This has been under-discussed in this thread. But looking to "government" (nee ICANN, nee Dept of Commerce) for help is not the answer, rather it's more the problem.
A while ago we had this headline about a no-bid contract awarded to Verisign. I don't know about recent developments, but a while ago this was an ongoing thing.[1]
Appeals Court Reverses & Allows Suit
Against Verisign To Go To Trial:
This Is A BIG Deal
Under the current contract, which expires Friday,
VeriSign was guaranteed four price increases
of up to 7 percent each on domain name registrations
[1] http://www.thedomains.com/2009/06/05/appeals-court-reverses-... [2] http://www.nwherald.com/mobile/article.xml/articles/2012/11/...
Perhaps he's just abhorred by typical rent-seeking[1] behavior for such an important part of the global Internet?
"The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee (or rent of the section of the river for a few minutes) to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector. The lord has made no improvements to the river and is helping nobody in any way, directly or indirectly, except himself. All he is doing is finding a way to make money from something that used to be free."
I am not seeing in any way the comparison between a company that maintains infrastructure and employs people and machinery to accomplish issuing and enabling domains and keeping them functioning on the Internet and "a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river....there is nothing productive about the chain or the collector".
Wow. It's like we are reading two different articles. If Verisign isn't doing typical rent-seeking, then we might as well delete the Wiki entry, because the concept doesn't exist.
Just from paragraph 1:
seeking to increase one's share of existing
wealth without creating new wealth.
From paragraph 2:
capture of regulatory agencies to gain a coercive
monopoly can result in advantages for the rent
seeker in the market
[1] http://timothyblee.com/2010/01/22/verisign-angling-for-no-bi...
The action is to find someone important who is not and start driving change from there.