Posted by shaunpud 5 hours ago
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.
I have a particularly valuable domain name that would be perfect for a museum that later opened with the same name.
I'd love to sell or even give it to the museum, but all my offers have been ignored. I don't blame them, since everything on the Internet is a scam these days.
But I won't just put it for sale to the highest bidder. Then it'll end up with a squatter. I'd rather sit on it.
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?
We can do a lot better than using non-inclusive language like this. There are better ways to express the underlying concept.
- such a pussy about actually using record types
+ not bold enough to use actual record types
And I know it's not the core of the issue, but I meant "using TXT records for everything" not "for everyone".
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.
I suppose the saving grace is that they can only create the _for-sale and not any of the attributes specific to the intent to sell and hopefully that is enough to prevent any shenanigans.
Wonder how hard will it be in 20 years to get a good, unused name in a reasonable price.
Neither registrars nor tld operators care about squatting, even when they don't get a cut. Why would they? The squatter is paying them the same as you'd pay them.
What positive outcome comes from squatters sitting on unused domains?
But at some point we will also exhaust all nice TLDs too...
It will be even more difficult than it is now
Welcome to 2003.