Agree with all of these statements except this one: > Verisign will suck about $3 billion dollars out of the world economy just by having some powerful friends

Agree with all of these statements except this one: > Verisign will suck about $3 billion dollars out of the world economy just by having some powerful friends at ICANN. It's not a zero-sum game. If Verisign manages to extract $3B from the poverty-stricken folks who are buying up .com domains, it doesn't just disappear (unless, of course, Verizon takes it in cash and sets it on fire in the basement.) That $3B will then be spent on whatever pet projects Verizon feels like spending it on, thus re-injecting into the global economy. I personally think that Verisign should have to compete to run the .com registry, just like how we do FCC spectrum auctions, but hand-wavy statements like "suck about $3 billion dollars out of the world economy" do not help make that case.