Can we just agree that nobody is posting the full proposed set of rules on HN, and nobody is trying to take away your domain?

Every time this solution to domain squatting is proposed, someone counters with your objection as if it's a huge problem with the idea, but it just isn't. Surely you can imagine a set of rules that shuts down a large number of domain squatters but allows your use case.

And if they are a big company that owns hundreds of thousands of unrelated domains with no apparent email traffic, it would be pretty obvious that it's untrue.

So sure, a lot of small bad actors would get away with it. But it would could potentially take out the biggest bad actors.

And either way, even a bad countermeasure would be better than nothing, as it would show that squatting is not longer tolerated. It would set a precedent for stricter regulation later on, because as it stands right now, ICANN is actively ignoring the problem and happily collecting their 14¢ fees.

As for a better solution, first ban all advertisement of peer-to-peer sales of domain names (so only registrars may offer a domain for sale). That should improve the situation significantly.

Not entirely yet, or it would have already entered the political debate. However, in many ways the proliferation (and success) of alternative TLDs indicates that there is an issue. You shouldn't have to use an Indian Ocean domain because .com is squatted to the wazoo.

We have lived through the land-grab era, sooner or later the redistribution era will come.

> Should everyone be able to get a short dictionary word .com domain?

Considering there are less than a million 4-ascii-letter combinations, obviously not. But there could be more stringent criteria for assignment and revocation, like limits per-company and per-individual, escalating costs in a way that hoarding becomes uneconomical, banning parking (which is absolutely doable, you just need an actual human judge), and so on.

It's the same problem as land. We have more and more people that need it, yet the supply is by definition finite. Hoarding it for yourself not only contributes nothing to the community, it actively prevents others from doing so.

Yup. Still waiting to hear a more nuanced explanation of the supposed “problem” than this.

Yes, this is a terrible idea.

> Surely you can imagine a set of rules that shuts down a large number of domain squatters but allows your use case.

Nope, how do you intend to perform these usage audits?

I'm not saying a fix is or isn't needed, but there are all kinds of things we restrict despite ability to pay. For example, you can't buy a social security number without a person or a physical address without physical land to tie it to.

Your comment doesn't prove your conclusion.