Most domain brokers are pure sleaze, period. Sorry, that’s just the way I feel about it in the most simple terms.
First, I should say that I auction off domains and websites myself. But there’s a huge difference.
The only domains and websites I sell are legitimate ones where I was at one point maintaining an actual project of mine or that I had some back-burner idea of doing something of substance with, but it just faded.
I don’t go around buying up hundreds, maybe even thousands of potentially good domains for the sole purpose of holding them hostage for a ridiculous price to gouge would-be startups that may come along and need that domain eventually.
Some of the sleazier brokers actually buy up available TLDs (Top Level Domains like .com, .org, .net) of already established companies and actually try to extort them.
Say, someone starts a company SuperCats101.com, but leaves the .org and .net counterparts unregistered. Then, someone comes along and snatches up SuperCats101.org and SuperCats101.net and then offers them to the owners of SuperCats101.com for thousands of dollars.
I myself, get these emails. If it’s a respectably established trademark, usually a quick complaint to ICANN will do the trick, but I generally just ignore these types of emails as spam.
Am I wrong? What are your thoughts? Some brokers really do go too far or it’s all fair game?