The Rape of the Internet

The daggers being stuck in us keep coming.  Here’s another dagger. It is shocking.  We are living in what can be classified as the Age of Rape and Enslavement.

Up until not long ago the prices of Internet domain names were capped. They were usually under about $15 per year, with the highest cost associated with the .com extension and lower costs for less popular extensions, usually around $7 or $9 per year.

Then, several years ago, the floodgates opened on domain extensions. In addition to the traditional .com, .net, .org, and various country top-level domains (for example .uk or .ca), there are now hundreds of others.

This was all promised to us to be a panacea to provide a flood of really inexpensive domain choices, given that with all the new TLDs it would vastly multiply the amount of available domains. Based on supply-and-demand, when the floodgates of supply are opened, then the prices should go down, way down.

But go down they haven’t. Hell no. Instead the domain “industry” (what a joke to say that, but that it what it has turned in to) has gone insane. The prices of domains has gone up drastically. Caps on domain prices have disappeared. Registrars are now selling domains for hundreds and thousands of dollars. And these are not “squatted domains” either, but actual unregistered domains that are being sold for hundreds and thousands of dollars.

Domain squatting is another issue – it should be illegal. People buy domain names in the hope that someone down the line will want to buy it, and they can sell it at an inflated price. Domain names are an essential part of the Internet and they should not be a commodity to be manipulated for the sake of pure profit.

Even more insulting is that all available domains are now listed with initial prices that are a fraction of the actual renewal price. A domain advertised as $7.99 per year for the first year will then be subject to a yearly renewal cost of $27.99 per year.

It is shocking that this has occurred. The Internet domain name system has become a huge ripoff scam. People should be outraged by this. The people who allowed this to happen should be put in jail.

The actual costs associated with the registration process for a domain are actually miniscule – under $3 per year. But now there are domains being sold for hundreds and thousands of dollars, and it is very difficult to find any decent domain name that is under $15 per year. The entire domain industry has become a huge, massive scam.

I cannot believe this is happening. This is a rape of the Internet.