Thread

People who buy hundreds of domains with the intent of creating link farms is in my mind, not fine. It’s annoying and spammy.

Of course it is. But it’s still not illegal, and I don’t see how it could be; very slippery slope there (How many links would be illegal? Who would actually judge that?)

Google is already banning people from using adsense and freezing accounts for just that very thing.

That, again, is perfectly fine: Google as a private company can decide who they do business with, after all, and who not. They can ban them, delist them, constantly tweak their algorithms… but it’d still not be illegal—only annoying.

Of course it is. But it’s still not illegal, and I don’t see how it could be; very slippery slope there (How many links would be illegal? Who would actually judge that?)

I’m 100% sure that something like this could (and quite possibly should) be regulated. If not then I should invest 2G’s a year and possibly with any luck, haul in 20G’s. I’d then be polluting the internet with advertising and soaking up domains that REALLY could be put to better use. Why should I even bother with providing a service when I can pimp out domains relevant to various markets?

This is my point. It may take years, but I will almost guarantee you that in due time, this practice will be classified as a form of spam or will at the very least be regulated by lawmakers.

I’m 100% sure that something like this could (and quite possibly should) be regulated. If not then I should invest 2G’s a year and possibly with any luck, haul in 20G’s. I’d then be polluting the internet with advertising and soaking up domains that REALLY could be put to better use.

If it works for you, it’s a legitimate business as far as I’m concerned.

This is my point. It may take years, but I will almost guarantee you that in due time, this practice will be classified as a form of spam or will at the very least be regulated.

I see all kinds of issues here, and not just the ones touching on international law (if it’s outlawed in the US, and/or the EU, I am sure there’ll be plenty of rogue providers in some far east or third world countries continuing to serve these sites.) I hate to say it, but publishing a site that is not libelious in itself (or features some otherwise forbidden content, for whatever reason), is probably free (commercial) speech. That’s life.

And of course, the sad truth is that you’re right on all accounts. I really don’t think that charging a hundred bucks is the way to go on this issue either, so really it just looks like we should leave well enough alone. The only thing that really matters to me anyway is if I can sleep at night once my head hits the pillow, and as it is, I have absolutely no problem there.

😉

I’m outta here Ingmar, it’s time to catch some zzzz’s! It was cool shooting the breeze with you.

I own three domains, the one I’ve held the longest is now not being used, but was for many years.
If that makes me a squatter for $27 bucks a year, I guess I can live with that.

I agree with the ex-lawyer.  At the end of the day, being annoying isn’t illegal (though I wish it were :-p)

Do you really think that raising the cost to a benji is going to stop these fools? If anything we’d just have a bunch of perfectly useful domains that are nothing but link directories and ad dumps, because the “little guy” had to give it up.

Are you sure about that? As Lee mentioned, ad farms make money at less than $10 a domain. Would as many make money at $100 a domain?

Who’s to say that my use is necessarily inferior to yours?

A link farm is inferior to a site with valid content. I don’t care if the site is used to promote McDonalds or someone’s goldfish, but the site must provide value to someone - other than the squatter. That’s my definition of squatting.

Obviously, it’s impossible to determine if a domain is or will be used legitimately. Therefore, a price increase seems to be the only way to cut down on squatting.

I remember when domains were $75. Now they are as low as $2? Should they be $0.10? Free? Currently “stupiddomain.com” is taken. At $0.10 I probably couldn’t get “reallystupiddomain.com”. Where to draw the line?

Are you sure about that? As Lee mentioned, ad farms make money at less than $10 a domain. Would as many make money at $100 a domain?

Probably not Rick, but a lot of great sites would go under as a result. After sleeping on it - I wonder if domain registrars would just be able to charge the link farms $100.00 a year when it’s time to renew their domains. But then as Ingmar said, who would regulate it, and could something like that really be stopped? So really - there are two choices so far:

-Kill off the “little guy” while making the link farms turn almost no profit,
-or find some way to regulate it (seems like a tall order though).

