If domain names are worth nothing, as you say, why would anyone engage in “rent-seeking” behavior? The fact is that a memorable name that leads you to information / goods / services / whatever is valuable.
It was valuable, once. Until there were better alternatives. Memorable domain names are now legacy technology. The only people still talking them up, by and large, are people with a financial stake in keeping them precious.
Once upon a time companies put their URLs on their trucks, airplanes and all marketing collateral. That practice is on the wane because they know consumers can easily search for them.
Naturally, people seek to profit. I suspect you find this objectionable
Not at all.
I love and admire when people profit by innovating and adding value by helping end-users find what they want on the web. Rent-seeking ... profiting from an asset simply because you were first in line to get it ... is neither innovative nor value-adding. It's the Internet equivalent of ticket scalping. I acknowledge its existence but believe that it is seen by Internet destinations as an irritant, a shakedown that deserves a workaround. Or multiple workarounds.
but I think you would also agree that it’s inevitable.
What is inevitable is that the world has recognized the shakedown, and successfully sought those workarounds that make "memorable" domains increasingly pointless. In some parts of the world that don't use Latin scripts, they went to numerical domains and QR codes. The growth of mobile and touchscreens led to development of apps that in some cases were just hotlinks that hid the domain. Other apps like Facebook served as gateways to web destinations and to many are the preferred way to access the Internet. Every browser maker implemented a search bar as quickly as they could, soon replacing the original URL entry window with a combined URL/search entry. And now Interactive AI can take you to sites that you didn't even know you wanted, totally burying the domains from sight along the way.
Your plan seeks to eliminate this behavior by making domain names cumbersome,
I don't have a plan for domain names, I just offered a what-if scenario. I choose to actively participate in the development of workarounds as I have no interest in fixing what is broken beyond repair. Memorable domains are legacy tech. Companies are increasingly able to get by with un-cool names with hyphens or other hacks because algorithms will still find them if consumers seek them out. What you call cumbersome I call inevitable because it will be buried, much of it already is as Karl has correctly noted.
It would help your case if you could show some actual harm to consumers on any scale that is actually endemic to domain names and not the internet in general. There were dire predictions and prophesies of apocalypse if consumers were allowed to have a great choice of names, but where is the calamity?
One of the Internet's great design strengths has been the ability to route around obstacles. For the longest time the DNS has been an irritation that Internet users and Internet destinations have had to endure in order to connect to each other. The paths to circumvent that obstacle have been in active development for decades and, unlike the DNS, continue to demonstrate innovation and growth. The market cap of Verisign, the 800-pound gorilla of domain-name space and ICANN influence, is $26.3B, while Google's is $2.05T.
Now, who exactly would be in charge of deciding which category which businesses should go into? How does that work?
You mistake me for someone who cares.
I remain involved in ICANN At-Large as an act of harm-mitigation. I want to see ALAC laser focused on maintenance -- keeping the DNS stable, secure and as trustworthy as possible in its current, legacy, form. It's why I responded to John's original post; while I appreciate his work, I believe that ALAC's meddling in the mechanics and geography of the domain supply chain is a harmful distraction unless it directly relates to safety and stability.