CircleID

Well, actually, there's nothing wrong with domain names… when they're used in the manner intended by the "founding fathers" of the Internet, to create logical, structured addresses for things on the net.  When you use domains sensibly, there's no need to build a "portfolio" of them; a single name, and its logical subdomains, can give sensible addresses to a wide variety of sites, as I've done with domains.dan.info, webtips.dan.info, mailformat.dan.info, etc.  And why should anybody be compelled to register every last possible typo of their site name?  That makes a mockery of the logical structure of the domain name system.

The 15% of people who go to sites by typing in addresses directly undoubtedly consist mostly of people who already know the address of the site they want, so they're only "targets" for the exploitative practices of "domainers" if they're careless and mistype the address.  The sort of activity most desired by the domain-exploitation community, that of typing in generic-word domains in hope of finding info about a subject (e.g., dogs.TLD when looking for information about dogs), is not a very sensible thing for anybody to do compared to using Google or another search engine, and it gets worse the more it's exploited by content-free ad sites.  Contextual ads need some actual context!

Adding further to Daniel's comments, I observe that if it weren't for typosquatters, there would be no need for the legitimate domain holder to register "typo" domains. The number of possible typo-domains is huge, and can place an onerous burden on a domain registrant. If nobody registers those domains (and there is no "SiteFinder" nonsense going on), then a typo in a directly-entered URL will almost certainly result in an error message stating that the domain does not exist. The error message will prompt the user to re-examine the URL and fix typing errors.

If, on the other hand, the user arrives at an actual web page upon mis-entering an address, they might assume it is the web page they intended, rather than the one they actually typed. Neither the original domain owner, nor the user typing in error is well-served by the typosquatter.

The semantic value of the "typo" domain only exists because of the effort invested by the original domain owner in the original domain. Ultimately the typosquatter behaves in the manner of a parasite, and nobody likes a parasite.

While I may agree with TFBW that this behaviour is parasitical, the Devil's Advocate in me wants to ask: Is this not just another example of "Innovation at the Edge" of the network that we all seem to support as an enabler of growth?

Well I suppose you could also describe spamming—sorry, bulk email deploying—in those terms if you wanted to be charitable. Not every innovative use of technology is a net social plus, even if it's profitable for the adopters.

Typosquatting isn't new. It already has been around for several years. As far as I know, it was pioneered by pornography sites to generate traffic. I have noticed that there is even misspelled domain name search tool that finds misspelled domain names with outstanding traffic.

I think that most of legitimate domain holders do not need to capitalize on misspelled domain names to direct traffic to their web sites via misspelled domain names unless typosquatters use them for an evil purpose to harm the original domain owner.

I hope that companies will not take advantage of misspelled domain names like typosquatters. They should know that a stitch in time saves nine. Companies should protect the value of their original domain names and prevent misuse of misspelled domain through domain name arbitration body such as WIPO. If companies do the same as typosquatters, it would be too much burden for them. Every time new top level domain name is created, companies will be suffered to register misspelled domain names prior to the registration of typosquatters.

The rhetorical question at the end presumes that companies aren't actually buying their own misspellings. As another commentor points out, the number of potential misspellings of 'www.f-secure.com' is immense. Perhaps the company does own many of them.

Also bear in mind that real trademark owners have the option of using the UDRP arbitration process to recover many typo-squatted names after the fact. It's an expensive way to do it, but it has the advantage for monster companies like Microsoft of conspicuously throwing their weight around.