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Comment by sidman | Hacker News Reader

I dont know what to say ! i get angry when i see a domain name that i want being parked on and going to absolute waste, but on the other hand the business this guy has created and the money he has made could be viewed as a smart hack in some perverse way. He has basically seen a market where no one else did in the early days (or only few did) and has managed to capitalize of it very sweetly (all of which he did skillfully and legally).

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> being parked on and going to absolute waste

1st) Parking makes money (ads). 2nd) All sorts of assets are held without use for speculative reasons; land, art, patents, options e.g. to make movie based on book, metals, money, etc.

Land in particular is very close to domain names in being a limited, exclusive commodity which you can go and see is not being "used" and rail against the "unfairness" of it all.

Surely, it is legal and indeed a hack. But still, not morally correct!

It's not amoral. I've been frustrated myself over domains I couldn't get, but I fail to understand how this is amoral. Too often we are quick to make moral judgments based on distaste (of which I share).

a·mor·al ( -môr l, -m r -). adj. 1. Not admitting of moral distinctions or judgments; neither moral nor immoral

After he sold to NameMedia, of which he still owns a 15 percent stake, Mann had a noncompete that kept him away from the domain game for about four years. Instead, he worked on his many other ventures, such as SEO.com and a nonprofit called Grassroots.org.

From grassroots.org:

The mission of Grassroots.org is to help charities succeed by providing them with modern technologies and best practices at no cost.

I don't know if it's morally correct or not, but Mann doesn't otherwise seem like a morally bankrupt individual.

Grassroots.org appears to just be away for him to funnel more cash to himself. The charity gives away his SEO services - i.e. donors are just paying for his salary.

Why is it not morally correct? He is just speculating as speculators do in all different industries. And kudos to him - it's technically non-trivial, carries a lot of risk and clearly requires a lot of business acumen to work.

I don't think $10/yr is a lot of risk.

So why don't you go and buy a 1,000 domains? Presumably you'll be confident you'll get at least $10/year on average from them all....

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