GSK (Glaxo Smith Kline) selling 908(.)com the other day.
iDrive Inc. sold Driveway(.)com to Lithia Motors, Inc. the other day
Elon Musk buying X(.)com from Paypal
Sterling Jewelers, Inc. (parent company: Signet Jewelers Limited) sold Gold(.)com recently and Ruby(.)com
Evite, Inc. sold Postmark(.)com
NBC acquired Peacock(.)com from an individual with the surname Peacock.
Micro Focus Software Inc. sold Mercury(.)com
Dropbox, Inc. sold Loom(.)com
Pearson Inc. sold NN(.)com, AW(.)com and more
Microsoft Inc. sold ProjectCentral(.)com, Firefly(.)com, Zoox(.)com, Jellyfish(.)com and many more.
Travelzoo sold Fly(.)com
MarkMonitor is offering hundreds of domains for resale on behalf of its corporate clients -
Catchword Branding, a leading branding agency, offers 1,800 of its "reject" domain names for sale on its Just the Word web site -
https://justtheword.com/.
Should these companies not be able to sell their domain names for market prices?
Inherently valuable domain names are valuable corporate assets. It is impractical to suggest that the domain name aftermarket could be eliminated, or that companies should not be able to sell their assets for a mutually agreeable price.
ICANN has entrenched the very domain speculating that you decry on a massive scale through the new gTLD program. Those registries have taken over the role of domain speculators, but instead of on individual domain names, they have done so for entire name spaces. The new gTLD registries acquire the rights to a name space and then premium price the most desirable domain names based on what they believe the market price for those domains to be. It is perplexing that setting market prices for domain names is loathsome when done by domain investors but admirable when done by new gTLD registries.
Domain investors fulfill the function of investors/speculators in any other market - providing ready liquidity. Domain investors are often not the original registrants of domain names. When I buy domain names, I'm usually buying from prior registrants who no longer have a need for the domain name and wish to quickly convert the domain name to cash. Domain investors often act as intermediate owners - acquiring from companies that wish to sell a domain name, and incurring the pricing and timing risk of providing ready cash with no certainty of return, and then, if successful, reselling to another company that wishes to acquire that domain name.
It reflects a misunderstanding of domain investing to equate it with ticket scalping. Poor understanding leads to poor policies recommendations.
An argument that price increases on hundreds of millions of registrants worldwide are justified on the basis that 1) a freely operating aftermarket in domain names is illegitimate and that 2) raising registration and renewal fees on all registrants would suddenly free up highly valuable domain names and make them available for registration at a base registration fee is not well grounded in the facts.
My understanding is that the registration and renewal fees charged by Verisign are not set by market forces, contrary to your suggestion:
" I am amused at the reaction of those who are quite happy to let market forces determine selling prices but scream when anything close to that logic is used to determine their buying prices."
Regards,
Nat Cohen