These are not "cybersquatters". Octo and Part are generic terms.

One of the domains I own is a combination of a word that means "software" and another word that means "place you like to go". I got it for a developers site... and then after I got it I discovered that there was an italian maker of luxury goods whose trademark is that word - apparently the combination of these two english words makes another word completely in italian.

Am I cybersquatting? I've considered selling this domain to them because its much better than the one that they are currently using. If I sell it to them, then they will be getting a better domain at a price that they think is fair (or they wouldn't be buying it).

Some may say I'm being opportunistic and this is wrong- well, I say that my intent was elsewhere and this was a surprise coincidence... but that my intent isnt' really relevant. If I'd registered the name then I have perfect rights to it-- after all if they'd wanted it, why didn't they register it? If I register it and several years later they decide they want it-- what gives them the right to demand that I give it to them for free?

Finally, the truth is that I didn't register this domain, I bought it at auction. so, what's to say what a fair price is?

The idea that these people are "cybersquatters" is an idea of entitlement-- its based on the false notion that you somehow have a right to domain names, even though you didn't register them when they were free.

This is false. Domain names are an open territory- if you think of it and register it, its yours. If you later realize you should have registered it, then its you're error, not the error of the preson who did register it.

They arent' scamming you, they are asking for compensation for the risk they took in registering it. If hte price they ask is higher than the value of the domain (and if you have foo.com then foo.cn isn't really that valuable, is it?) then just don't buy it and let the owner of foo.cn use it for whatever they want.... why should you care?

If they are using a domain to pretend to be you-- then that would be one thing, and that's what cybersquatting really means.

But domain speculation, like real estate speculation, is a perfectly legitimate activity. Where does one get the idea that all names of a certain category should belong to them even though they couldn't be bothered to register them?

(Speaking in general here, not to the original poster since he didn't express much of an opinion, other than to misuse the word cybersquatter)

According to the law and from the perspective of the business world, what Mr. Li & co. are doing is perfectly fine, no one would disagree. You call it 'legitimate', and I think that's a fair description.

Obviously, though, you'll notice that a lot of people don't like what they're doing. I personally wouldn't go so far as to call it 'unethical', but I know that I definitely don't agree with what they do, since on a number of levels it strikes me as wrong.

The legal framework surrounding the purchase and ownership of domain names was ultimately established by fiat. The model we have is not a sacred construction that fell out of an economics textbook. It was chosen to represent some idea of how we thought domain name ownership should be handled. We didn't know how the domain name market was going to evolve. How could we? It was a radically new idea with little precedent. The closest thing we had was our model for physical real-estate, and so that's roughly what we adopted, in an attempt to make it a fair system.

Early on, though, we realized that our model didn't quite match up to the expectation of fairness we had for our system, and when a legal framework fails to match our conception of how things should work, we revise it, and we do so with more laws. The major law that came out of this was the Anticybersquatting act, and though it was drafted largely as a result of corporate interest, it represents our belief that something was wrong with the framework we had set up. (If I'm going to build a McDonald's, you have to move your lemonade stand off the piece of real estate labeled MCDONALDS in big bold letters...on every map ever printed.)

When you say that Mr. Li isn't a cybersquatter, even though it is grossly obvious he fits that definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticybersquatting_Consumer_Pro...), whether you agree with it or not, it leads me to believe that you have a problem with anyone being labeled a 'cybersquatter', on the basis that there is nothing inherently wrong with the act of cybersquatting.

The problem people have with Thomas Li and octopart.cn, is not that he desires to own a domain name that somebody else might want. It's that, rather than engage in some type of productive behavior, Mr. Li has seized upon a opportunity to make a little money entirely at the expense of the Octopart company. His behavior is counterproductive. It is of benefit to no one (except himself). He has created, in effect, a potential loss for Octopart, and now he is offering them the ability to avoid that loss. The key point here is that he has created a loss opportunity, and no real gain for anyone. Of course, he has the potential to gain money for himself, but in the long tradition of ill-gotten gains, people really won't like him for it, because he won't be receiving money in exchange for some positive output he's created, he'll be receiving ransom money in order to not make something worse.

We see a similar thing happening in the parking of domain names on a massive scale. Mass parking occurs when an entrepreneur buys up thousands of domains, on the cheap---since most of them haven't been registered---and then sets up dummy search pages and advertisements on each of them. He never puts original content on these sites. With judicious use of SEO tricks, he can still get them to pop up in your Google search, even though nobody in their right mind would ever link there or even want to visit there in the first place. Do parked domains actually add value for the consumer? Not likely. At best they simply rearrange or add vestigial segments to the plumbing of the internet. If I search for "sony tv" and the first ten results are WALMART.COM and the last one is TARGET.COM, my search isn't any better than if the first result was Wal-Mart and the second was Target. All Wal-Mart's done is increase the probability that I visit their site before I visit Target's...which may improve their market share, but actually degrades my experience as a consumer. You'll notice what we have going on is, again, a transfer of wealth, and not a creation thereof.

The practice of mass domain name parking must make some people a lot of money, but I don't think that anyone believes this is a desirable feature for the internet to have.

