You could own your name outright if you could take sole responsibility[1] for resolving disputes. Basically, we'd have to have some scheme where everyone can ad

You could own your name outright if you could take sole responsibility[1] for resolving disputes. Basically, we'd have to have some scheme where everyone can advertise which names they own, and then you'd negotiate directly with DNS operators to convince them that your advertisment takes precedence over someone else's. So it could be done, it might even be a better scheme, but I think it would be expensive and messy. [1]: You could obviously pay someone to negotiate on your behalf, but you're still initiating the action.