> I would argue that learning of an emerging product and preemptively buying the domain is not cybersquatting but more like IP theft.
Or how about investment? If you can see the future, pay for the valuable domain before it's valuable, then get your return by selling it to the company that wants it. Isn't that quite a lot like giving money to the company in exchange for a share of the profits? The risk is that you might misjudge and waste money on worthless domains, just like traditional investing.
In investing you control real resources that you offer to the company to further their goals in exchange for future gains. When you squated on a good name you seized an opportunity from them by registering a name you had no use for for a legally defined minimum fee and demanding payment for something you had no use for ensuring they must pay someone hundreds or thousands instead of the legally defined minimum fee.
It would make more sense to let registrars charge what they please instead.
It's the opposite of investing. Squatters aren't providing value they are pure parasites. People are most apt to learn of the parties smartly chosen name not through their marketing but via being the second person to come up with it and learning they must pay the squatter.
Or how about investment? If you can see the future, pay for the valuable domain before it's valuable, then get your return by selling it to the company that wants it. Isn't that quite a lot like giving money to the company in exchange for a share of the profits? The risk is that you might misjudge and waste money on worthless domains, just like traditional investing.