I generally agree (and hate domain spam), but I've also wondered if it's not the same as speculation of any kind. The original domainers found this resource the rest of us were underpricing hugely. Same as property - it doesn't go to the person who has the best use of it, it stays with whoever's (great, great) grandfather found it first, or bought it cheap.

I wish it weren't true - many times I've wanted a perfect domain to find it taken up by some loathesome spam page.

There's a huge difference though, you can't buy thousands of plots of land at once for zero-investment cost ( aka domain tasting - did ICANN ever fix that?) and then see if someone expresses interest. Most people who speculate property invest more time, energy, money and research than the average domain-squatters do.

Furthermore, stuff that's common practice amongst squatters is expressly forbidden in other areas. At least in the US, you'd have a very difficult time trademarking an software company spelled "Microsoff", but typo-squatting is _rampant_.

There's a massively disproportionate amount of risk/reward for property speculation than there is for domain 'speculation'. If I find out about some new product coming to market and squat the domain - the company could potentially lose a huge amount of revenue, whereas I'm risking the cost of a latte.

I was thinking more of great grandpappy walking up to an area out West and saying "mine!" (possibly with a small payment) - it took a while before everything was owned and more rational prices were set by the market. The earliest domainers had a similar experience - no owners, so they didn't have to buy it from anyone.

In the end, any resource that is limited, underpriced and has some ability to produce income will get nailed by speculators sooner or later, and the price will rise.

Yes, ICANN has fixed domain tasting. No refunds for registration fees.

Typo-squatting is of course unethical. I would not say that the practice is rampant. A recent report by Verisign showed that it is declining and really is not prevalent. It's also not very profitable. PPC revenue has hit rock bottom in recent years. Talk about risk.

There is risk it seems because there is a high learning curve for what a quality domain name is. If you watch the industry, research keywords and learn to evaluate domain names you can do very well.

Domain Tasting was a problem for a few years, but let's be honest, 99.99% of the best stuff was taken beforehand. Domain tasting focused a lot on expired names, monitoring DNS/whois and frontrunning. It was but a hiccup in the timeline of domaining.

As far as punishment, looking ACPA, 100k penalty for cybersquatting. That's taken out some of the biggest offenders (see IREIT).

An interesting example, considering that Microsoft has successfully gone after similar domain names in the past:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft