I disagree about fantasy. Indeed if there is fantasy it is that ICANN is like Wylie Cayote - having run off the cliff and standing on nothing but air. There is the ICANN fantasy that the internet can have but one DNS. That is completely untrue and has always been untrue. Different systems of roots can arise - and do exist. The issue is that of consistency of content, not singularity of source. ICANN's insistance on singularity makes ICANN vulnerable to nearly instantaneous circumvention. Also, ICANN's role is not IANA - IANA is a separate job that ICANN merely partially performs under contract to the US government. The IETF has begun making noises of dissatisfaction with ICANN's performance of the numbers-assignment function of IANA. And IP address policy at the IANA level is best described as "when the RIRs ask, IANA grants". ICANN job is technical, or rather, was intended to be techical - to ensure that users and providers of the net receive reliable, accurate, and efficient DNS service. (We can forget IP addresses as ICANN long ago abandoned that task to the regional IP registries, the RIRs. ICANN has similarly abandoned oversight of upper tier DNS reliability when it left the root server operators to operate according to their own decisions and desires.) Unfortunately ICANN has gone ultra vires in its attempt to become a worldwide regulator, and a regulator in the most heavy-handed and intrusive of senses, when it decided to abandon the technical oversight that we users and providers need and, instead, has become an instrument of social engineering mainly for the benefit of registries and trademark protection interests. ICANN is a more dangerous monopoly in restraint of trade than is Microsoft. Microsoft is held-back by the need to keep its customers relatively happy and to make a profit, and also by national laws. ICANN, on the other hand, has attacked privacy and restrained the innovation of the internet, limiting the marketplace and selecting vendors, in ways that have come into direct conflict with national laws created by elected legislatures. If ICANN wants to give substance to the claim that it has restraints then it ought to begin by living up to its promise to have the public select a majority of the seats on its board of directors. The ALAC is not even close to that promise, indeed it more resembles the old system of soviets in the old USSR. Your argument that ICANN is here to stay to me sounds like Louis XVI saying to the crowds at the Bastille - "hey guys, I'm here to stay, so why don't you just go home, I'll make everything better." The internet is certainly here to stay, but ICANN as a governance body is not so certain. DNS is evolving, and can easily slip away so that ICANN is left with nothing but a few contracts that, at the bottom of things, really say who can edit a given text file on a given computer. I've written several papers analyzing the jobs that we need done on the internet and described how to create accountable, limited, inexpensive structures to provide those needs. Yes, this means splitting ICANN. And it also means that ICANN's social engineering would fall by the wayside. It is likely that ICANN will be soon forced to abandon its social engineering - the era of lawsuits against ICANN as a combination in restraint of trade is, to my way of thinking, soon to begin. ICANN, because it can not base its choices on technical necessities, will find itself in a weak position.