Want to start a website? Great! Just be prepared to pay someone who bought the name before you even thought of it.

There's something incredibly frustrating about coming up with a great idea for a website, spending time thinking of the perfect name, and finally heading over to a domain registrar like GoDaddy or Namecheap to register it.

You type in your brilliant new domain name, hit search, and... it's taken.

Fair enough. It's the internet. Millions of websites exist. Someone probably got there first.

But then you discover something interesting. There's no actual website. No business. No blog. No community. Not even a half-finished project someone abandoned back in 2014.

Just a page informing you that the domain is available for purchase.

For the low, low price of $4,995.

Oh, wonderful. Apparently, I wasn't trying to start a website. I was accidentally shopping for beachfront property.

Welcome to the wonderful world of domain name speculation, where someone else's creativity is apparently a business opportunity.

Ticket Scalping, But for the Internet

We've all heard of ticket scalpers. They buy up tickets to concerts, sporting events, and other popular attractions, then resell them at ridiculous prices to people who actually want to attend.

They didn't organize the concert. They didn't build the stadium. They didn't contribute anything to the performance.

They simply got there first, grabbed something other people wanted, and waited for someone desperate enough to pay their asking price.

Now replace concert tickets with domain names.

Companies and individual investors register domains they believe someone might eventually want. Some build enormous portfolios containing thousands of names. Others concentrate on short, memorable words or names connected to emerging trends.

And then they wait.

A domain that might have cost a modest annual registration fee suddenly has a resale price of hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars.

For what, exactly?

The privilege of buying something from someone who never intended to do anything with it in the first place?

At least the ticket scalper is selling you a seat at a concert that actually exists. The domain speculator might be selling you nothing more than the opportunity to create something that doesn't exist yet.

That's quite the business model.

Millions of Domains, Doing Absolutely Nothing

And this isn't some tiny, obscure corner of the internet.

A 2022 academic study involving researchers from the University of Twente identified approximately 60 million parked domain names, representing roughly 23% of the domains examined.

Now, to be fair, a parked domain isn't automatically being held for resale. Some are reserved for legitimate projects, some are used for advertising, and others simply aren't being developed.

But the sheer number illustrates just how much of the internet's naming space isn't being used for actual websites.

Sixty million parked domains.

That's an awful lot of digital real estate sitting around waiting for something to happen.

Imagine walking through a shopping district where storefront after storefront is empty, with nothing inside except a sign saying, "Want to open a business here? Make me an offer."

That's not exactly the thriving internet I remember people getting excited about.

The Little Guy Gets Squeezed Again

Here's what really bothers me about the whole thing.

Big corporations can afford expensive domain names. If a company with millions of dollars in its marketing budget needs the perfect address, spending a few thousand dollars might barely register as an expense.

But what about everyone else?

What about the person who wants to launch a small business? The teenager learning to build websites? Someone creating a community, starting a blog, building a hobby site, or trying to turn an idea into something real?

These are the people who helped make the internet interesting in the first place.

Not everything online needs to be a multimillion-dollar business. Some of the best things on the internet started because one person had an idea, a little spare time, and enough curiosity to see what they could build.

Now imagine telling that person the name they wanted is going to cost $3,500 before they've written a single line of code.

That's not exactly encouraging innovation.

It's discouraging people from even getting started.

Sure, they can pick another name. Add a hyphen. Throw a random word on the end. Use a different extension. Maybe replace a few letters until the domain looks like something a cat typed while walking across the keyboard.

But why should someone have to twist a perfectly good idea into something barely recognizable because another person decided to stockpile internet addresses?

Wait... Hasn't Anyone Tried to Stop This?

Actually, yes.

And here's where things get interesting.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, better known as ICANN, has dealt with abusive domain-registration practices before.

Back in the late 2000s, there was a practice called domain tasting.

Companies could register enormous numbers of domains, test them during a five-day grace period, and return the ones they didn't want, often without paying a registration fee.

Essentially, it was the internet equivalent of walking into a store, grabbing everything off the shelves, taking it home to see what might make you money, and returning whatever didn't work out.

ICANN eventually implemented changes that made excessive use of this registration loophole costly.

And guess what?

It worked.

According to ICANN's own 2009 report, grace-period domain deletions dropped by an astonishing 99.7% between June 2008 and April 2009.

So apparently, when the rules change, behavior can change too.

Imagine that.

Unfortunately, those rules addressed domain tasting, not the broader practice of buying names, holding them for years, and selling them at inflated prices.

As long as someone legitimately registers a domain and continues paying the renewal fees, they're generally free to hold it, even if they never build anything.

So one particular form of speculation was effectively shut down, while another continues operating as a perfectly ordinary business model.

We fixed the free trial. Apparently, the expensive subscription is fine.

What About Cybersquatting Laws?

There are protections against cybersquatting, including ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP).

These rules can help trademark owners challenge domain registrations made in bad faith.

For example, someone registering a domain specifically to exploit an established company's trademark can find themselves facing a dispute.

That's reasonable.

But what if you're just an ordinary person with a new idea?

What if you come up with a name for your future website, only to discover someone registered it years ago and now wants $8,000?

