[JoshTriplett]

> names are not a scarcity and can be shared

Domain names cannot be effectively shared between non-cooperating entities. Someone has to own the DNS A/AAAA/CNAME/etc records, and be able to change them at will. They have to point to someone's server. It doesn't matter what technological implementation underpins name resolution, it's a fundamentally important property that it must be possible to have exclusive ownership of a domain name.

If I'm trying to reach my bank, I need to know that I'm talking to my bank, and we have a whole technological stack designed to ensure that, including cryptographic authentication and public logs (Certificate Transparency) to make sure nobody can secretly tamper with that authentication.

Any system that cannot provide such authentication is not a viable naming scheme.

There's a long-standing concept that has been discussed many times that naming could be based entirely on that cryptographic authentication, without having any kind of "human-readable" name at all. However, such a system would not solve the full problem that needs solving; it would just mean there would then need to be a separate directory system to help people find the server they actually want and then talk securely to that server.

[bootloop]

.com is shared, and .apple.com can be shared across multiple subdomains in the same way. We already have that eg. co, gov etc. The registrar would have to maintain the link lists and host them on apple.com for you to choose. You would get a subdomain which you can manage.

[JoshTriplett]

com isn't "shared"; it points exclusively to the .com registrar, who determine the ownership of names under .com.

It would certainly be possible to treat "apple.com" the same way, but then, who decides who gets "records.apple.com" and who gets "computer.apple.com"? Does "records.apple.com" go to Apple Records, the music label, or to Apple Records, a hypothetical bookkeeping ("record-keeping") company, as one of many possible conflicts?