[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.