The Misconceptions of the Cybersquatter
Cybersquatting is a topic which recently came up on Slashdot in the form of an Ask Slashdot article “Buying a Domain From a Cybersquatter“. The writer of the original topic mentions that:
“since we don’t own a trademark on this name it doesn’t qualify as bad faith”
This in it’s self means legally they are not a cybersquatter. Using the term cybersquatter to describe someone whom has legally purchased a domain name which does not infringe on a trademark is a large deviation from it’s actual meaning and should be avoided. Let’s think about this for a moment; squatter as defined on http://dictionary.reference.com/ in this scenario means
“a person who settles on land or occupies property without title, right, or payment of rent.”
Prefixing cyber to squatting changes the meaning slightly as it then deals with occupying a domain name without rights to the trademarked content (the name). Never was “cybersquatting” meant to apply to non-trademarked names. How can someone “settle on or occupy property, esp. otherwise unoccupied property, without any title, right, or payment of rent.” if the domain name is not trademarked or otherwise owned by anyone when they paid the fees for that domain?
Note; domain tasting is a whole other issue.
Think I’m wrong? Do your research, the term was coined in the early days of the Internet and was never intended to be used in the generic way which some people are now using it. Another term “parkhole” fits the scenario mentioned in the article much better.
Slashdot is comprised of technical people yet the comments by these people also incorrectly use the word. Sometimes it really is amazing that some people don’t know what specific terminology means in their own area of expertise. An example of not having a proper level of understanding is this comment by Overzeetop. The fact that this comment is marked as insightful pretty much proves my point about the mass of ill informed and/or illogical people. This isn’t to say that everyone on Slashdot lacks an understanding of the word, some people such as noundi understand the meaning perfectly based on his/her commentary located here.
The other issue I have noticed is the assumptions about domain resellers in general, again I will use the original article mentioned above as an example but this isn’t a Slashdot only issue. Even though tasting is another issue all together as mentioned, in this comment the commenter says:
“in most cases, these idiots haven’t even purchased the domain names”
This commenter is stating that the domain resellers are all idiots and then mentions that “most’ of them are tasting, but he does call them all “idiots” which to me is a pretty wild and inaccurate assumption. With a similar demeanor but possibly less tact hyades1 says in this comment that:
“Offering these scumbags money just teaches them that they’re on the right track. If you’ve got money to burn, why not throw a little at some of the many groups that are trying to outlaw this practice?“
First off nobody is trying to outlaw buying and reselling domains as far as I know and secondly why the assumption that someone not breaking the law is scum? It’s a supply and demand thing, the domain name is unique, if you want that domain over the ones available for lower prices you will need to pay more. Nothing is scummy about someone buying a domain before you ever wanted it and than selling it to you for more than they paid for it. People buy and resell things all the time, a great example are Ebay sellers. These people often buy an item on Ebay and later resell it for more than they paid for it, is this a scumbag thing to do? If so why? It is the basis of commerce, a company sells it’s products for more than they paid to acquire said products.
If people started thinking before stating opinions much more time would be spent on the improvement of everything from the economy to the environment and less time would be spent trying to find ways to screw those people whom they feel are screwing them. I’m not a domain reseller or anything of that nature so this is just my opinion based on two parts logic and four parts research.
June 5th, 2009 at 8:49 am
“It’s a supply and demand thing, the domain name is unique, if you want that domain over the ones available for lower prices you will need to pay more. Nothing is scummy about someone buying a domain before you ever wanted it and than selling it to you for more than they paid for it.”
Fully agree! It’s similar to owning brands and then selling those off. The same thing’s happening with twitter and other names now (something to write about?). Have a look at sites like http://assetize.com – you’ll notice many accounts for sale there too.
November 18th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
I disagree completely. When you buy up domain names in the hope that you can resell them for a lot of money, your just trying to make something valuable by hording a lot of worthless property. I’d compare domains to water. Extremely cheap, available to everyone but if I blocked off all lakes and rivers, damned it up and tried to sell it to the public for $20/L would I be scum, or just a business man running a business?
November 21st, 2009 at 4:05 am
I can’t make a name valuable by holding on to it, the value must already exist to the person trying to buy the domain. It is obviously not worthless if someone is willing to pay for it. Water is needed to survive, you would be scum because you would be forcing people to buy from you or die. Someone holding a domain is not at all the same as someone controlling something required to live. Laws exist against that, basic human rights laws, also not all domains are being bought by these people. You are using a straw man argument so I will leave it at that.
January 3rd, 2010 at 6:49 pm
I have become a victim of this practice, due in part to my own negligence. I owned a domain for roughly 6 years that had no value but due to the length of time I had it, it gained a considerable amount of traffic and it was used to promote a project. There was a problem where the card that the domain was under expired just before the renewal, and by the very next day it went up for grabs, it was taken even though I had fixed the error on my part. Immediately resold to me the original owner for 2000 dollars, I still haven’t been able to repurchase it, and due to this the networking I had done through the site was completely lost. There was a trademark on the domain as well, but I had let it expire after this incident, and this was before the everyday term “cybersquatting” became common knowledge.
My whole point is, not EVERYONE is doing this with honorable intentions. A well-travelled domain is published in a public list as soon to be renewed/expired, how many commodoties do you know of that advertise to people sitting in the comfort of their own home that they are up for grabs with just one click? Nowadays you can even reserve a domain years in advance and pull an enormous profit from. I’m not fond of the ebay resellers either you pointed out, because most of them obtain things by shady tactics that a common person may not be aware of. Anything online is a game to these people, because most of it is automated.
I don’t disagree with the nature of your post, but there are other factors (the human factor).