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Comment by gallerytungsten | Hacker News Reader

Is it society that would be benefiting from Harsh taking away Keen's domain? Or is it Harsh? By defining the benefit as being to "society" one might sound noble while masking the reality: Harsh is attempting to steal Keen's domain name in a sleazy and opportunistic fashion. Defining this kind of hijacking as a benefit to society is misdirection at best.

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I'm absolutely not trying to defend Harsh Mehta's tactics.

I'm just trying to start a conversation about the value of Kneen's sitting on a domain name he isn't using for 16 year.

Same argument can be made against property owners that refuse to developer their land.

That is like telling that most of a billionaire's billions are not really worthwhile to them and that they are uselessly "squatting" on them when instead they could be put to good use by someone else. One's possessions legally acquired are one's own to do what one wishes with it! Including sitting uselessly on them.

It doesn't matter how long Kneen has sat on his domain. The only reason the domain has value is because Kneen found it worth registering, and Harsh now wants it. If Kneen had registered www.:-mgpdgwcpdgw.con instead, he'd have been perfectly in his right to do so, and no one (presumably) would be interested in taking his domain. So why should someone else get a chance to take it away just coz he wants to? As long as there is no company called workbetter, the domain might as well be gibberish, and gibberish.com is not valuable to society.

Well - OK lets try taking the conversation a bit further.

"Adverse possession was still possible in any private property where at least ten years had passed ‘without effective action by the owner" [1]

Should we have 'squatters' rights' (adverse possession) for domain names? I personally think not...

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2622995/Squatter-400...

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