[Hitch]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Who decides?
The courts, most often.

No...the argument here is that the creating and buying and "parking" or holding of domain names, as a business, is somehow evil or bad or unworthy of any consideration. That the people who do this are trolls, not simply regular businesspeople.

Why? Why is it "bad"? People buy and wait on myriad things. People buy and hold gold. People buy and hold precious stones (not really the smartest thing in the world, in terms of value, but, hey.) People buy cars and park them, long-term. An entire industry has been built around that--car collecting.

What about "collectibles"? Any of you have action figures? Batman, Boba Fett? Anything like that? Are you bad or evil, because you prevented some child from having that toy? OMG, you MONSTERS!!!

It comes down to intent as most civil cases do.
You thought to build a business with the website? Fine and dandy.

No, but YOU are adjudicating someone's intent. I have probably 2 dozen domain names. Yes, most of them were biz ideas I played with; some are simply terms or ideas or names that amused me. Who are you to judge my intent as being worthy or not?

You heard Nintendo's next toy is going to be called Dooderoo57 and decided to grab the domain *solely* to squeeze them for a profit? The judge might not like that.

I'm not talking about court cases, where someone (finally) decides to put their money where their mouth is. I'm talking about the sentiment I see in this thread, that someone exercising their right to conduct a perfectly legitimate business is excoriated as being a troll.

Who decides? Sometimes ICAHN, sometimes a court.
The "court of public opinion" might say otherwise but that really has little power.

The court of thread opinion is my current topic. Why do any of you feel entitled to judge someone else, for spending their own money to buy domain names and wait for them to appreciate? You all behave as if every domain that someone buys is a gold mine. They're not. Of all the domain names I own, one, other than my own direct biz, has ANY value at all. The others are simply expenses. Black holes into which I've poured money, over the years.

The same is, I'm sure, true for all domain buyers and sellers. It's a commodity. That's what it is. Period. if anyone on this thread has ever--ever--bought anything at all, whether collectibles, coins, stamps, antiques, etc., with an eye toward appreciation, it's precisely the same thing. Does that make all of you Collectible Trolls? Stamp Trolls! Did you prevent some small child from getting that yadda-yadda stamp that he wanted, for his precious collection?

It's no different, for that matter, than buying and selling stocks and options. Do you have friends that bought Google or Tesla, early on? Do you think that they're geniuses because they did, or do you think that they are--gasp!--STOCK TROLLS! OMG, call the Stock Troll police!

Pocketbook is asking the court to decide.
It might be a negotiating tactic, it might not.
The court might side with them, they might not.
One way or another, the legal system will have its say.

Yes and that's Pocketbook's lookout.

Unless or until the buying and selling of domains is somehow rendered illegal, I fail to see why anyone doing that, in whatever quantity, should have any reason at all to feel ashamed of themselves for doing it. Or, for that matter, why they should be called Trolls.

Like pretty much any other businessperson, they've bet on their own judgment with their own money--and if some of the names that they buy later have an increased value, they've likely earned that increase. It's not like they get to magically make all the expenses on the no-value domains disappear. Not one of you knows whether most domain-name buyers and sellers make a big profit or a small one, or if they even make a profit.

It's no different than anything else, any other hobby around collection or any other commodity.

Hitch