(Historically, these types of 'transactions' are frowned upon. If I'm a pirate and I capture your ship, I just got a lot richer, but the net effect on society is negative, since much work has been expended without the creation of wealth, and now much more work in the future will have to be expended on defense, which, short of economic stimulus and R&D, also fails to create wealth. This is why industrialized societies don't like war, or theft, or raiding, or vikings, bandits, bank and train robbers, burglars, pirates, muggers, hijackers, and highwaymen. Their acts are always lucrative for a small number of people at the severe expense of everyone else. Wouldn't you rather someone spend all day planning a building instead of a robbery?)

>With judicious use of SEO tricks, he can still get them to pop up in your Google search, even though nobody in their right mind would ever link there or even want to visit there in the first place.

Blame Google for that.

As the author pointed out, the domain was registered five days after his site launched. The domain was registered in bad faith. The owner is now soliciting the author for an offer on the domain name. According to Wikipedia, cybersquatting is 'registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else.'

Agreed. Whats being missed here is this: Registering a domain you think will be profitable in the future : enterprising.

Registering a variation of a domain that someone else just registered because you think you might be able to extort some $ out of them : rotten. No cookie for you.

Sounds like BitGeek is sending your emails ;)

octopart.cn and octopart.com.cn were registered on 3/10/07. we launched on 3/05/07.

this is sad. the good news is you probably don't need a .cn domain name. what registrar did you use? Some registrars are a bit shady and will pull this kind of crap on you.

So make the subdomain cn.octopart.com, and tell them to suck it! ;-)

this is called enterprising. They aren't pretending to be you, they are just buying generic domain names that might be useful to someone in the future. You can either buy them from them, or give them a pass.... that's your choice.

But it seems like you're offended that they offered them to you and that's a waste of energy.

They provide no value to anyone and hold intellectual property hostage for nothing other than their own personal gain.

What you call "enterprising" I call "pigs feeding at the trough".

Maybe they should find a way to provide value to someone else instead of domain squatting. Now, THERE'S your waste of energy.

They are providing value- they risked their own capital to speculate on a domain name that might be valuable in the future... just like anyone who buys swampland hoping to drain it. They took risk, they identified a customer for their property, etc. All these things add value.

They aren't holding intellectual property hostage. And by the way, when is personal gain evil? Do you go to work each day primarily to benefit other people, rather than yourself:?

They are providing added value, they registered a domain that someone else didn't think of.

The problem here is, that you regret not registering it, and so you, rather than accepting blame for your own failure, are blaming the person who was smarter or faster than you.

Back in the 1990s, I looked up USWeb.com. I almost registered it, but was on the fence, then went back three days later to register it and found that it had been taken the day after I thought of it-- and that company became a big company eventually before the bust.

Were they holding my intellectual property hostage? No.

Where does this sense of entitlement come from? IT reminds me of people who build a house in a neighborhood and then complain because a walmart gets built nearby... as if they think they somehow have property rights in the land that walmart bought. LOL.

You assert three times that they are providing value, but never explain how they are adding value. Can you please provide a concrete example of how this adds value?

Well, they provide protection against other domain squatters! :)

"It's a nice domain name you have there; it would be bad if something happened to it..."

The domain could be taken by a competitor, not in order to use it, but to prevent you from using it.

Or it could be taken by somebody for whom the domain name also made sense. For example, someone who sells paintings of octopusses.

Also, by keeping the domain name available to you, they provide a service to you at no present cost.

Would you complain if someone opened an outdoor testing facility for smelly firecrackers next to your house?

LOL right back at ya, especially if you think J. Random Shopper has enough time or interest to keep track of "bad PR", and somehow that will solve your problems for you. It doesn't work that way, which is why we reality-based types have zoning ordinances.

Hi BitGeek,

Safe to say you and I don't see things the same way. When I read this post, I felt so compelled to respond that I slowed down and then realized that you are the same person I "debated" with just the other day in the Crappy Programmer thread. You referred to the work of Edsger Wybe Dijkstra (Structured Programming) as "idiocy" and presumed to know what I thought (which included a "borderline" personal attack). I responded to your last post here

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=83191

but never heard from you again.

You did not know what I was thinking then and you do not now. Here IS what I think...

"Do you go to work each day primarily to benefit other people, rather than yourself:?"

Both. I don't give away my work for free, but the day I begin doing what I do WITHOUT providing (highly demanded) value for others is the day I hang it up.

"The problem here is, that you regret not registering it, and so you, rather than accepting blame for your own failure, are blaming the person who was smarter or faster than you."

To use a phrase you like, "LOL!" I regret nothing. I accept blame for nothing. I failed at nothing. I blame no one for being smarter or faster than I. I provide value. They don't. That's all I said. That's all I meant.

"Where does this sense of entitlement come from?"

I'd respond to this remark if I had any idea what you were talking about.

You are certainly entitled to your own opinion and I imagine we'll get to see more of it here. I suspect though, from your point of view, you will get lots of "debate" from others here. Don't expect too many people to see things your way, and don't ever presume to know what someone else is thinking. There are better ways to show your underwear.

