undefined | Better HN

0 pointsjgeada13d ago0 comments

What risk? They contributed nothing, they have performed no function. Their only claim on it is having been first on the dictionary attack and laid claim to a bunch of useful letter combinations without providing any value or service.

If they didn't do any of this that combination of letters doesn't disappear, it just goes back to being available from the primary registrars.

The squatters are just vacuuming up some of the profit off people that would/could use that combination of letters to actually provide a service.

I don't view middle man parasitic behavior as valuable, and see no market value performed here other than extraction.

0 comments

jyscao13d ago

>I don't view middle man parasitic behavior as valuable, and see no market value performed here other than extraction.

Seeing middlemen businesses as "parasitic behavior" is a common misunderstanding of their role in the economy. They make possible commercial transactions between initial producers and ultimate end-consumers, where and/or when such transactions could never have taken place affordably without their presence.

jgeadaOP13d ago

Except in this case the middleman added thousands of dollars to the cost without adding anything of value: not curation, not discovery, nothing. Without this middleman acquiring an expired domain would have been whatever the nominal registrar cost (somewhere between $10 to $100 or so per year for a domain)

Useful middlemen do serve a role and add value. A parasitic middleman just extracts value without adding any value anything in return.