[mahouse]

Of course it's new. It's new since there are free certificates. Before, you had to pay, always. The amount was irrelevant, but you had to show your credit card. You had to prove your identity. That's a whole new felony there: stolen ID, carding, etc.

[notatoad]

You had to have a credit card, but there was never any matching of the credit card name to the cert. Nobody is going to stop you from buying a cert for my domain with a prepaid credit card.

[wtetzner]

I don't see how it's a whole new felony. You could use your own credit card, and still convince the CA you own a domain that you don't.