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A comment on Transitioning the web to Namecoin by addressing name-squatters.

Re:Transitioning the web to Namecoin by addressing name-squa... by jval on Sunday December 22, 2013 @03:03AM (#6949724)
Is there any way to enforce a use requirement?

One idea would be to have an agent[0] with its own Bitcoin wallet purchase server time that it uses to index the web and compute a uniqueness factor of each page. The agent then calculates a tax based off a blended index of the website's size and uniqueness. Because squatters don't have the resources to make all of their sites unique they will get taxed hard. Big websites like Facebook and Twitter are unique but they are also large, so they could be levied a larger amount to support the agent which will presumably require a lot of server power. Small, unique sites would barely get taxed at all.

Just an idea.

[0] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Agents

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Re:Transitioning the web to Namecoin by addressing name-squa... by mikro2nd on Sunday December 22, 2013 @03:14AM (#6949740)
You seem to have forgotten that there are many legitimate uses for domain names that do not involve using them to run websites. How do you propose to index a domain that gets used only for (say) mail, or only for CDN provisioning, or only for reserving namespace for a public API?
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Re:Transitioning the web to Namecoin by addressing name-squa... by jval on Sunday December 22, 2013 @03:35AM (#6949772)
Ahh yes, good point. Could the agent learn how to recognise each of these use cases and tax accordingly? Or could people learn to put up a unique website for any domain they use, or risk being taxed?
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Re:Transitioning the web to Namecoin by addressing name-squa... by DennisP on Sunday December 22, 2013 @07:30AM (#6950132)
Doesn't much help when people squat pepsi.com. It's already got a unique website, which just doesn't happen to belong to the squatter.
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Re:Transitioning the web to Namecoin by addressing name-squa... by jval on Sunday December 22, 2013 @07:50PM (#6952484)
That's right, but I don't think opportunistic squatters are that big a deal. The problem is people who own portfolios of names that don't get used, and there's no way these players can put unique pages up for an entire portfolio. Killing portfolio squatters is possible... not sure there's any feasible way to hit the long tail though.
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