[tsimionescu]

The problem is that you can't own a domain, you only lease it for a limited time. If you fail to pay the lease, you automatically lose it, and someone else can automatically get it, and there's nothing you can do about it. Domain names are worse than email providers from this point of view, since even if you lose your Gmail account, Google will typically not give it out to someone else, at least for some time.

[bell-cot]

True-ish.

OTOH - before email existed, the critical "how do we contact the real you?" identifiers were phone numbers and mailing addresses.

And if you failed to pay your phone bill, or rent, or property taxes...the exact same problem - someone else would get "your" identifier.

[tsimionescu]

Your point that phone numbers and mailing addresses work in much the same way is true - but I don't think these have ever been quite as directly tied to identity as email is on the web.

Traditionally, for anything that's even slightly important, either your physical presence ultimately acted as your identity, or significant legal liability protected the non-physical identity (that is, if a court sends an important letter to you at some address, someone else who moved in to that address faces significant legal penalties if they open that letter).

[teddyh]

Isn’t the same thing true of physical mailing addresses? If you don’t pay your mortage or estate taxes, you lose your physical mailing address. Yet people seem to have no problem considering themselves to be the owners of their houses and residences. Why should domains be any different?

[LegionMammal978]

Timescale, for one. If a lender wants to foreclose on your home, they'll usually have to go through a whole process, giving you a month or more of notification. During and even after this time, they'll often be happy to just take your money if you can come up with it, and they may be required to, depending on your jurisdiction's redemption laws. (E.g., my state gives owners an entire year following a tax sale to redeem their property. Some people make a whole business of chasing after redemption money.)

In contrast, many domain providers will resell your domain in a heartbeat once you miss a payment deadline. And then the buyer can do whatever they want with emails sent to that domain, since there's no such thing as identity theft when your domain is your identity. In the case of a mailing address, it's not an identity at all, which is why non-junk mail will also have a recipient line.