Hi David,
If I may chime in-
A scalper buys a ticket from a pool of tickets that are limited in number and that have a limited useful life - usually a couple of hours on a particular date. The ticket provides access to, and a source of funding to support the production of, exclusive content provided by a presenter who charges a fee to experience that content - be it a concert, a performance, a race, a fight, etc.
In contrast, the pool of domain names are nearly infinite in number, the useful life is indefinite, and the domain names are not sold by the owners of exclusive content as the exclusive means to access that content. Domain names are an alias for an online IP address. They are sold by a registry provider whose job it is to match certain contact information and name servers with a particular domain name. The character of domain names is much more similar to physical real estate which can be bought and sold many times in the resale market. The role of a domain name registry is akin to that of a land registry not a concert promoter.
In the past couple of weeks, I acquired
lentes.com (Spanish for glasses) from the registrant who lives in Mexico and
lentesdesol.com (sunglasses in Spanish) from the registrant who lives in Colombia. They both no longer had a need for those domain names and valued the cash that I offered them more highly than continuing to own those domain names. I hope to sell these domain names for more than I paid for them. In what way is this free functioning of the secondary market a problem or akin to ticket scalping?
Regards,
Nat