If you don't have qualifying trademark rights and evidence of an abusive registration, existing dispute procedures generally aren't going to help.

Being annoyed by an outrageous asking price isn't grounds to take someone's domain away.

Apparently, "Come on, seriously?" isn't a recognized legal argument.

Which is unfortunate, because I suspect quite a few people would love to use it.

Is Anyone Actually Trying to Change Things?

Believe it or not, yes. Although the results haven't exactly been overwhelming.

In April 2026, an initiative called Free The Names published a campaign calling for reforms to speculative domain hoarding.

Its proposals included greater transparency around domain ownership, higher renewal fees for large speculative portfolios, and a way to challenge certain abusive domain holdings without needing an existing trademark.

The basic argument was pretty reasonable: domain names should be available to people who actually want to use them, not just those hoping to make a fortune sitting on them.

Of course, the proposed solutions weren't without problems. Requiring proof that a domain is being used could punish people saving a name for a future project. Higher renewal fees might simply encourage speculators to spread their holdings across different accounts.

Still, at least someone was trying to start a conversation.

And then came the irony.

When I checked the Free The Names website in October 2026, it was no longer accessible.

That's right. A campaign dedicated to freeing up internet addresses apparently couldn't keep its own website available.

You really couldn't script that any better.

Now, whether the site is permanently gone or just experiencing technical problems isn't clear. But there's something almost poetic about a website campaigning for a more accessible internet becoming inaccessible itself.

It's difficult to campaign for a better internet when people can't even reach your little corner of it.

Unfortunately, even while the campaign was online, a petition wasn't going to magically change the rules. And as of October 2026, there still isn't a broadly adopted policy requiring domain investors to release names simply because they're sitting unused with ridiculous price tags attached.

Meanwhile, ICANN is working on something else: expanding the number of available domain extensions.

On October 7, 2026, it announced 1,615 applications for new top-level domains.

More extensions could eventually give people additional choices. That's certainly better than nothing.

But here's the problem.

If the perfect .com name for your business is sitting in somebody's portfolio with a $10,000 price tag, introducing another extension doesn't make that name any more affordable.

It just means you might be able to register something like MyBrilliantIdea.whatever instead.

Wonderful. Problem solved.

Apparently, the solution to domain scalping isn't to address the scalpers. It's to give everyone else more creative ways to avoid them.

Not Every Domain Investor Is the Villain

Now, before the domain investors start sharpening their keyboards, there's an important distinction worth making.

There's nothing inherently wrong with owning a valuable domain or selling one you've legitimately registered.

Some people purchase domains for future projects. Businesses change direction. Valuable domain names can have genuine market value, just like recognizable business names and other assets.

There's also a difference between a previously registered domain being resold by its owner and a domain registry designating a name as premium-priced from the beginning.

Both can result in eye-watering prices, but they're not exactly the same practice.

And simply registering a generic domain with the intention of selling it later isn't automatically illegal.

I understand all of that.

But something being legal doesn't automatically make it good for the internet.

My issue is with treating domain names like collectible trading cards, buying them in bulk, and sitting on them hoping somebody eventually needs one badly enough to pay a ridiculous markup.

That's not building something.

That's betting on somebody else wanting to build something.

There's a difference.

There Has to Be a Better Balance

I'm not suggesting we confiscate people's domains or prohibit anyone from selling a valuable website address.

There are legitimate reasons to reserve names, protect brands, and hold domains for future development.

But surely there's room for a discussion about large-scale speculation and whether the current system encourages it.

Could there be more transparency around who controls enormous domain portfolios?

Could registration and renewal policies do more to discourage abusive bulk speculation without punishing ordinary owners?

Could there be better protections for legitimate new businesses that haven't yet established trademarks?

These aren't simple questions, and any proposed solution would need to protect legitimate ownership as well as new opportunities.

But the fact that solutions require some thought isn't a particularly good reason to ignore the problem.

Especially when we've already seen that targeted policy changes can make an enormous difference.

The domain-tasting crackdown proved that.

What it didn't prove is that the broader problem has been solved.

And that distinction matters.

The Internet Should Be for Builders, Not Just Buyers

One of the things I've always liked about the internet is that ordinary people can create their own little corner of the world.

You don't need to rent a storefront. You don't need a corporate office. You don't need investors sitting around a conference table asking how many subscriptions you plan to sell.

You can have an idea, register a domain, put together a website, and see where it goes.

Or at least that's how it should work.

The internet became what it is because people created things.

Websites, communities, services, projects, experiments, and plenty of gloriously weird corners that probably made absolutely no financial sense.

Not because someone purchased 10,000 domain names and waited for the rest of us to show up with our wallets.

So yes, I think domain name hoarding has a lot in common with ticket scalping.

Both exploit limited availability, and both can turn getting there first into an opportunity to charge considerably more.

The difference is that when a concert sells out, there's at least a performance happening somewhere.

When a domain gets bought up and parked for resale, there's often nothing happening at all.

Just another empty space on the internet with an overpriced FOR SALE sign.

And for people who actually want to build something?

Well, apparently, creativity is free.

The name you wanted for it? That's going to cost extra.