> The much simpler way to avoid squatting is to make .com domains cost $200 a year
replyA monopolist hiking prices to this extent will likely see legal action against them. That's a 20x increase you're proposing.
It's also unlikely to have a material effect. .com used to cost $75 a year back in the day, and that didn't stop squatters, and high value domain transfer sales. $75 in 1990s dollars is about $150-$190 today.
How does this lend itself to self-hosting then? I think few people will pay that much to self host.
replyI don't get it. How do you handle 10k people wanting, say, garden.com, without a free market?
replythe most fair distribution for limited sought-after resources that are inconsequential (like domain names) are raffles. let people apply in a 4-week window and then randomly assign it to one of the applicants.
replythen don't allow reselling, just allow giving it back and do a raffle again
how about make it round-robin, so all 10k of them get a fair slice of traffic? ;)
replyfirst served or random from a waitlist are other options.
reply