A parked Internet domain is one which is taken, however it's not connected to another service - web or email hosting. Essentially, such a domain address will not open any actual content if you type it within a web browser, but no one can take it as you have already registered it and you are its owner. The main advantage of obtaining a domain and parking it afterwards is that you will be able to keep it and not stress that somebody else might register it in the meantime if, for example, the site for it is not ready yet. You may set a short-term Under Construction page for a parked Internet domain while you're working on your website, or direct it to some other web address - temporarily or permanently. The second option can be used if you have already registered domain.com, for instance, and you obtain domain.net and domain.org, so as to protect a brand name or a trademark. In this situation, the .net and .org domain names can be parked and forwarded to the .com since you do not need different sites for them.