Comment by JonathonW
3 years ago
You can move between registrars, but the registrar's not the one that you're leasing the domain from; they're just a reseller.
The entity that you're actually leasing the domain from is the registry operator-- such as Verisign for .com or PIR for .org. And, yes, it's still a lease relationship-- while there are some ICANN-mandated consumer protections around your "purchase" of a domain, if you stop paying your annual renewal (or run out of whatever amount of time you've prepaid), that domain isn't yours any more.
Omg.lol is operating the same way (albeit not under ICANN oversight, as they're not running a gTLD); they've just cut out the middleman and are leasing subdomains directly rather than via third-party registrars.
> Omg.lol is operating the same way
Not entirely true; I'd argue it's closer to subleasing a part of the property they're currently leasing from an ICANN accredited registrar.
> they've just cut out the middleman
Quite the opposite! They've just introduced themselves as yet another middleman on top of the already existing middleman (there's still a value proposition to this, but it's not the same).
TL;DR: subtenant rights ⊈ tenant rights
EDIT: typing mistake: replace ⊈ with ⊊ (proper subset)