[Menge]

> limit the number per person to something like 3, except where a special permit is held.

Organizations are people too, or corporations end up getting special permits? Either one leads to trouble and groups that buy up to maximums since they want to use all their entitlements.

> no two domains could serve essentially the same data for more than a certain transition period

So now we all need different VPN gateway and email system homepages? Who is to say domains exists for HTTP? They are unique names for many protocols.

The main problem is the ability to sell them for value. Make that hard. For example, make parties prove it is a legal inheritance or court victory that requires a transfer otherwise push it into the pool where others can try to buy it faster and deny the old registrar involvement until it falls out of the next valid ownership chain.

[insoluble]

Email logins are an interesting exception, at least for those whose domains exist purely for vanity. For non-email logins, sub-domains could be used instead.

I agree that targeting the selling aspect is another approach to consider, although I imagine there are some big hurdles there as well.