ICANN's main process for handling trademark-based complaints is the UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy). This policy is used for instances where someone claims you registered a domain in bad faith that matches their trademark, and they have a panel that looks at whether you have "rights or legitimate interests" in the name. Bad faith evaluations by this policy often involves intent to sell the domain to the trademark owner, disrupt their business, or attract users by confusion.

So the spirit of ICANN's philosophy around this is clear: we don't want people buying domains with the intent of withholding them and later profiting by selling them to trademark holders. I would argue that preemptively buying domains with the speculation that people will eventually want them and pay for them is basically a violation against the spirit of their policy, you're just operating in bad faith preemptively against any possible future owner rather than a current specific one.

Disputes around this are notoriously unsuccessful. I say all this context to get to the point that I think the current system would work fine if there were policies that included this style of preemptive squatting, and more of an ability to successfully dispute bad faith actors. Including by looking at: how many other domains does this person own and not meaningfully use, how much is the site a legitimate use versus asking ChatGPT to write 50 articles, and whether the effort or investment put into the site is proportional to a ballpark of the value of a domain name. With exceptions, perhaps, for situations like domains that are also your name.

I'm even fine with the idea that domains go to the highest bidder on fixed terms, like 5-10 years. Or that it will at least require good-faith evaluation after a fixed term. But it's a problem when that money goes to squatters instead of towards something useful, like funding infrastructure. Maybe we can have a non-profit version of Cloudflare.

I don't necessarily support any of these, but it's essentially a solved problem when discussing the supply side - especially for artificial scarcity:

* lots of jurisdictions have occupancy taxes on vacant real estate

* taxation rules differ depending on the source of income, ex: employment vs. investment

* going concerns are legally treated different than inactive entities

* qualitative usage can define treatment

* lots of internet-focused legislation provides for challenging "what" is being served

You would think this is all in Google's best interest, as the SEO of these low-value domains is a major threat when LLMs are very effective in displacing google searches.

Wait people are upset, do the Friendster founders want their URL back?!

Maybe I glossed over something

IIUC it's not the model of buying domains from registrars which stinks of crap, it's the buying from registrars by domain squatters who then flip them for a profit having provided zero value that bears a whiff of shite. These ticket scalpers of the internet who contribute nothing can well and truly fuck straight off.

You don’t need to propose a better model of the world to despise the dirtbags profiting from legal but icky shit in this world.

I don't need to be able to cure cancer to tell you that cancer is terrible.

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There should be a land value tax on domain names