[belorn]

Registering a trademark is generally more expensive than a domain name, and trademarks don't compete on the same namespace and is split depending on industry. The biggest difference to the domain market is that with domain names everyone is clogging the same namespace. If people just spread out based on nationality and industry it would be easy and cheap.

To make a direct example, if I talked about Abba here in Sweden, most people think about the music band. But if I talk about Abba in the context of food, people will instead think of Abba seafood that make Kalles Kaviar and pickled herring. Abba.se as a domain is thus very ambiguous as it doesn't specify if it about food or music, and abba.com is likely to surprise people as it has nothing to do with either.

To make matter worse, companies that want to protect their trademark or work actively at preventing fake shops will often buy several hundred versions of their domain names under different name spaces. It is seen as best practice, especially for online shops.

[bin0]

But at the same time, I think we might be a bit to far with the current setup of the web to change this. Not saying it can't be redesigned better, though. I can't see everyone moving to "abba.food.se" or "abba.music.se", especially as domain length is at a serious premium (though my information is old and it's just a correlation, it's the best factual support I could find short-notice for what is commonly known). [0]

There's a fine line between "clogging the namespace" and commoditizing something. I like being able to have my own domain - I can host stuff, run a web site, access services with a friendly name, attach friendly names to my internal IPs, etc. Why should I have to be a legally-registered something-or-other to do that? And if I'm not, why should I have to settle for something three times as long? Most of the pollution is from squatters, who are cancerous to the internet.

[0] http://www.gaebler.com/Domain-Length-Research.htm