Domain Sniped on Launch Day (opens in new tab)

"Sniped" makes it sound like they did something wrong, but they didn't. I reject the idea at the end that there were ethical lines crossed. You need to buy your domain when you name the project, not when you release it. If you don't have the domain then you don't have the name. Buying the domain is naming it. Take the lesson for next time.

I usually give nicknames for concepts projects for this reason and others. even the dev subdomain points to the nickname before the domain is purchased.

sightly related, movies productions also have "Working Titles" before release to disguise project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_title

Killsaas.org and killsaas.net are available to buy. Why aren't you getting these domains? Yes, owning the .com is better, but you've already mentioned that the project is a public benefit one. In that case, .org and .net seem pretty appropriate. I'm curious—why is there so little interest in .org and .net domains?

There should be some regulatory mechanism for domains if the owner doesn’t use them for something meaningful, they should pay and increased price for it, and/or lose the ownership after a certain amount of time.

They way how it currently works is bad for the SaaS/app developers, bad for the content creators, and bad for the users.

It is ridiculous that nowadays you cannot buy a good domain name, because someone mass registered all of the meaningful combination of words in every existing tld, in hope that they can sell some of them for a few thousand dollars to someone who is willing to pay for it.

Not to mention these obviously unethical cases like this.

It is frustrating and this is why you don’t want to wait till launch day. As soon as you know it’s more than an inkling of an idea, get those domains. Most are cheap, and easy to let go if you decide it isn’t for you anyway.

Years ago, this used to happen a lot because registrars could grab a domain for a short period without any cost - so some of them would see you searching for a domain, and hold it, then try to make you buy it at a higher cost. I don't deal with domains any more, but I thought ICANN had put a stop to that practice.

1. Super nitpick and personal pet peeve: "Buying" a domain is not buying it. You're absolutely renting it and it can be taken away at any time.

2. The post is a big list of "I made mistakes and had to face the consequences" — not one, but multiple. (Open repo, legalese comms to NC, non-actionable email to registrant) I've got a lot of sympathy, but I don't know if there's any learning besides "think -> do -> check -> repeat".

3. Congrats on the launch! For what it's worth, kill-saas.com looks more pleasing to my eyes than killsaas.com :)

Bonus Point 4.: I had a similar idea for a website with the same name a year or so ago when I was cancelling all my Netflix, Spotify, etc. subscriptions. There's evidence in my Whatsapp convos. Then again, I don't feel like you've stolen anything from me & wish you all the best! ;)

Domain hoarding is really annoying. Recently I noticed superposition.de was available and wanted to register it for a side business, now a domain grabber got it and is reselling it for 27.000 USD... I can't fathom how this is a legal practice. I mean, I get that it is legal but the naming authorities could change their terms of service to disallow such trading. It's a small annoyance of course but I find it tiring how every little aspect that made the Internet great is getting monetized into oblivion.

Honestly, there have been so many businesses and individuals that lose out on their domain because they just didn't buy it as soon as they saw it was available. I don't understand why - in the grand scheme of things a 5, 10 or even $100 domain isn't going to break the bank. Just buy the thing as soon as you find it and avoid this mess.

>"I believe someone scraped this name and stole the domain."

I believe it is a bit harsh accusing someone of theft because he registered a domain before you did or doing some action before you did. Merely having an idea doesn't give you the right to a property before you pay for it.

Let's suppose I have found my dream home and I take my wife out for dinner and talk loud about why is that house wonderful, why does it have a huge potential and how I've talked the owner into making a nice discount. I brag loudly about how that house is almost a steal.

Because I have some things to do at work, I will be able to speak with the real estate agent in one or two weeks, only to find out it was sold to the gentleman sitting on the next table in the restaurant.

Should I go to the police and open a theft complain?

Of course, domain scrapping and squatting has some gray moral areas but are not against the law.

When I have an idea I like, I go register the domain first. Even if I will not pursue that idea further. At worst I will lose 5 to 10 dollars. At best I will make something out of it. Or I can even sell the domain along with my idea to someone else who might want to use it.

I don't search the domain names using registrars or various domain tools. I only use Whois services I trust and I usually buy the domain short time after that.

I do have an idea which might work against squatting. Write a script to flood domain registrar and online domain tools with searches and make the squatters pay for tens of thousands of useless domain names.

Cybersquatting is one prime example of value extraction vs value creation. HugeDomain has sat on my obscure family name's .com domain name and wants to sell it to me. Every year their price goes up a thousand dollars.

Hot take:

We should work towards dethroning .com as the default so that all the people who trade domain names lose all the money they had never earned. I'm also for a more expensive .com base price. Some of the things that make moving away from .com hard is the blanket gtld level email/traffic bans in Sophos and other security firms

I'm now desperately looking forward to reading someone else's blog post about their vibe domain squatting set up where a combination of LLMs and spiders trawling Github for fresh targets lead to a decent passive income.

This is like opening a restaurant and expecting to pay your lease on launch day

Pretty sure what happened is, he searched on Namecheap for the domain a few days before committing to buy. Namecheap and other scummy domain sellers are known to buy domains that their users show interest in by searching. The telltale sign was that the registrar is also Namecheap.

Never use GoDaddy or Namecheap or other scummy providers to check domain availability. Always use the ICANN whois service.

I do not understand why you feel entitled to the domain. If I was entitled to the domain of every side project I had, I would be a multimillionaire in domain assets.

> After some back and forth, I realized my GitHub repository was public, which was not my intention at all before launching the project.

:facepalm:

Uhhh, welcome to the internet?

> I realized my GitHub repository was public, which was not my intention at all before launching the project.

I'm sorry, but aren't GitHub repos private by default?

edit: see down-thread, but they are private by default in GitHub Desktop, which is what I have used to create new repos for years. However, they are public by default on github.com.