Quoting Deus Ex Machina on Thursday March 24, 2005:
| > 
| > Can you buy thousands of number plates to resell, without even owning a
| > car?
| 
| afaik

I am surprised then. But on the other hand, I guess the market for
securing a specific number plate is substantially different to domain
names. There is probably little demand for a speculative market on
number plates.

| , and you can also buy phone numbers without owning a phone.

That's true, but it is rare there is an intrinsic connection between a
company's name and/or services, and the number the choose. The only one
I can recall is 1800-reverse.

For domain names, there is a perception (and correspondingly a market
need) that a domain name matches the service it points to. Perhaps it
would be different if companies like Enetica were expected to be found
at http://mgftncxhbng.com.au or http://203.17.36.26/. But, then again -
unlike phone numbers or registration tags - the whole reason the DNS was
created was to create a mnemonic relevant mapping between an entity's
name and its location on the Internet. If it didn't, we could draw that
analogies more relevantly if people were fighting over specific IP
numbers.

kim