Comment by kadoban

> Everyone running a high-level domain like that is essentially rent-seeking, no?

Possibly as a technical, economics definition. I'd say no because real registries are adding value. What I'd call rent-seeking here specifically is destroying the market just to increase one's share of it.

The value I see registries providing is in large-part just consistency. A .com should cost and act about the same 10 years from now as it does today. If you start exponentially increasing cost (well past inflation), you're mostly just holding everyone hostage that currently owns a domain, until everyone is priced out and the TLD is destroyed.

> there a better term for 'high-level domain'?

IMO TLD is fine for this level of conversation, I'm not 100% sure if it's technically correct or not in _all_ cases, but it gets the right idea across. A "domain registry" or just "registry" is a good term for an entity running a TLD.