alt Hacker NewsThe (refundable) escrow payment would indeed be a possible solution.
I feel to some degree governments are also responsible for this, by not making consistent use of *.gov domains.
Take for example sunbiz.org, the Florida business register. For 20+ years sunbiz.org was the official domain, until they switched to dos.fl.gov in 2023. The average joe may have heard about "Sunbiz", but was the domain sunbiz.com, sub.biz, sunbiz.net ... who knows?? How would anyone know? All of this could have been avoided by using *.gov everywhere in the first place.
Replies
ButlerianJihad • today at 11:08 AM
I can always count on Springfield.GOV for current nuclear plant status
Or by just not having all these choices. I always found it odd that in the English speaking world you have .org(anization), .com(mmercial), .gov(ernment), .net(work) and maybe more that I can't think of right now, but in other countries, everything is just the country code at the end. (Or one of the English ones is used.)
Though, seeing how there are now even more of them than there used to be, I guess that's not feasible.