[OtomotO]

I do that, but you're still at the whim of a corpo and have no real legal right to that domain/email adresses.

Also it's kind of technical. Perfect for a nerd like me, but e.g. for my mum? Nope!

[akvadrako]

Once you buy it you have a legal right to it.

It is a bit technical, but that can be solved without involving the government. You just need the registrar and email providers to talk to each other with OAuth plus some DNS delegation protocol.

[dento]

Regional domain providers, i.e. .cc country code domains, usually give you legal rights to that domain as long as you pay the fees.

[severino]

Interesting. So if you want to have some kind of legal protection over your domain, the best bet is buying a .cc domain (from the country you currently live in, I suppose) but no chance when buying a .com, .org domain, right?

[mark-wagner]

Yes, and .is (Iceland) is pretty good. See https://slc.is/#The%20Best%20TLD%20is%20Not%20.com which somewhat summarizes https://www.eff.org/files/2017/08/02/domain_registry_whitepa...