Becoming Remotive.com

Why is it not legal to discuss the sales price of certain sales of expensive assets like domains or companies?

- Usually domain squatters have a whole portfolio and prefer people not knowing the real prices

- It makes for more dramatic blog posts

- They signed an "NDA"

For others reading and thinking of trying something similar:

You could offer to lease the domain instead. Rent-to-buy. And/or a mix of cash and options/rev-share.

Talk to your accountant (get an accountant you doofus) about writing it off, there may be tax benefits. Jerry, all these big companies, they write off everything. They just write it off.

Best to come up with a proper name to begin with and avoid all of this hassle.

The one example I know personally where this actually mattered is a company called face.com (facial recognition) sold to Facebook. To be sold to a big company got to get on their radar first. And all things being equal, out of several face recognition startups, the one with the face.com domain is the more obvious choice :P

I thought ICANN can forcibly transfer a domain that is not being used to another entity who can prove a legitimate need for it?

That was supposed to end a lot of domain squatting, especially since web addresses are kind of crucial to modern companies and in the wild west of the internet, anyone can setup e.g. cocacola.org or something and start trying to steal your customers.

> that is not being used

How will that be defined? It's not difficult to put up a small website. And just like that, the page is now used.

Not wanting to point fingers or start conspiracy theories, but what guarantee is there that GoDaddy didn't squat this domain? They had an employee act as "broker", and it seems there was little information about the original owner revealed.

I ask because, years ago, I had a few friends tell me that they searched a domain name on a few registrars, found them available, then upon trying to buy them found that they were already registered. They suspected foul play on the part of the registrar.

I own a few domains, and haven't come across this, but I'd like to know the current state of affairs. Is this a thing? Are there protections in place to prevent this? How do you avoid this? Is domain squatting still the wild-west?