Steem Cybersquatting
I've noticed that cybersquatters are active on Steem. There are a lot of mined accounts with well-known brand names that do not post nor vote. Many have recovery account set to @ninja, see this — looks like a hub account for transferring (mined?) Steem from other branded accounts.
What do you think? Will Steem account names become valuable? Will there be market for them? Should there be any countermeasures to cybersquatting like having account expiration and requiring annual payments to keep the name? Would it make sense to have some subdivision of the account namespace, like top-level domain names with different registration rules and fees?
They'll just use "TheRealBrandX" instead of "BrandX"
I don't think so, this approach does not work for them with domains. Btw, Steem accounts can also be used as domain names (with a custom DNS server).