[kbenson]

It has nothing to do with paying money, it has to do with reputation. The fact the most the companies (CAs) that are willing to put their reputation on the line for you will do a bit of checking to make sure you're who you say you are, and that this process incurs some overhead, is a byproduct.

Let's put it another way, would you really trust that you're talking to https://www.amazon.com if it's trivial to get a cert for www.amazon.com[1] that's signed by a CA that the browsers include and trust[2]? How is it any different if the browser doesn't tell you the current cert is of dubious reputation?

[1]: It is, I could generate one right now using openssl.

[2]: It's not, that's why the system works.

[XorNot]

Web-of-trust schemes are effective. The usual way we find out about stuff like this happening is word-of-mouth. Infrastructure for the process would automate it - after all the only thing you need is a way to say "this is what the certificate's hash should be".

[kbenson]

I'm not asserting that there's no other way to do it, just that getting rid of the popup that says the site is untrusted is not a solution, nor even a step in the right direction, IMHO.