I don't like domain squatters, either. They make the world a worse place.<p>But even if I could wave a magic wand and make domain squatters vanish from the earth, you still couldn't have had quirk.uk. Somebody else would have gotten it first. Maybe it would be an e-commerce site, or a comic book shop, or browser documentation.<p>The only reason it's not owned by any of them is that it belongs to a squatter who got there first. And that squatter is indeed a horrible person, who nabbed something for cheap solely because nobody else had done it yet. They're the guy who takes every single cookie on the tray and insists that it's their legal right to. The world is a crummier place because they exist.<p>Honestly, it's not like quirk.cc is any great internet content, either. The web page is a placeholder. I imagine you're doing email with it, or scoping your package names, or something. It makes you better than the squatter. But I'm sure there's some coffee shop going, "Man, I've got so much better use for that name."
What if somebody else with the same surname wants quirk.cc? All that you really have going for you is that you were there first. What if the other Quirk is somebody more prominent? What if they have a bigger family to give email addresses to, or a cooler idea for the site? It's really not faaaaaaaiiiiir that you are hogging that domain name.<p>Maybe you should be required to sell it to them at a reasonable price, no more than 100 quid. Or provide documentation proving you have a better use for the domain than they do.<p>Or maybe that's all a lot more complicated, ripe for abuse and favoritism, and centralized than the current system where the owner sets the price and you are free to either buy it, or pick from the infinite space of other options and leave them still holding it paying yearly fees on something they get zero value from. Especially in today's world where every browser's address bar is really a search bar by default, most email clients display the person's "real name" with more prominence than their email address, and a nice domain name is just a cute little bonus.
I think I recall there being a process for ICANN at least, when someone has squatted on a copyrighted identifier. I could be completely wrong, but my memory on this is foggy. There's pages on ICANN's site about it, iirc.<p>In America, if you had a copyright on the identifier, or maybe in this case, a small business with your name in it, I believe you could make a claim against the domain.<p>Edit: See <a href="https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/cybersquatting-2013-05-03-en" rel="nofollow">https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/cybersquatting-2013-05...</a><p>For UK audiences, see <a href="https://www.csy-ip.com/cathy-ayers/when-is-cybersquatting-legal-insights-from-recent-nominet-decisions/" rel="nofollow">https://www.csy-ip.com/cathy-ayers/when-is-cybersquatting-le...</a>
The entitlement is astonishing!<p>It’s his name, so what? Boo boo!<p>My name is taken by some big footballer from Australia I never heard of. I’ll never get it, as he is crazy famous. And it’s my fault for not getting it back in 1997.<p>What next, am I entitled to my birthday as an IP address? Should my government ID by a free domain?<p>It’s free market, he bought other variations on other TLDs. This isn’t 1994 when domain prospecting became a thing.<p>Domain squatters aren’t squatters, they are investors. If you want it so bad, you need to either pay up, or try to get it when it releases.<p>If it were cheaper I’d just buy it out of spite.
$1000 is practically cheap for a squatted domain. I’m looking at one that’s requesting $4000.<p>Frankly I think this is a little over the top. Yeah domain squatting sucks but to claim you have some sort of rights to the domain because it’s “connected to your name” is a bit ridiculous. That would lead to an absolute rat’s nest of litigation around rights to domain names.<p>These are just some of the issues inherent to the problem of readable, unique identifiers. Scarcity is unavoidable.<p>Projects like <a href="https://handshake.org" rel="nofollow">https://handshake.org</a> may help alleviate this, but it depends on adoption which is always tough
OP didn't mention how long the previous owner had it. In this case, not long, but imagine paying for a .io domain, which used to be > $100/yr, for 10 or more years and then someone comes along complaining that they can't have it for $100. Does it really matter why they were "squatting"? How many of us register a domain, with the best intentions, for an idea we never get to and then won't let it go for less than the sunk cost + the opportunity cost?.
Some folks in the comments here are missing the point or perhaps haven't read the article thoroughly enough. The article is making a reasonably valid complaint about overt domain squatters, but the writer doesn't have a problem with the owner of a domain having some kind of useful and legitimate use if it's not available:<p><i>"If it was being used legitimately, I’d have absolutely not problem with someone else owning the domain."</i>
The infamous and supremely arrogant squatter asking for > $10m:<p><a href="http://milk.com/value/" rel="nofollow">http://milk.com/value/</a>