ID:278386
 
Is it possible to BUY a domain...repeat BUY not RENT , BUY a domain that will be mine till the end of time??
No. You can buy multiple ten-year extensions and essentially have it last forever.
In response to Nadrew
Nadrew wrote:
No. You can buy multiple ten-year extensions and essentially have it last forever.

That is a third party service by the registrar however. If that registrar were to shutdown, you would lose any time paid for after the current 10 year block.
In response to Xioden
If it's ICANN accredited the domain and time paid will be transferred elsewhere. Once that expiration date is registered it's set.
In response to Nadrew
Nadrew wrote:
If it's ICANN accredited the domain and time paid will be transferred elsewhere. Once that expiration date is registered it's set.

ICANN will only register a domain for up to 10 years. Anything beyond that is the registrar itself auto-renewing the domain for the customer.
In response to Nadrew
why isn't possible to buy a domain?
In response to Biond_coder
Because a domain name is just a mapping in the DNS root servers, and you only have such a mapping so long as the operators of the physical DNS root servers decide you can have a mapping. It's a service, not a product.

These people could potentially sell lifetime leases, but they don't for practicality reasons. There are like 6 billion of us on this planet, even if we each wanted one domain, that's a lot of domains.

I got some of my current domains after the lease expired. Presumably the person leasing it didn't renew because their original purpose was no longer relevant. I've very glad I could get awesomeware.org, instead of having to settle for awesome1987ware1337.org. This expiry represents the majority of expiry cases I would presume, with very few being "grabs" of currently used domains.