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- Hacker News
- Actually I like this RFC and the world was missing a list of _for-sale domains, so here it is https://forsaledns.net/.
I just gave my domains a _for-sale record. I asked AI for what they should cost and put that value and for domains I don't want to sell I added a 0 at the end.
by softwarerero - > If you are willing to sell, the interested buyer has no way to learn that short of a cold email to a WHOIS contact that privacy redaction has probably removed.
Has everybody forgotten about well-known email alias addresses? Inquiries about the hostname itself would be (among other things) exactly what `hostmaster@domain` was intended as a point-of-contact for. No need for a working WHOIS service, let alone a non-privacy-redacted WHOIS record.
by derefr - I've recently bought many domains (1000+ over the last year). A few of them (the more valuable ones) all had TXT records for `@` (the root) that had for-sale info. This new record is just a TXT record anyway, proving the point that the interested buyer can quite easily learn of a domain for sale with existing mechanisms.
Also, for domains that are just "parked", not in current use, obviously the parking page can just have a for-sale banner. This is exceedingly common.
> Enquiries that would have been welcome never arrive, and the ones that do arrive are indistinguishable from spam.
Laughable misrepresentation.
by jiveturkey - Hi, author of RFC 10023 here.
I appreciate the interesting discussion!
If you’d like to get a better understanding of the concept, have a look here: https://rfc10023.nl
The biggest use case today, at SIDN (the registry for the .nl ccTLD), is described here: https://github.com/SIDN/ForSale-RFC10023/blob/main/examples/...
by mdavids - This was first done by SIDN I believe, the company that orchestrates the .nl domains. They however, do not implement most of the spec.
When searching their online whois[1], they'll tell you if a domain is for sale and link to the for sale page. They don't use any of the info you put in the DNS though. The URL comes from their internal system. You need to register it separately. They also don't use the price, txt or anything else you put in the DNS.
All they use is the "fcod", to look up the url in their own system. They had a different syntax for this before, but this functionality has existed for some years.
by perino - Here's a third pary implementation that I came across that implements the full spec:by mdavids
- But what about the costs? There are several domains I want. They're just sitting there and no one is doing anything with them. But when I ask to buy them, they ask for outrageous prices (at least in my opinion.) If someone else bought the domain, I would think, "I'm just being outbid." But they never change hands. I've tried telling the owners that I'm their only hope. They just sit there because they have some insane idea for how much it is worth.by xhkkffbf
- This would have been great for a 2-letter .st domain I had been wanting for years (which appeared to be parked and just redirecting towards ticketmaster or something, with no contact info available). I was bummed about it for a long time, as the .st nic had a sale on 2-letter domains which made me want to pull the trigger, but it got scooped up a day or two prior apparently. I lucked out this year and saw they let it lapse! (I did have a yearly calendar reminder telling me to run whois :)by temp0826
- Yeah cause we really had to improve domain squatters lives.
In my opinion domain squatting should be banned instead.
by Anoian - And what is the definition of a domain squatter?by bigbuppo
- Do you have any domains that you purchased with the intention to use and haven't been able to use them yet?by slig
- Maybe domain hoarding should be illegal. 1 domain per person, 1 per registered business. That would make the world a better place but I am dreaming.by system2
- I totally agree with you! It's so hard to get a good domain name these days. It's annoying that people take advantage of that to line their own pockets.by qack
- Like a lot of things, society would probably benefit if we had caps on how much a single entity could own.by wredcoll
- I'm wondering if this can be used to hunt down squatters and take domains from them, for example, if they have the domain marked as for sale in DNS, while also renewing the domain. If a renewal happens while someone has a domain listed for sale, they should give up all rights to that domain and it should go back on the open market for a sane price.by al_borland
- It’s interesting that domains apparently are still such a big business, despite how browsers have been deemphasizing URLs and domain names, and given the prevalence of apps.by layer8
- Imagine if AOL keywords had stuck around.by cj
- Domain names are a mess in my opinion. Even though we have over a thousand TLDs only a very small handful are considered for commerce or even thought to be valid.
I have a domain name with the TLD of "today". Many people think my email is [email]@[domain].today.com. It's not just the common person's fault but also software engineers / product managers who still have a very restrictive view of what a TLD is (under 3 three letters is the primary restriction I hit).
Since I don't believe we'll ever convince people that domains longer than 3 letters / full words are TLDs, I think the solution is every human being gets 10 domain names at marketprice then every domain ownership above that gets graduated ownership costs; the first year is market, second year is $100, third year is $500, fourth year is $1,000, and so on until the 10th year where it levels out at $10k per year.
The idea of it being if you want to hold onto a lot of domains you need to pay for it or make the domains economically viable. With what is essentially infinite space, we shouldn't be allowing domains to be like finite real world real estate to be speculated on.
by madamelic - > Remove it when the domain is no longer for sale. The convention has no “not for sale” value; absence is the only way to say no.
Since most domains that are for sale don't currently have such a record, it would be wrong to assume they are not for sale. Therefore, absence of such a record does not explicitly mean "not for sale." It's no different from a house: a "for sale" sign in the front yard means it's for sale, but lack of a sign doesn't mean it's not for sale; it could mean the owner doesn't wish to advertise that way, or at all.
by kmoser - ..so? It’s better than what we have nowby Marciplan
- They need Georgism for DNS names. You set your own price for your domain. But you have to pay 2-5% of that price annually to keep it.
That way, squatters are incentived to sell it to someone who's going to use it.
by asdfman123 - by jefftk
- Pay 2-5% to who? That's the problem for me - usually this means just another way to expand government. If you would just distribute it equally to all relevant citizens, with none of it going to the government, then I might get on board.by Nifty3929
- You’ve just described registry premium domains. The .com registry operator is bound by a bunch of pricing restrictions but that’s not true for most other registry operators. And so, registry premium pricing was invented to defeat domain investors by making desirable domains more expensive. Want to register chat.now? That’s $5,000/year. Ai.now is $20k/year.by reticulates
- Sounds like a great way to have larger competitors with more capital bid for your site to take down your domain that your users were using. Rather than Land Value Tax a better analogy might be a Vacant Property Tax which only targets squatting.by Fordec
- by Tiberium
- Thank you, for a moment I wondered why a specification was being written by AI.by ricardobeat
- Something I've wondered... if you publicly say that a domain is for sale and someone has a trademark for it would you automatically lose in arbitration?
Around 1998 I registered a domain. Sony registered a trademark with the same name a few years after that. Someone on a Gmail account asked if he could buy it - I later found out he worked for Sony. I told him no - it's for a game I've been working on. I went on a vacation for a month and when I got back there was a fedex package filled with documents from Sony saying I'm violating their trademark and they'll take the domain.
I got a lawyer and he told me that I shouldn't offer it for sale as that would show the arbitration board that I don't need the domain. But he also told me that in order to fight the trademark it would probably cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars. So I could keep the domain but not use it for commerce...
In the end I ended up selling it to Sony but through my lawyer - I never stated it was for sale. But this was early on for domains and I wonder what the process is like now.
by comrade1234 - Not sure about the legal theory behind domains and intent to sell, but fact-wise my defense would be that I consider all of my assets to be for sale, the only difference is the price, so they would have to prove that my 'intent to sell' was significant enough. At the very least price would have needed to be discussed.by TZubiri
- >But this was early on for domains and I wonder what the process is like now.
UDRP:
https://www.icann.org/en/contracted-parties/consensus-polici...
by gruez