CircleID

Well, yes and no. I agree with most of what you are saying, but not for the same reasons. In regard to personal sites, yes. But when it comes to the commercial venture I think it's more like saying "I can't afford a car, but it doesn't matter because they're expanding the bus routes every day!" After all, if you can't afford a car, why focus on how much better it would be with one? Similarly, saving up for a moped isn't a real substitute, even though it does provide more independence. (analogous reference to .net, .biz, .info etc.) Commercial websites depend on visits to their website and, whether they invest in a quality, descriptive domain name or they invest in a keyword at Overture, they're going to pay—and only one of them is perpetual. Ad in the ever increasing bully tactics of huge corporations (see http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-5061888.html or http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y03/m08/i05/s02 for a couple of examples) and a quality domain name looks better all the time. But don't take my word for it, just try to trade someone your keyword contract for their descriptive domain name.

Domain names don't have to be unique. For example, if a name mapped to two different IP addresses, the DNS servers could pass a "more details" string to be used by the client to a) ask the user to choose which one and b) to compare with a cookie holding the selected choice.