[adventured]

There is no good reason, it's a legacy system from a time when the Web was a tiny place with systems designed for academia.

The real reason it still exists as is, is because the registrars make money off of an artificially manufactured benefit. They're selling air at an infinite mark-up. And they're the ones that will fight to keep the status quo.

A registrar the size of GoDaddy must earn tens of millions annually in nearly pure profit off of WHOIS privacy fees.