"nobody will ever use an alternate root"

100% in agreement with this. Take spam which is a much larger significant problem. In order to eliminate spam you'd have to get everyone to completely change the email protocol habits usage etc. There is no way to patch over it. That hasn't and isn't going to happen. Major providers who control access aren't going to go along with any alternate root. And getting people to program in individually alternative dns servers or do anything "technical" in nature won't create enough critical mass. (Majority of domain names registered even with the availability of alternate tlds and cctlds are still .com)