I’m curious… who hosts and controls this content? IANA? Never really considered this question until now…

see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42705284 for some historic detail on this

the 'about' link on example.com sends you here https://www.iana.org/help/example-domains

which does appear to say that yes, IANA hosts this

They wouldn’t and with the current cap they don’t. Uncap it (or just raise the cap) and now they will have to contribute more.