Who owns domain names?

[Daniel]

For instance, when I go on GoDaddy, they give me a price to buy [or lease] a domain name.

But what gives them the right to do so?

Who owns the name to begin with?

What specifically does a domain "service" like GoDaddy do?

[steve -]

ICANN is the governing body for domain names. Those that want to sell domains to others are called "Registrars". They have to be approved by ICANN to sell domains.

Go-Daddy sells domain names as does Network Solutions and many others. You can purchase the domain from any one of them. They will basically give you the rights to the domain for up to a certain amount of time (10 years at a time). Or you can purchase on a yearly basis. Once you own the domain for that time period, it is unavailable in the database. If you lapse on renewing your domain, it will either go for auction or be released back to the database. So for example Ford.com will auto-renew so they never lose the domain as there are probably thousands of people with bids in for it.. should it ever lapse. Then it would go up for auction.

If you want to see the specifics on how Registrars apply to be able to sell them, you can look at the following article.

http://www.icann.org/en/resources/regist...reditation