Or maybe you just like to argue. Fine. But I have much better outlets for my "energy".

No. They are speculating, which does not generate wealth.

Really? It's obvious to me (and you) that sex.com is worth more than american-rivet-supply-corporation.net, but the question of how much more the first is worth is one that should have ramifications -- for example, if sex.com just goes to the first person to register it, it may end up as a popular, disappointing sexual education site -- if it goes to whoever pays the most, it's going to do whatever earns the most.

If someone else has a better use for octopart.cn, they'll buy it; if the Octoparts are the best possible users, they'll pay for it. If octopart.cn is worth more than X, where X is what they pay to get it, they're still ahead (just less so than they could be). If not, octopart.cn is overpriced from their perspective, and will end up going to whoever thinks it's cheap.

That's not a very effective defense of domain squatting. The idealistic sex educator should just as rationally say, "I'm not making $1.5m off this site, so I should accept that bid and sell it, and use the money to get my important message out some other more efficient way."

The domain squatter serves no beneficial function at all to society, so nothing is lost by banning that behavior except a sliver of economic freedom. If economic freedom is a very high priority for you, of course you're going to be against regulating the registration of domain names. You're entitled to your principles, but don't expect everyone else to share them.

"The domain squatter serves no beneficial function at all to society, so nothing is lost by banning that behavior except a sliver of economic freedom."

I like how you glide right past the argument I made. You note that you disagree, and then note that you disagree, but I see no refutation, so I'll illustrate it again: toilet-seat.com gets registered by a loving toilet-seat fanatic. He posts pictures of all the awesome toilet seats he's seen, and writes a fantastically detailed blog about the aesthetics of toilet seats. He is in the 99th percentile for Adsense users, earning upwards of $10 a month.

He realizes, however, that Global Toilet Seats, Inc, a massive conglomerate, could earn $500,000 a year more from their Internet operations, just by buying his URL. They offer him $5 million to give up his hobby site. He'd rather have $5 million than the URL. They'd rather have the URL than the $5 million.

You'd rather both sides walk away sad, because you can't see the value in reselling a domain to whoever can use it best, given that this sometimes benefits whoever thought of a good domain name first.

"You're entitled to your principles, but don't expect everyone else to share them."

I don't! That's why I argue them with examples, rather than. Um. Flatly stating that I'm right. I know of plenty of economic libertarians who do just say "Not allowing people to sell domain names they own violates freedom of contract," as if that settles it. But the people they're arguing with largely disbelieve in freedom of contract, so it's a wash.

Duelnode, we need you: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/10/duelnod...

I realize I'm howling in the wind by replying 13 days after the fact, but I just noticed this.

I would view the sale of "sex.com", at whatever price, to be a good and natural example of free markets tending to reallocate resources for near-optimum utility. I believe I read your parent post correctly as claiming that domain squatters serve a beneficial function by auctioning off domains to high bidders rather than letting fast-moving hobbyists set up disappointing web sites at those domains, and pointed out that the hobbyist could sell the domain just as well as a squatter could -- thus the squatter doesn't provide any added value for society as a whole.

So no, I would not "rather both sides walk away sad", and likewise I would not agree with most of your characterization of my comment. I'm sorry I was not more clear.

It can generate wealth in markets where accurate prices lead to more efficient allocation of the resources needed to produce the good in question.

That's great for physical commodities, but it doesn't take a genius to see that this doesn't do any good with domain names. It takes a committed libertarian to fail to see that, though.

A libertarian would think this kind of thing is repugnent as well. The difference is that a libertartian's first response would not be "we should pass a law forbidding this..."

You mean just as speculating in the mortgage securities market has led to economic prosperity? Oh wait...

Investing is not speculating.

Speculating in physical goods does generate wealth.

"this is called enterprising. "

this is called being a jerk

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: viewr.cn & viewr.com.cn Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:30:27 +0800 From: Thomas Lee <[email protected]> To: [email protected] CC: [email protected]

viewr.cn & viewr.com.cn Dear Sirs,

We have viewr.cn & viewr.com.cn for your purchase to expand China market which is to be No.1 market in the world.

Your interest? make offer pls.

Thanks

Regards,

Thomasa

We got one, too, at Scribd. Maybe they read news.ycombinator.

I guess it's more automated than that; they probably monitor registry updates with robots.

I don't know, I registered several domain names recently and did not get any .cn emails. Maybe my Gmail junk filtered them away.

When i got a business license a couple years ago, someone bought my company's .com domain mere days after i registered the trade name. The domain is absolutely useless to them, but they keep it in hope that ill pay them big time for it. not in their lifetime...

cyber-squatters lie somewhere between the scammers and spammers on my internet jackass shitlist.

all your base belong to octopart.cn

Beware! all those chinese domains are tainted with lead.

I just registered a new, really good, 6 character .com domain and the .cn is already gone...

We got a similar email when we launched i-conserve.com (also with the chinese domain name).

We (skribit.com) got an email like this within a week of our launch..

Yep, we got one too. Idiots.

all your domains are belong to us