Yes.
It's not as obvious with something like cats.com how this harms society, but I've worked with nonprofits numerous times who had to pay tens of thousands of dollars for their domain names because someone squatted them.
Let's not pretend there aren't widely-agreed-upon values being trampled here. Your argument is moral relativism.
> Sounds like there's more market oriented ways to resolve this issue. If you feel like short domains provide the world outsized value, why charge the same $10 annual maintenance fee as a 15-letter domain? The shorter, the higher the registration fee. Problem solved?
Given you haven't even agreed that there is a problem, it's pretty clear you just want to propose a market-oriented solution regardless of what the problem is, or whether the market can even solve it. This is not how problems get solved.
An often overlooked complication as well comes in the form of programming language package management reliant on reverseddomain names. Fail to renew your domain claim, and you may find yourself having to repackage healthy chunks of code.
The vast majority of squatted domains aren't squatted by "the little guy", so nothing you say starting from that incorrect assumption has any validity.
I'd argue that domain names are limited: there is exactly one of each domain name, the fact that there is a practically infinite number of other different domain names isn't necessarily relevant.
They're not limited, the short ones are. I'm not sure why people think they're entitled to short domain names.
> You're not providing value, period, at all.
I mean, you pay an annual maintenance fee do you not? That funds the registrar, which funds ICANN.
> So stock buyers are providing value to the market, while domain squatters are actively removing value from the market.
Maybe squatting on a domain provides them some satisfaction, who are you to judge how people choose to use their domains? If I choose to host pics of cats on "cats.com" (as the current squatter is doing) am I any less entitled to the domain than PetSmart? Just because you don't approve of what I choose to do with it?
Yes domains aren't specifically fungible, they're slightly different with regards to how memorable they are. You can still do exactly the same with each of them: host a website.
Sounds like there's more market oriented ways to resolve this issue. If you feel like short domains provide the world outsized value, why charge the same $10 annual maintenance fee as a 15-letter domain? The shorter, the higher the registration fee. Problem solved?