Regulatory Capture at ICANN
There seems to be a progression of MBA-ification of the Internet domain name namespace management.<p>Originally, there was what seemed to be a custodian role, looking after the namespace.  Then it seemed to possibly be getting confused as a profit center, with fees.  Then ICANN happened.  Then there was inexplicably created a bizarre cottage industry of numerous middleperson &quot;registrars&quot;, effectively selling or renting domain names they didn&#x27;t own.  And a few big businesses, including Superbowl ads.  Plus there were the squatters, of course, since no one was looking after the namespace anymore.  Then an explosion of TLDs were sold.  So now we have business people talking about &quot;market share&quot; of TLDs, and &quot;consumer&quot; options:<p>&gt; <i>Allowing .org and future domain names to move to market-based pricing makes sense with today’s healthy TLD market, which is populated with many choices for consumers to choose from. The .org domain name is well known as one of the first TLDs in the market available for public registration, but it still only holds 5.5 percent market share, with just over 10 million names in the .org space compared to almost 140 million domain names and 75 percent market share for .com.</i>