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.
I tried to register a domain like acme.stream through Cloudflare Registrar and it asked me to affirm I had Acme Widgets Corp.'s permission [edit: I might be wrong about this part, since I'm in a totally different niche, but the pop-up freaked me out]. I went with a different domain.
>If you're offering it for sale, you're clearly not using it for commerce. [...]
>if you're selling a domain and someone has a trademark for it, you should have to hand it over. Hell, I'd argue that should apply even without a trademark [...]
I disagree, but they made a point and did so clearly.
Why that person felt someone else's chosen commercial use of a domain should trump anyone's non-commercial (or less commercial) use, I don't know.
All business assets are for sale at the right price, right? Even whilst living by the business at a particular domain, I'd have sold that domain for £200k, probably a lot less. Same as for any business asset, even (especially?) those in commercial use.
I agree with you about assets being for sale (if someone wrote a big enough check I'd sell my house right now) and commercial not trumping non commercial, but there was, at least for a while, a reasonable argument for opposing "domain squatting" under the theory that domain names were a limited resource and society as a whole benefits from those resources being used more optimally.
It's like concert tickets or any other limited resource that is transferable, "society" generally wants most people to have access to them but if they're too cheap then it's easy for one rich person to just buy them all.
Anyways, domain names are perhaps less limited these days (and google/claude kind of remove user's direct interaction anyways) if the usage of non-dotcoms are anything to go by. Also it's super hard to distinguish personal private use vs squatting.
> I shouldn't offer it for sale as that would show the arbitration board that I don't need the domain. [...] So I could keep the domain but not use it for commerce...
If you're offering it for sale, you're clearly not using it for commerce. I'm sure if you finished you game and offered it for sale on that domain, you'd be fine. You're actually using it and in a non-infringing way.
So yes, if you're selling a domain and someone has a trademark for it, you should have to hand it over. Hell, I'd argue that should apply even without a trademark, but alas...
> 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.
This website has been trying to gain a veneer of legitimacy for months now. Half of its contents aren't even published by any real standards body, it's just AI-centric "best practices" for the current generation of hyperscaler models.
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.
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.
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.
Habituation is difficult to overcome. If domain names had been freeform from the start, we wouldn’t have this particular issue.
Domain names are still a finite space, given that a full domain name can be at most 253 characters, and each domain label at most 63 characters. “Requiring” a .com/.org/.net/.CC at the end isn’t really that much of a restriction.
By the way, madamelic.com appears to be available.
From the RFC The "_for-sale" leaf node name can be placed at any level of the DNS, except in the .arpa infrastructure TLD.
There used to be a number of sites that would let users create {username}.some.subdomain.apex.tld. Perhaps this is not a thing any more I honestly don't know. If it is still a thing and someone registers the username "_for-sale" they could cause some confusion.
Why allow any level of DNS? If you are selling a domain that should include the entire domain and thus the _for-sale should only be valid at the apex unless the goal is to cause legal problems for some big providers.
(Not quoting the article directly due to HN's auto AI filters)
In "Common mistakes" this article first says not to add this record if you're not actually planning to sell the domain, then says that the record doesn't oblige anyone to do anything, that feels quite weird to me.
This probably means that meeting the minimum price does not guarantee that you would be able to buy it due to other (probably opaque) criteria. For example, the seller might not want to sell to you/your company in particular, but is open to other people/companies.
Interesting, a binding bid might be more useful than this proposed no-op slop.
TLDs like .online actually have a registrar-based dynamic pricing system based on internal rules, like domain size, presence in word lists, plurality, etc... And their distribution of available to taken names is quite good. It's different, which is already good, no one needs yet another TLD with the uncreative allocation system of copying the .com, we need variety, and I feel a binding DNS based offer system might make for a aftermarket-based continuation of the successful .online experiment.
But if the offer is not binding, then it's just an advertisement, no consideration, no contract, unlikely to amount to anything materially different than a 'domain for sale' HTML pages. In fact, if the HTML page has a buy now button, it's effectively an offer that can be accepted just by clicking the buttons and inputting cc info, so it's even better than a non binding DNS record.
Also, let's stop using TXT for everyone, why is everyone such a pussy about actually using record types? Do we really need every tool to be compliant out of the box? What's wrong with forcing vendors that want to be compliant to actually write like 20 lines of code and formally implementing support for the feature?
I don't get the point, if someone is selling a domain the only content on the site will be advertising that. And you can bet people will forget to delete or not update the record as needed, making it kind of useless.
A parked domain would potentially make more money hosting AI generated “content” to improve its SEO and passive ad revenue. That’s why invested interests have pushed for this side-channel “For sale” sign.
my slop detection instinct is so good that I can tell it's slop before even clicking the link. I precogged the neon colors of the website, the pill modals, the 'it's not X, it's Y', the emdashes...
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.
I tried to register a domain like acme.stream through Cloudflare Registrar and it asked me to affirm I had Acme Widgets Corp.'s permission [edit: I might be wrong about this part, since I'm in a totally different niche, but the pop-up freaked me out]. I went with a different domain.
>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...
This has been my understanding. I was told by lawyer in in th 90's that it would be described as squatting in court.
A reply said this, but it's dead:
>If you're offering it for sale, you're clearly not using it for commerce. [...]
>if you're selling a domain and someone has a trademark for it, you should have to hand it over. Hell, I'd argue that should apply even without a trademark [...]
I disagree, but they made a point and did so clearly.
Why that person felt someone else's chosen commercial use of a domain should trump anyone's non-commercial (or less commercial) use, I don't know.
All business assets are for sale at the right price, right? Even whilst living by the business at a particular domain, I'd have sold that domain for £200k, probably a lot less. Same as for any business asset, even (especially?) those in commercial use.
