> You are free to hand out domains for free to strangers, if you so desire.
> Nobody stopped anyone from anything.
This is impossible, as we have just seen with the ICANN termination of Freenom. Turns out, the legal threats will kill it, even if other TLDs also have plenty of cybersquatting going on. There's realistically no way to repeat Freenom's success in giving out free domains without greatly heightened legal expenses now. It's gone, the fun is over.
Likewise, because of this legal pressure they will likely never allow a .free proposal -- which is to assign .free to an organization wishing to provide free domain names and foot the bill themselves, essentially becoming the LetsEncrypt of domain name registrars.
Essentially, yes. Freenom lost its registrar accreditation a few months ago, so all domain names will be forced by ICANN to go to another registrar. I'm assuming they saw no path towards getting it back, due to the difficult nature of complying with reporting correct registrant information for free users.
> Nobody stopped anyone from anything.
This is impossible, as we have just seen with the ICANN termination of Freenom. Turns out, the legal threats will kill it, even if other TLDs also have plenty of cybersquatting going on. There's realistically no way to repeat Freenom's success in giving out free domains without greatly heightened legal expenses now. It's gone, the fun is over.
Likewise, because of this legal pressure they will likely never allow a .free proposal -- which is to assign .free to an organization wishing to provide free domain names and foot the bill themselves, essentially becoming the LetsEncrypt of domain name registrars.