Which one seems like the better choice so far? My take:

I really don’t think that charging a hundred bucks is the way to go on this issue either, so really it just looks like we should leave well enough alone. The only thing that really matters to me anyway is if I can sleep at night once my head hits the pillow, and as it is, I have absolutely no problem there.

What about you? Are you pretty well set on the idea that $100.00 domains are the way to go?

Doood.  Links farms are not like email spam.  Spam itself is not a problem, it’s the costly (to recipients) activity that spammers engage in that is a problem.

Consider a junk fax for example.  When someone spams your fax machine they are sending you an unsolicited message on which the costs are being placed on the recipient.  The person who owns the fax machine has to pay for the paper and the ink.  Email spam is much the same because of the sheer amount of spam that gets sent out.  Email providers have to spend a significant chunk of money paying for the bandwidth that spam uses as well as resources to filter it out.

In contrast, a spammy website at rest is a platform which is totally paid for by the spammer.  The spammer could cause problems which could be illegal by massively sending out trackbacks, pings, social networking submissions and other things but that still doesn’t make the domain itself illegal.

I’m not a lawyer though and I haven’t done extensive research on the subject. 

I think the free market works just fine.  I would rather pay a squatter $1000 for a domain and register it each year at $10 / year than pick up a domain for $100 and have to spend that again each year.  The free market sets real prices.  The less regulations and intervention from government the better.  Especially in the area of technology.  The government screws up enough things in the area of technology, lets leave them out of the are of domains as much as possible.  😉

I was tired last night (which led to more or less ranting on my part). I can definitely agree with everything you say.  Especially this:

I think the free market works just fine.  I would rather pay a squatter $1000 for a domain and register it each year at $10 / year than pick up a domain for $100 and have to spend that again each year.  The free market sets real prices.  The less regulations and intervention from government the better.  Especially in the area of technology.  The government screws up enough things in the area of technology, lets leave them out of the are of domains as much as possible.

In my previous response, I again quoted my position. I know that some of the things I’ve said really are quite a stretch to say the least, but it doesn’t really change the fact that link/ad farms are extremely annoying.

A link farm is inferior to a site with valid content. I don’t care if the site is used to promote McDonalds or someone’s goldfish, but the site must provide value to someone - other than the squatter. That’s my definition of squatting.

Again, that’s a slippery slope. If I type in a url that leads to a link farm page, but a link on that page gets me to the site I’m looking for, isn’t that arguably more valuable to me than if it were a site about your goldfish? Who gets to determine what is valid? And “valid” to whom?

A link farm is inferior to a site with valid content. I don’t care if the site is used to promote McDonalds or someone’s goldfish, but the site must provide value to someone - other than the squatter. That’s my definition of squatting.

Again, that’s a slippery slope. If I type in a url that leads to a link farm page, but a link on that page gets me to the site I’m looking for, isn’t that arguably more valuable to me than if it were a site about your goldfish? Who gets to determine what is valid? And “valid” to whom?

Exactly.  The medium is so much about expression that you’re invariably using subjective metrics to determine anything about anything on the Web.  Why does my page have to provide value to you?  If I’m paying for it and it’s valuable to me, why should I care if you find my site annoying?

A link farm is inferior to a site with valid content. I don’t care if the site is used to promote McDonalds or someone’s goldfish, but the site must provide value to someone - other than the squatter. That’s my definition of squatting.

Again, that’s a slippery slope. If I type in a url that leads to a link farm page, but a link on that page gets me to the site I’m looking for, isn’t that arguably more valuable to me than if it were a site about your goldfish? Who gets to determine what is valid? And “valid” to whom?

Are you seriously defending link farms? Do you use link farms to find information? Do you trust the links on those sites? No you don’t because you’ve learned to avoid them just as you avoid opening email spam.

However, I’ve already agreed that there isn’t a way to determine what is or will be a valid use for a domain. As I’ve said, I think charging more per domain is the best way to free them up.

Why does my page have to provide value to you?  If I’m paying for it and it’s valuable to me, why should I care if you find my site annoying?

Go ahead and create the most annoying sites you can. At $100 per domain, you probably wouldn’t create as many - and the interweb would be a little less annoying.