> what I'm getting at is: if ICANN never enforced the convention in the first place, and they are selling it to someone else who also doesn't intend to enforce it, what should I expect to change?

I think the biggest concern with this sale is around pricing more than "correctness of use", where I agree with you the ship has long sailed.

Selling PIR to a for-profit company, a private equity firm no less, means you can pretty much 100% guarantee that in the future pricing would be increasingly profit-driven.