Web Domain Advice

[bz£]

Here is some further commentary.

So sometimes people do get together and decide that they have more of a right to some resource/property than the owner, because they will use the resource/property for the common good.

Marx, Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Castro come to mind.

In this case, perhaps names like Washington, Jefferson and Franklin should come to mind, because what Sam is talking about is United States law. Maybe you don't live in the US; I don't know. This does happen, though. It's happening right now in the town I live in: there's a little convenience store that happens to be where a road wants to go instead. Too bad! It sucks to be the guy who owns the store, but, in the long run, it sucks more to see cars driving into the Merrimack River because there's a convenient store in their way.

To me that there is no way for the most important communication technology ever developed to have gotten here at all and become as useful as it has without someone deciding they could make a buck doing it. Speculation is an uneasy business, but it's a key part of the "goldrush" that fueled the internet's development, isn't it?

Here is the difference. Say I start up a company because I've come up with a great new way to search for music on the Internet. You can buy stock in my company and I'll use that money to hire fluffy to be my chief programmer. We turn out a super product and you make millions and everyone is happy. That is good.

Now, I want to sell my product, which is called FindSongs. Unfortunately, some dude named Eric owns "FindSongs.com" so I have to buy it from him, which I can't afford. Your investment has fueled progress and his has presented a barrier to progress. His speculation is making him money, but it's not helping anyone else. That's fine, what he does is morally questionable but not illegal. He's basically just a ticket scalper, making money without adding value in the process.



Eric: Here is some serious advice. Quit while you're ahead (relatively). I'm not saying you should stop doing business... just quit talking about it. You have to realize that there is basically nobody on the planet that considers what you do to be respectable, and it is unlikely that you will change any minds by continuing to talk about it. You are only making yourself look bad.


I will have no further comment.

[MC Eric B]

bzl - There is zero chance the domain FindSongs.com would be available right now even if a domain speculator never bought it, so I am not sure exactly what your point is regarding that scenario. If somebody like me did not own it, you would still need to pay lots of money to buy it from whoever owns it. I guarantee they would not sell it for $10 since the market value is much much more than that. In fact, there is a good chance you would not even have the option to buy it, because Google or Apple would own it and would not part with it at any price.

Domain speculators have nothing to do with driving up the prices for domains. Domains like FindSongs.com are worth a lot because a business like the one you hypothetically started wants a domain like that, and it adds huge value to their business. Domain speculators are generally not the ones paying huge prices for domains, they buy them for the base price (around $10) like I do.

[thehipcola]

That makes sense to me. Good replies. Hadn't thought of it in that light. I can see why it's so unpopular with folks. Something about identifying a deman in a marketplace, stocking up with whatever fills that demand and then adjusting pricing to reflect increases and decreases in the demand appeals to a very basic capitalistic sense I seem to have, but clearly it, in this case, and in the case of scalpers (great great analogy, btw), and likely other ways, it has poor optics, and really...kind of sucks. I hate scalpers, but I guess thats 'cuz I suffer at their hands. I haven't been bugged by domain-tycoons yet, so I've been kind of ambivalent, but you've framed it in an interesting way.


heh, Eric....not to assume anything about your income, but if you own a 3 million dollar a year company, why are you using a casio keyboard to do your music with?

[MC Eric B]

The flipside of scalpers though is that many people very happily buy tickets at higher prices from ticket agents (aka scalpers) because they can get much better seats than they would have obtained themselves. Also, much like domain names, many concerts are sold out. So, without a ticket agent, you would not be able to go to the concert at all.

The biggest losers from ticket scalpers are the artists, because they could really have sold the ticket themselves for $500 instead of $50 and made much more money. For domains, the "artist" is Network Solutions (they control all the domains), so I suppose they lose, but they are the ones who setup the current domain system so they could change it if they wanted.

[MC Eric B]

thehipcola - I bought the Casio CTK-900 keyboard at Guitar Center. See photo at http://www.guitarcenter.com/shop/docume ... 71&index=0 . It was $199. Since I don't know how to play the piano, it does not really help much for me to have a fancier one. I just use it for the beats and auto-chords, and I screw around with playing sounds on it.

[blue]

The flipside of scalpers though is that many people very happily buy tickets at higher prices from ticket agents

listen, jackass, NO ONE HAPPILY PAYS MORE MONEY FOR ANY FUCKING THING.

jesus f christ you are a dense son of a bitch.

[MC Eric B]

Blue - That is just not true. I, and millions of other people have bought concert tickets from ticket agents, in order to get better seats. Yes, I would rather get the same seats at the original low price, but that was not an option.

