I'm talking about domain name registration and registration companies, not dead people!  rofl
example: 
http://www.networksolutions.com and 
http://www.godaddy.com
I want to register a domain name for 10yrs, but I'm concerned that my registration company, godaddy.com, won't be around that long.  If the registrar, godaddy.com, closes, then I want to have access to my DNS records all the same.