[chanind]

This is solved in real life by taxes which make it uneconomical to sit on high value land while doing nothing with it. If it's not high value then who cares, feel free to squat. The problem is ICANN just charges $10/month per .com no matter the value, so it makes it economically viable for domain squatters to buy everything and just extort anyone who comes looking to do something productive. Just raise the yearly price on .coms, or raise the price proportional to how popular ICANN thinks the name will be, or ideally both. If it was $1000+/year for a high-value domain name, and $100/year for a reasonable length .com, squatters would vacate real fast.

[monodot]

The problem with proportional pricing is, who decides the value? If your website becomes successful, and the word "facebook" becomes more valuable, what's to stop ICANN simply increasing the charge? Then it just becomes extortion from ICANN.

The new-generation TLD owners already do this with "Premium" names. Google does it with .app. A price is arbitrarily decided for your first year. Who knows what price it might be in a few years' time.