Do you think that if you own a domain that someone else wants because its their companies or products name you should just give it to them at a normal price?

It's all a bit relative really.

There can definately be a legitimate trading of domains that have no real relation to a specific company. An Internet company might chose to name its product or even itself based on the availability of a domain. In that case, there's no moral question involved. The 'nicest' generic names are either in use or in holding, and they'll cost according to their niceness and the amicability of their present owner.

Deliberately buying a domain that's similar to a company name is usually only done to ransom the company, or misdirect and defraud users.

But, whether it's right or wrong to register a similar sounding name to an existing company is a compound question with a compound answer.

A lot of laywers get a lot of money for answering the question everytime it comes up. it's a silly case where so much money gets spent trying to prove that company A is 'emulating' or 'stealing' company B's face, and why they are doing it.

In my eyes, it's legal to buy any domain name, and it's legal to sell any domain name; unless a specific 'real' crime has been comitted (like fraud, slander or murder), it's just bad luck if someone else gets the domain you want, or a domain like yours.


I don't think I'd make much money as an intellectual property lawyer... But I'd consider myself a higer form of life if I was a 'domain squatter' than if I were a lawyer ^_-

Domain squatters don't just happen to own names, they deliberately register names in order to squeeze money out of others.
If I have a name registered and some years later a company with a similar name comes up and makes me an offer too good to refuse, I take them up on it.

That's not domain squatting, it's normal business, and I'd expect to be compensated for the cost of rebranding my business and possible loss of business because of it.

But I'm not going to buy a thousand domain names that companies just might want to use at some point in the future, put up a "this domain is for sale" notice, and start browsing through the yellow pages looking for companies to extort money from with threats to sell the domain to a child porn distributor.

Neither I am. I had no plans of advising people to squat for domains or buy them myself. Don't worry,

If someone does pay over the odds to one of these so called domain squatters, its their own fault. A company having a good sounding address for their website can't make up for good business management. Also, some domain suffixes have restrictions imposed on them by the DNS database maintainer, presumably to stop the squatting that has been mentioned here. For example, Nominet UK only allows companies registered in the UK to aquire domains ending with .plc.uk. At the end of the day, the organisations that maintain the DNS services are the only ones that can be expected to regulate the allocation of names.

Steven.

Yeah, i think this is also true for .ltd.uk domains, they are restricted to uk limited companies. However most mainstream internet companies go for the .com or .co.uk domain anyway. But yes I also think it is the domain allocators who should take the responsibility of stopping domain "squatters" from buying domains that are clearly going to be wanted by a company in the future.

I registered a name on 2 TLDs (I wont mention the name), and the next day a group whos website claims they 'protect .org domains for the good of society' (or something like that) bought up the .org version of the name.

They may or may not be legitimate: .org is supposadly reserved for 'organisations'. Luckily, I wasn't interested in the .org version of the name; if I was, I'm sure they'd have accepted a financial agreement, whatever their legitamacy. o_O

The moral - if you want lots (or all) of the TLDs on a name, buy .org first =P

quick go buy "finalfantasy50.com"

Maybe try buying a number slightly closer to the current edition . Video games and other items that have lots o different versions often use just one domain.

That's impossible to do. Domain squatters are companies, so they can buy those domains...
It's cheap and easy to set up a company in most countries, and a fake office in another country is almost as easy (most countries require just a PO box number for you to register as a company).

And how are you going to determine if "some company may want a name in the future"?
And why should individuals be banned from any domain that any company "may want in the future" anyway?
Say I have a common name and want to register that name for myself.
But because it is a common name some company with that name might at some point in the future exist and want it, so according you your proposed rule I would be banned from having that domain. Hardly fair.