I literally laughed out loud

Business as usual :)

Haha that will teach them

That's an expensive, uh, prank?

@NathanDoesDev call it... "investment" :P

Isn't domain squatting illegal? Or did I make that up?

@Zaphod65 it probably depends on the economic strength of the involved parties...
Probably doing dns squatting on coca cola is a bad idea but to a small startup it may actually work as it would be cheaper and faster to get in terms with the squatter than opening a long law case...

Or at least this is what would be in Italy, where trials are 5-10y long and so on... 😕

@Zaphod65 I assume that those hipsters don't have a trademark for any of those names they came up with. In order to be considered domain squatting then the guy who bought them would have to be infringing on their intellectual property for the purpose of extorting money out of them. The part that would be hard to prove is that the guy infringed on any intellectual property.

@Etrunon no, the law shouldn't discriminate because the party's involved aren't mega corps. You may be able to get away with domain squatting a small company's domain but it isn't any less illegal and they could sue you just the same as a big company.

Then just change name so he wasted his money

@NathanDoesDev I agree you are totally right.

But I was raising the point that you have two option: give some money and hopefully end it there,

Either involve the law, which should be the only option but, your small business may not have the resources to put in a trial for years before you can actually use that domain

:/
It's a shitty situation I know...

I have no idea why OP has the tag DNS :')

TurtleneckCult.com?

There is a 1% chance of the website actually becoming a real website and 99% chance that the founders will just say "whew, this is harder than I thought, wow" and throwing the plan away.

That's predatory and unethical - not even remotely cool.

They deserved it.

Alas, I only have one +1 to give

@iakar then don't blab your business ideas in a public place ;)