with ICE, they go straight to Verisign with ICANN consent and take the domain at the root without involving the registers. The way it works is that registrars

with ICE, they go straight to Verisign with ICANN consent and take the domain at the root without involving the registers. The way it works is that registrars for .COM and .NET work with Verisign who runs on the root name servers for those TLDs. It used to be Internic which was operated by Network Solutions, which was bought by Verisign but then NS was later spun back off, but Verisign kept the root name servers. .ORG was given to another organization at some point to manage.