They absolutely can. Just one example of how ICAAN regulation helps: ICAAN requires that the .org registry let domain owners lock in their current price for 10

They absolutely can. Just one example of how ICAAN regulation helps: ICAAN requires that the .org registry let domain owners lock in their current price for 10 years if a price increase is announced, and prohibits different renewal prices for different domains. ccTLDs can just increase prices with no notice, or price gouge popular domains. And .io is certainly worse than .org will ever be - there have been numerous security outages of the .io name servers and one very bad security incident: https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all-io-domains-with-a-targeted-registration/index.html https://thehackerblog.com/the-io-error-taking-control-of-all...