I agree with you about assets being for sale (if someone wrote a big enough check I'd sell my house right now) and commercial not trumping non commercial, but there was, at least for a while, a reasonable argument for opposing "domain squatting" under the theory that domain names were a limited resource and society as a whole benefits from those resources being used more optimally.
It's like concert tickets or any other limited resource that is transferable, "society" generally wants most people to have access to them but if they're too cheap then it's easy for one rich person to just buy them all.
Anyways, domain names are perhaps less limited these days (and google/claude kind of remove user's direct interaction anyways) if the usage of non-dotcoms are anything to go by. Also it's super hard to distinguish personal private use vs squatting.
Are you allowed to share how much (roughly) you sold it for?
Not too much... $30K plus all legal fees I had paid.
$30k? I was in a similar situation and sold for $2k... I should have held out!
> I shouldn't offer it for sale as that would show the arbitration board that I don't need the domain. [...] So I could keep the domain but not use it for commerce...
If you're offering it for sale, you're clearly not using it for commerce. I'm sure if you finished you game and offered it for sale on that domain, you'd be fine. You're actually using it and in a non-infringing way.
So yes, if you're selling a domain and someone has a trademark for it, you should have to hand it over. Hell, I'd argue that should apply even without a trademark, but alas...
> 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.
RFC: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc10023.html
Thank you, for a moment I wondered why a specification was being written by AI.
This website has been trying to gain a veneer of legitimacy for months now. Half of its contents aren't even published by any real standards body, it's just AI-centric "best practices" for the current generation of hyperscaler models.
Yeah cause we really had to improve domain squatters lives.
In my opinion domain squatting should be banned instead.
Like a lot of things, society would probably benefit if we had caps on how much a single entity could own.
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.
[1] https://www.sidn.nl/whois
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.
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.
Habituation is difficult to overcome. If domain names had been freeform from the start, we wouldn’t have this particular issue.
Domain names are still a finite space, given that a full domain name can be at most 253 characters, and each domain label at most 63 characters. “Requiring” a .com/.org/.net/.CC at the end isn’t really that much of a restriction.
By the way, madamelic.com appears to be available.
Imagine if AOL keywords had stuck around.
Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37416005
From the RFC The "_for-sale" leaf node name can be placed at any level of the DNS, except in the .arpa infrastructure TLD.
There used to be a number of sites that would let users create {username}.some.subdomain.apex.tld. Perhaps this is not a thing any more I honestly don't know. If it is still a thing and someone registers the username "_for-sale" they could cause some confusion.
Why allow any level of DNS? If you are selling a domain that should include the entire domain and thus the _for-sale should only be valid at the apex unless the goal is to cause legal problems for some big providers.
Country code TLDs would be one reason. Many countries reserve top-level domains names and only sell second-level domains (e.g. example.co.uk)
Initial underscore is a reserved namespace for this reason.
[delayed]
(Not quoting the article directly due to HN's auto AI filters)
In "Common mistakes" this article first says not to add this record if you're not actually planning to sell the domain, then says that the record doesn't oblige anyone to do anything, that feels quite weird to me.
This probably means that meeting the minimum price does not guarantee that you would be able to buy it due to other (probably opaque) criteria. For example, the seller might not want to sell to you/your company in particular, but is open to other people/companies.
I can have something for sale without an obligation to sell it (depending on offer terms, including price).
Interesting, a binding bid might be more useful than this proposed no-op slop.
TLDs like .online actually have a registrar-based dynamic pricing system based on internal rules, like domain size, presence in word lists, plurality, etc... And their distribution of available to taken names is quite good. It's different, which is already good, no one needs yet another TLD with the uncreative allocation system of copying the .com, we need variety, and I feel a binding DNS based offer system might make for a aftermarket-based continuation of the successful .online experiment.
But if the offer is not binding, then it's just an advertisement, no consideration, no contract, unlikely to amount to anything materially different than a 'domain for sale' HTML pages. In fact, if the HTML page has a buy now button, it's effectively an offer that can be accepted just by clicking the buttons and inputting cc info, so it's even better than a non binding DNS record.
Also, let's stop using TXT for everyone, why is everyone such a pussy about actually using record types? Do we really need every tool to be compliant out of the box? What's wrong with forcing vendors that want to be compliant to actually write like 20 lines of code and formally implementing support for the feature?
> why is everyone such a p**** about
We can do a lot better than using non-inclusive language like this. There are better ways to express the underlying concept.
This is probably the only item that can sold without saying, "Used, Like New"
It depends how much spam or other abuse occurred from it.
Is that good or bad? That's a genuine question here.
Wonderful. Another tool for domain campers. Just what standards bodies should be spending time on…
I don't get the point, if someone is selling a domain the only content on the site will be advertising that. And you can bet people will forget to delete or not update the record as needed, making it kind of useless.
A parked domain would potentially make more money hosting AI generated “content” to improve its SEO and passive ad revenue. That’s why invested interests have pushed for this side-channel “For sale” sign.
This is what really sucks about domain names
How long until these links are swimming with malware?
“This domain is somewhat worn.” -UO joke
Sigh, I'm not a fan of domains becoming the new kind of real estate.
Wonder how hard will it be in 20 years to get a good, unused name in a reasonable price.
my slop detection instinct is so good that I can tell it's slop before even clicking the link. I precogged the neon colors of the website, the pill modals, the 'it's not X, it's Y', the emdashes...
It's indeed written by Claude, like most of the website: https://github.com/jdevalk/specification.website/commit/99b1...
From now on it's the publishers who have to solve a captcha.