Domain registration is the most fascinating interaction between multiple outlooks. There's the true hacker spirit of DNS resolution as a technology. There's the lawful bureaucracy of ICANN shoe-horning the technology into a legal framework. Then there's the capitalism of registry "operators" who appear to exist almost solely to navigate ICANN.
It really feels like there ought to be a better system.
domains are almost as Lindy (a concept that explains the longevity of things like ideas or technology) as circuit switched telephone numbers. We're not going to shake the concept away for a very long time.
But a domain is now a virtual signal. Most adverts are "search X" or advertising online already so there is a link. There are plenty of cool non-english but pronounceable words out there you can .com let alone cute things .so, .be, .co, .io, .ai, .gg, .dev, etc.
This is kind of what I mean. You're talking about the DNS part alone here. I can encourage all of my friends to pass `/etc/hosts` around, just like those in Stanford originally did with HOSTS.txt, and I have domains.
The mistake was to let Postel mismanage DNS pretty much alone without any significant oversight or defined policies, that set the groundwork for dns to be free for all wild west of which the current situation is just natural consequence
I believe the main problem is lack of competition.
When a customer registers geographical domains, or old school domains like com / net, they can migrate to any other registrar they wish. This option guarantees reasonable prices for customers, even in the very long run.
When a customer registers their domain under TLDs like hot / deals / express they can’t move away unless they’re fine losing their domain name as the result. Most of these TLDs are owned by for-profit companies. IMO, this lack of competition pretty much guarantees the prices will eventually go way higher to extract more profit for these companies.
A while ago, people faced a similar problem with mobile telephone numbers. Many countries have solved the issue with legal measures, they force mobile operators to allow users to migrate to competing operators while keeping their old phone number. Until we have laws forcing internet domain names portability (similar to phone numbers portability), I personally plan to stay away from these new top-level domains.
The practice of selling TLDs to every two bit dotcom was a mistake and needs to end.