Live data from Hacker News

How many .com domain names are unused?

singaporedatacompany.com

201–210 of 213 posts

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can have a vote, but government will still force me to pay tributes at gunpoint. On the other hand, im not forced to buy most of private goods. At the end, the evil organizations are those that became monopolies, no matter if it is public or private.

> I can have a vote, but government will still force me to pay tributes at gunpoint No, at most you'll get a letter in a mail and a lien if you aren't actively trying to evade taxes. No reason to engage in hyperbole.

And then if you don’t leave your house you get put in the last socially acceptable debtors prison. And if you try leave that they will kill you. Ultimately the threat of murder and kidnapping are there

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you scan for uncorrupt institutions, how the hell do you end up on "governments the world over"?

With the government, you get a vote. With other institutions, you have to hope their stakeholders' interests align with yours.

We're talking about "governments the world over", and they are typically not fairly run democracies.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#203

One intriguing proposal to limit domain name squatting is "Harberger Taxation"[1] Under this scheme, every owner of a domain would declare a value for the domains they own, and pay a percentage of that value as a tax (replacing the current annual registration fees). Owners are incentivized to post an accurate value for their domain because they must sell their domain for the price they list if anyone offers to buy at…

That seems totally bonkers for the case of an entity like Google or Apple. Would they really list their domains worth $1,000,000,000,000 dollars? and pay some percent of that a year?

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While it makes sense in theory, I think there are some practical problems that would have to be addressed before such a system could be put into use. For example, what stops a company with a large bankroll from squashing competitors by purchasing their domain? They don't have to sell if the offer sucks.

The idea is that if I'm a startup that owns google-disruptor.com, I have to declare a value for that domain name (let's say $100,000), and pay a percentage of that value as a tax. I'm then obligated to sell the domain to anyone who is willing to pay $100,000. This prevents me from undervaluing the domain. Since Google has a much larger bankroll than me, they can purchase the domain for $100,000, and revalue the domai…

So as a competitor to Google with $1000 in my pocket, Google could domain-snipe me out of existence, legally, for $1001 dollars?

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can have a vote, but government will still force me to pay tributes at gunpoint No, at most you'll get a letter in a mail and a lien if you aren't actively trying to evade taxes. No reason to engage in hyperbole.

And then if you don’t leave your house you get put in the last socially acceptable debtors prison. And if you try leave that they will kill you. Ultimately the threat of murder and kidnapping are there

Or you could just be a decent person and pay your taxes.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#206
post #105
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holding companies would break an approach like this very quickly - it's likely that the cost burden of this change would hit smaller companies much quicker than large ones.

Correct me if I am wrong, but are you saying domain sqautters could spawn 1000s of holding to maneuver around my proposal? I guess there could be countries/states where you can register a company for a very low cost. What is the cheapest place one can start a company?

$50 is the price to incorporate in Arkansas, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Oklahoma and Mississippi[1] apparently

[1] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/241528

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#207
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is liability in frequency of transactions that requires human monitoring. The more frequent a transaction is the more liability there is. If the charges were automated would you risk the presence, trademark, and health of your business that your domain will always be there due to that automation?

> There is liability in frequency of transactions that requires human monitoring. The more frequent a transaction is the more liability there is. If the charges were automated would you risk the presence, trademark, and health of your business that your domain will always be there due to that automation? I don't understand..large companies currently outsource domain management to others, effectively relying on automa…

Bills and accounting at any large company are managed by a team of accountants with the support of automation.

The difference is that utilities do not expire. If you don’t pay your bills you may lose service temporarily, but they won’t delete your account and reprocess your facility. A domain name is essentially leased property. If you let it expire not only will you lose it but then somebody else can take it and you won’t get it back. The real world equivalent is failing to pay mortgage or property taxes on your house, except consumer protection laws require a large number of failures (sometimes years without payment) before they can take ownership.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently not https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/07/06/average-cost-p... > Below are the 97 countries represented in the map, in order of highest average cost per click to lowest average cost per click, compared to the US average CPC, which is between $1 and $2 on the Search network.

Now I'm unsure if each individual click is actually billed for that much. Or if that's a sum / average of all the advertising costs until someone finally clicks.

It is what Google gets when somebody/something clicks on an ad in SERPs.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#209
post #206
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I am wrong, but are you saying domain sqautters could spawn 1000s of holding to maneuver around my proposal? I guess there could be countries/states where you can register a company for a very low cost. What is the cheapest place one can start a company?

$50 is the price to incorporate in Arkansas, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Oklahoma and Mississippi[1] apparently [1] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/241528

Interesting, but there are typically recurring costs involved in keeping a company open. Mind you, I guess accounting/filing costs also can get pretty cheap at scale, especially if each company is identical in nature.

Re: How many .com domain names are unused?

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for that? Because it's a pretty big claim. I have used namecheap for years, and they have been absolutely wonderful, but if they are also hugedomains I will start migrating.

I just googled for the thread I remember reading, and it is namebright that is apparently linked to them: https://www.scottphillips.com/post/2010/buying_a_domain_from... This is the thread where someone mentions they /had/ their domain with namecheap, which is why I confused them: https://www.namepros.com/threads/held-hostage-by-huge-domain... Personally I've never used either - I'm in the UK so it is different compa…

I appreciate you looking and following up. I have had nothing but wonderful experiences with namecheap so I was extremely concerned.
Post reply on HN