While I'm personally not a fan, it's not all that silly. If you've registered a domain in the past, your registrar likely invoices you by emailing you the invoice when your domain comes up for renewal (margins are so tight that it's the only cost-effective way). And if you're not checking your mail and you haven't authorised them to automatically charge your credit card, it's possible to miss your payment reminders, which could lead your domain to go into redemption and be deleted for non-payment.
Also, the verification checks only need to be done after you initially submit your contact details or after you attempt to change them, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue.
The big problem that registrars face is that law enforcement want us, the registrars, to verify phone numbers and addresses too, which is going to push up costs quite a bit, even if we find ways of doing so without having to actually phone people.
Verifying a phone number should be pretty easy - auto-call, force them to enter a code. Apart from calling cell phones and some countries, it shouldn't cost more than a few pennies.
Verifying addresses sounds like a real pain though. I imagine they'd want a scan of some ID or something else just as silly. Hopefully ICANN can push back on LE.
Less straightforward than you'd think. Ideally, it'd just be a matter of a text or call and having them input a code, but the costs lie in the failure state: we already deal with a large number of ccTLD registries, and many of those, including the IEDR (.ie) who we deal with regularly, require some form of documentation to allow domains to be registered, contacts to be updated, &c. Even with a 30% gross margin on .ie domains, the support costs with a highly automated application documentation submission process are high enough that we don't actually make much money on two-year registrations until the first renewal.
Thankfully, the new requirements for gTLDs aren't quite that onerous: we have to contact them to validate phone numbers and emails (which can mostly be automated), and we only have to ensure that the address provided is valid. That said, the costs involved in address verification aren't small, and we're hedging potential savings in avoiding fraudulent customers against the additional costs involved.
ICANN can't push back against the LEAs though: this stuff is now in the contract, so we're all stuck with it.
Also, the verification checks only need to be done after you initially submit your contact details or after you attempt to change them, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue.
The big problem that registrars face is that law enforcement want us, the registrars, to verify phone numbers and addresses too, which is going to push up costs quite a bit, even if we find ways of doing so without having to actually phone people.
It's going to suck.