[marcfowler]

The first thing I thought of was some rule saying that you have to be 'using' the domain within, say, 2 years or it gets pulled from you.

But then the problem is, do we want someone policing what the definition of 'using' a domain is? Hell no.

I think that unfortunately the way it's going is that you basically use a different TLD, but even now it's beneficial to have the .com if you can (especially among non-developer audiences who aren't used to .ly, .io, etc etc). 'Just go to whatever.io' to your grandma isn't as obvious as 'Just go to whatever.com'.