[ricardo81]

The registration process is more or less automated for almost all TLDs, if they were free then it'd be a bot race to register absolutely everything.

If limited per customer it'd still be a similar situation, probably involving lots of 'fake' accounts and registrant details.

Years ago .info domains were being sold very cheaply. Their registrations skyrocketed and the quality of the average .info domain clearly went down.

[MaxBarraclough]

It's true that domains shouldn't be free, but it's a pity the money ends up piling up at ICANN. If I understand correctly, they have hundreds of millions of dollars just sitting around, on account of their monopoly.