Sure, we can allow that, but it makes the internet more confusing and less safe. When anyone can register microsoft.x, there is the legitimate use case for the

Sure, we can allow that, but it makes the internet more confusing and less safe. When anyone can register microsoft.x, there is the legitimate use case for the ice-cream manufacturer microsoft, but more likely it will be a scammer or a phisher or something like that. If we give up these nationalized namespaces (which aren't really enforced anyway, see .tv and and .ly etc) then we have one canoncial name for normal web sites, and microsoft ice cream could be found at microsofticecream.com By the way, I don't mean "allow" in a legal sense. Everybody can run their own DNS system and be happy with it, I use the word in a technical sense. Everybody can call his company how he prefers, this is about DNS.