then they should be sodomized with a mouse!

budster101 · Sep 4, 2005, 09:31 PM

Scum.

Artful Dodger · 04:17 PM

It's a despicable way to make money. People did that in anticipation of Pope Bendict XVI being elected. Losers

MaxPower2k3 · Sep 4, 2005, 10:33 PM

someone bought my domain after some kind of glitch in the registrar's database kept me from renewing it. i could've done more to get it renewed, but i wasn't using the domain at the time so i wasn't really concerned with getting it renewed immediately. never thought someone was waiting to take it. now i'm pissed that i don't have it. the new owner just has it forwarding to one of those ad list sites

ghporter · Sep 5, 2005, 09:31 AM

Buying a domain name on the speculation that someone might want it, and then making a decent profit is fine. Buying a domain name to basically blackmail someone who has a truly legitimate claim to that name-or to sully their name by making it a porno site-is despicable.

Judge_Fire · Sep 5, 2005, 06:11 PM

And buying domain names based on common typos like "nytime" is amusingly desperate.

J

Link · Sep 5, 2005, 07:08 PM

Not to mention the "search engine" sites with no imaginable way to find out how much the owner wants.

Those are irritating because the owner usually wants a ridiculous amount like $5000.

tooki · Sep 5, 2005, 11:18 PM

P.S. It's "squatter" not "sitter"

tooki

Athens · Sep 5, 2005, 11:37 PM

Originally Posted by stukdog

Recently, my aunt asked me to help her market some domains that she bought. Personally, I never really thought that domain investing/squatting/sitting was a good practice. On the other hand, I guess it can be calling the market ahead of time, which is usually looked well at.

What is the general feeling toward domain sitters? (People who buy domains just so they can sell them later.)

I won a case with Internic 3 years ago where a guy was trying to sell a domain he bought for 2000.00, he originally bought it for 500.00. Because I had a registered company and blah blah blah I won the right to the domain and he lost out because he was just a sitter. If some one has a legit right to a domain and the current person has non, IE reselling it with no real claim to it a person/company can usually win it.

stukdog · Sep 6, 2005, 11:21 PM

My aunt bought katrina related themes and are offering them around $250,000 on ebay. I told her that I didn't feel right with that because if a foundation bought one for that much, it would significantly cut into what they could give to the foundation itself.

deej5871 · Sep 6, 2005, 11:33 PM

Originally Posted by stukdog

My aunt bought katrina related themes and are offering them around $250,000 on ebay. I told her that I didn't feel right with that because if a foundation bought one for that much, it would significantly cut into what they could give to the foundation itself.

Trying to take advantage of this huge disaster like that? She's no better than some of the politicians. Despicable IMHO.

BTW, would that happen to be this auction?

Artful Dodger · 12:56 AM

Originally Posted by stukdog

My aunt bought katrina related themes and are offering them around $250,000 on ebay. I told her that I didn't feel right with that because if a foundation bought one for that much, it would significantly cut into what they could give to the foundation itself.

Hey Stukdog....did you stay true to your conviction or did you give in?

jcadam · Sep 7, 2005, 12:33 AM

Originally Posted by deej5871

BTW, would that happen to be this auction?

vinster · Sep 7, 2005, 01:03 AM

I was trying to help a customer of ours at an ISP that I used to work for get his domain renewed. The company is called Irritant records and their domain, irritant.com, was originally registered in the wrong credentials and had expired somehow (some problem w/ their previous ISP).

There was like a 30-day window between the day it expired and when it became available again. So I checked first thing in the morning on the day it became available to see if it could be registered, but it had already been snapped up by some squatter in Florida who still has the domain.

I think the domain squatting industry as a whole is tainted, but there's really nothing that can be done about it.

yukon · Sep 7, 2005, 01:59 AM

I don't like it, it means holding onto a name and using it for nothing while someone else could use it to give content to users. I don't want one of those horrible search engine fake things, there's enough of them, and they're all useless anyway. If someone buys a domain, perhaps they should be forced to forfit it after one or two months if there is no appreciable content being served, but that would never happen since money is being made on both sides of the deal, and judging content is difficult/vague.

It's not extortion, it's just immoral, at the least unhelpful.

JoshuaZ · Sep 7, 2005, 04:52 AM

I keep trying to buy joshzimmerman.com cuz the guy is just hosting his resume on it. He never mails me back. Jerk.

jcadam · Sep 7, 2005, 01:18 PM

And then there is the famous squatting case of Mr. Nissan and nissan.com

turtle777 · Sep 7, 2005, 01:23 PM

I have two domains that I can't leave home alone.
Anyone wants to domain sit so I can go out to the movies sometime ?

-t

Oisín · Sep 7, 2005, 02:40 PM

Originally Posted by turtle777

I have two domains that I can't leave home alone.
Anyone wants to domain sit so I can go out to the movies sometime ?

All right, but only if the porn's good!

starman · Sep 7, 2005, 03:02 PM

http://www.starman.com

'nuff said

(ok, not a squatter, but still....)

Warung · Sep 7, 2005, 03:23 PM

Originally Posted by stukdog

What is the general feeling toward domain sitters? (People who buy domains just so they can sell them later.)

Incomparable asshattry. Just a tiny level above spammers.

nforcer · Sep 7, 2005, 10:50 PM

Domain sitters are jerks. There was a domain I wanted a few months back. Nothing was at this domain, and I believe that had been the case for a while. It expired, and then went into some kind of stupid grace period "Pending Delete" or something. For the next few days I tried to grab it but could not because it was still "Pending Delete". Then suddenly, one day later, the domain was somehow renewed by the original owner. I was like "What the hell?" It looks like the guy just let it expire, then bought it again through a different registrar the moment the "Pending Delete" status stopped. And still, nothing of importance is at the domain. So that sucked.

vinster · Sep 8, 2005, 12:25 AM

Originally Posted by jcadam

And then there is the famous squatting case of Mr. Nissan and nissan.com

I actually like that Mr. Nissan made a stand against Nissan motors (although it is futile), but after seeing Nissan's persistence he really should sell it to them before they wrangle it from him via the courts.

stukdog · Sep 9, 2005, 12:49 PM

Originally Posted by Artful Dodger

Hey Stukdog....did you stay true to your conviction or did you give in?

I stayed true, in fact I think I convinced her to donate them. (She was written about in the chicago tribune over this)

mdc · Sep 9, 2005, 01:42 PM

Originally Posted by JoshuaZ

I keep trying to buy joshzimmerman.com cuz the guy is just hosting his resume on it. He never mails me back. Jerk.

why don't you go round to his house and make him an offer face-to-face. all his personal information is right there in his resume

Artful Dodger · Sep 9, 2005, 10:48 PM

Originally Posted by stukdog

I stayed true, in fact I think I convinced her to donate them. (She was written about in the chicago tribune over this)

Good going!!! It's tough when its someone in your family. I hope you didn't take the statements in this forum personally...they weren't intended for that purpose. You actions are an example for all. It take balls to ask people for their opinion knowing that mostly likely you'll take some heat. Good job!

stukdog · Sep 10, 2005, 01:40 PM

I didn't take it personal at all.

I talked with my aunt a bit more and told her how against this practice I am, and turns out that she didn't know this was a common thing online. She thought she just had a creative idea to make some money.

Since her URL's had to do with Katrina, this has gotten quite a bit of attention in the media. She has now just asked me to find a good honest blog/site to donate the domain names to.