So the spirit of ICANN's philosophy around this is clear: we don't want people buying domains with the intent of withholding them and later profiting by selling them to trademark holders. I would argue that preemptively buying domains with the speculation that people will eventually want them and pay for them is basically a violation against the spirit of their policy, you're just operating in bad faith preemptively against any possible future owner rather than a current specific one.
Disputes around this are notoriously unsuccessful. I say all this context to get to the point that I think the current system would work fine if there were policies that included this style of preemptive squatting, and more of an ability to successfully dispute bad faith actors. Including by looking at: how many other domains does this person own and not meaningfully use, how much is the site a legitimate use versus asking ChatGPT to write 50 articles, and whether the effort or investment put into the site is proportional to a ballpark of the value of a domain name. With exceptions, perhaps, for situations like domains that are also your name.
I'm even fine with the idea that domains go to the highest bidder on fixed terms, like 5-10 years. Or that it will at least require good-faith evaluation after a fixed term. But it's a problem when that money goes to squatters instead of towards something useful, like funding infrastructure. Maybe we can have a non-profit version of Cloudflare.
* lots of jurisdictions have occupancy taxes on vacant real estate
* taxation rules differ depending on the source of income, ex: employment vs. investment
* going concerns are legally treated different than inactive entities
* qualitative usage can define treatment
* lots of internet-focused legislation provides for challenging "what" is being served
You would think this is all in Google's best interest, as the SEO of these low-value domains is a major threat when LLMs are very effective in displacing google searches.
Maybe I glossed over something
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
This person has built something using the domain. They are not squatting it.
I don't think that old business names should be "retired" and forever banned from use. After a certain amount of time the name should be free for someone to use again, and 10 years of non-use seems reasonable to me. The main concern with reuse is confusing consumers into thinking they are dealing with the old friendster, but I think consumers are savvy enough to realize that an old trademark rising from the dead often has nothing to do with the original, regardless of whether the current trademark holders purchased rights from the original, or claimed abandoned ones, as in this case.
His other business dealings aside, I don't have a problem with how he obtained/revived the friendster domain and trademark.
There is nothing inherently wrong with domain squatting. Lol. Blame the system, not the people operating within it.
Lets look at Friendster from a less foggier lense, its an attempt in the right direction. Use it or don't use it.
