To be fair, you really don't own a domain. You still rely on the TLD honoring your purchase and not hand it over to someone else in the same way you rely on the phone company to treat your number as yours.
Some domain registrars are so completely incompetent (ie Dotster), I'm disappointed they're still in business. Literally clueless "customer support" staff that either don't auth (experienced that personally), or refuse to follow the written rules to everyone's detriment.
Note - Don't use Dotster (specifically) for your domains. If you're using them now, switch away. Saying that because if you experience any trouble with your domains, you'll be wanting to contact competent staff who can fix problems. Dotster's can't. :(
In the same way that you rely on a county deed office to own your land. The only difference is the amount of legal precedence in place and physical occupancy, neither which can be solved with the wave of a hand.
This needs to change as well. We nee to do away with the concept of a select few TLDs, indeed we need to scrap payed for subdomains/domains in general.
