Provocative article from Salon on why It's time for ICANN to go.
Did you know that Network Solutions was bought out by (and sold again at the height of the dotcom boom) by SAIC, a multi-billion-dollar company that derives most of its income from classified US military contracts?
Interestingly enough, Ester Dyson, the ex-chair of ICANN, was the keynote speaker at SIGGRAPH this year. Unlike last year (where Danny Hillis delivered a rather inspirational address), Ester's message seemed to be "ICANN is broken but it's not my fault". One of the first audience comments was more thought provoking than the speech. The gentleman in question put it to Ms Dyson that the domain name system provided no value - no-one fights over phone numbers.