With good domains, you don't really have the option of ever getting them at the low price, because all the good ones would be taken even there were no domain speculators.

[sausage boy]

With good domains, you don't really have the option of ever getting them at the low price, because all the good ones would be taken even there were no domain speculators.

Not going for or against, but this point keeps cropping up. I have read and understood your other points, Eric, but this one confounds me. Saying that you did something because somebody else might do it has never been a very good reason for anything, to me.

And that is what you are saying, that the potential for the domain being taken is there. But if only domains were sold that had an intended purpose, surely there would either be more domains available, or just more sites with content.

I realise that what you are doing is legal and all, but that doesn't mean that its right. What about when cigarette companies could advertise where ever they wanted? Nowdays, such a notion is frowned upon, but once, it was a legitimate thing. But experience has taught us it probably wasn't the right thing.

*sorry to smokers out there, for the semi-targeting. But you get me point.

[MC Eric B]

sausage boy - I don't have any reliable stats on this, but I would estimate that only 1 out of 100 domains that gets bought goes to a domain speculator. So, taking out the domain speculators would not make much of a difference in the supply of good domains (like FindSongs.com).

But, my main point is that if you start a company today and want a domain like FindSongs.com, it is too late to get it for cheap no matter what. Almost all the domains I sell are ones I bought many years ago. So, there is just no way you could ever buy them today.

That being said, at the time I bought all those domains, I am sure somebody else wanted them also, but I bought them instead. So, in that respect I deprived them of the domain they wanted. But, that is how the system works. Nobody 100% expects to get the domain they want, because there are always other people who want it also. Also, I bought the domains as investment, not to resell them the next day to that same person who was trying to buy it. I also bought them because I was setting up my own sites on them.

Anyhow, a ticket agent is probably a good analogy for all of this (a "domain scalper" implies it is illegal, so that is not a great term for it). But, domain scalpers and ticket agents/scalpers both exist because the market supports it. I have bought both high priced tickets from an agent, and high priced domains from other domain sellers (to setup real sites I wanted to create, not for speculation). And, I was happy with these transactions.

[MC Eric B]

sausage boy - Yes, just because something is legal (like cigarette ads to kids used to be) does not mean it right. Slavery, women not voting, etc. were all later shown to not be right. But, you can't use that as an arguement for domain selling being wrong. For every controversial issue like slavery or voting that was changed, there are hunderds of other ones that stayed the same because they turned out to be correct. And there have also been many times society acted on things and was wrong, like Prohibition, McCarthyism (communist witch hunts), Salem witch trials, etc.

Laws may change in the future about domain names, but it is certainly not 100% clear right now that it is wrong.

[Lunkhead]

I think it's silly to debate the morality of it. Eric, you are a successful capitalist. If people think what you have done is immoral, they ought to really think about the fact that sometimes immoral behavior can lead to success in a capitalist system and ponder the implications of that reality.

Personally I don't blame you for taking advantage of the whole domain thing. I registered my one and only domain back in 1995, when they were free! Little did I know I was sitting on a gold mine. Oh well. I don't lose sleep over not registering 1000 domains back then. Maybe if I had I would be arguing your side of things, Eric.

I think Ben makes a good point, though, which is that you're really not going to be able to persuade those of us on the other side of how you're actions have benefited us, not without some convincing evidence/statistics/etc. etc. Obviously you're OK with your line of work, so it's really a moot point. Most of us will only ever encounter the side of it that involves having to pay a lot more than we expected for a domain we wanted, it we can get it at all.

Also, I think arguing about whether someone would even have been able to get to a domain they wanted first and buy it is too speculative (ha!) to be relevant here, or doesn't apply. Let's assume someone who has a specific use in mind for a domain is the first person to approach you about buying it. You didn't buy the domain with that use in mind, so technically he/she is the first person to want it for that use, and would have been the first to try to buy it anyway if you didn't own it.

The only time a speculator would benefit someone in the way you're talking about is if the speculator bought the domain first, then somebody came along who wanted it but couldn't afford it, then someone else came along who -could- afford it. That later person with more money gets to buy the domain. So really if you're helping anyone you're helping people who can afford to pay more for domains than other people. More capitalist goodness, yum!

Also you did say in a previous message that speculators drive prices up, but then you backpedaled from that, which was odd, but whatever.

Anyway, I should stop rambling in here as this could obviously go on forever. I have to go back to figure out how I can make as much money as I make now without having to work 40hrs/wk so I can make more music.

[ken]

Anyway, I should stop rambling in here as this could obviously go on forever. I have to go back to figure out how I can make as much money as I make now without having to work 40hrs/wk so I can make more music.

Agreed.

Ken