I feel like we need a chance in policy that makes this practice not worth the trouble. I see no value that he gives the internet. I may be bias though, I can't grab the .com variant of a non profit school I work for because someone like him owns it and wont accept offers for less then $600 bucks.
Meet the 'Mann' who registered 14,962 domains in 24 hours
21–30 of 97 posts
Re: Meet the 'Mann' who registered 14,962 domains in 24 hours
#22Vaguely related, a lot of people seem to jump to the conclusion that a domain that is registered and is not in use is automatically someone that bought it and wants to sell it to you at an extortionate rate to "steal" money from hard working "real" entrepreneurs, but how many people here have 1 or more domain that they don't use but did register with honest intentions? I bet most people do. I bet there are people who…
I've 100+ (including surround TLDs like .net, .org) domains out of which 40-50 are ones that I wanted to do something with but never did. And none of them, except for few, might be considered sellable. But then, in the past, I was able to let go off few domains and got paid good for them.
Re: Meet the 'Mann' who registered 14,962 domains in 24 hours
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Entrepreneurs build things. Domain snatchers/ squatters are not entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs take advantage of business opportunities. And it IS a business opportunity. Fact is people pay for those domains. Let the down-votes commence.
>Let the down-votes commence.
In future, omit these kinds of statements. They're pointless and inflammatory and are unwelcome because of that.
Re: Meet the 'Mann' who registered 14,962 domains in 24 hours
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Entrepreneurs build things. Domain snatchers/ squatters are not entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs take advantage of business opportunities. And it IS a business opportunity. Fact is people pay for those domains. Let the down-votes commence.
The people who inflated the mortgage-backed securities bubble also "took advantage of business opportunities". That doesn't, in my view, make them entrepreneurs; it makes them antisocial assholes.
Of course, it's no surprise that the domain squatting business is populated by similar arrogant jerks. It's not like this idea didn't occur to a lot of other people; the just recognized it as society-negative BS and went and did something useful.
Re: Meet the 'Mann' who registered 14,962 domains in 24 hours
#25The article says he claims that he sometimes buys domains via GoDaddy. Why would he use GoDaddy since he can get them from cheaper (and more-ethical) domain name registrars than GoDaddy?
Cheaper than GoDaddy, like who? GoDaddy give awesome discounts if you're a bulk buyer. You can pay close to verisign price. It can work out more economical than running your own registrar if you're willing to trust GoDaddy. They also have great support for high quantity customers.
I just researched it and fair enough! Though you can easily find cheaper prices if you're not a bulk customer, you may be right on bulk.
Ok, then I guess he just doesn't care that he's supporting an ethically-challenged company that has supported SOPA, etc.. but that's not too surprising.. giving what he does for a living :).
Re: Meet the 'Mann' who registered 14,962 domains in 24 hours
#26I know MM personally, and although he's a bit quirky, he's not "evil" by a long shot (see grassroots.org).
Re: Meet the 'Mann' who registered 14,962 domains in 24 hours
#27Vaguely related, a lot of people seem to jump to the conclusion that a domain that is registered and is not in use is automatically someone that bought it and wants to sell it to you at an extortionate rate to "steal" money from hard working "real" entrepreneurs, but how many people here have 1 or more domain that they don't use but did register with honest intentions? I bet most people do. I bet there are people who…
I think there's a big difference between 30-40 domains not being used for an honest reason, and 15,000 domains purchased for the specific purpose of reselling them at a higher price. And that's only 15,000 bought over a two-day period. How many does he own in total?
Given the numbers here, I'd say that any random parked domain you find is statistically far more likely to belong to a domain squatter than a legitimate "I have this crazy idea that I'm not sure if it'll take off" entrepreneur.
Re: Meet the 'Mann' who registered 14,962 domains in 24 hours
#28I think we should institute a Homesteading Law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_principle ) for domains. You can claim a domain as long as you use it for a legitimate purpose instead of just parking on it. There would be details to hash out for sure, but in the end I think we would have a much better system in place.
That's a terrible idea. People would just create fake purposes for the websites.. and then who would be responsible to decide if a purpose is legitimate or not?
Re: Meet the 'Mann' who registered 14,962 domains in 24 hours
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely, it is legal and indeed a hack. But still, not morally correct!
It's not amoral. I've been frustrated myself over domains I couldn't get, but I fail to understand how this is amoral. Too often we are quick to make moral judgments based on distaste (of which I share).
a·mor·al ( -môr l, -m r -). adj. 1. Not admitting of moral distinctions or judgments; neither moral nor immoral
Re: Meet the 'Mann' who registered 14,962 domains in 24 hours
#30I tried snatching up newmogul.com (it was a developed community like HN for business news at one point) when it expired, but was beat to the punch, presumably by someone like this guy (as it currently seems to have some fake blog parked on it now).
The original owner and operator of New Mogul just shut the site down out of the blue, and I got a replacement site setup at http://forlue.com and wanted to direct NM to forlue.
I sure miss NM.