Elliot, I think a lot of your arguments against the harm that Verisign could do if they were unregulated would be moot if there were serious competition at the registry level. If, for example, ICANN had accepted IOD's .Web registry in 2000, rather than deny the longest-standing participant and almost giving it to their insider friends, I think Verisign's stranglehold on .com and .net would be much weaker. .info and .biz aren't the .com-killers. Hopefully, this time around (in 2005), I'll get a chance to put my money where my mouth is and prove what I'm saying. If so, I believe you (and Tucows) will be very pleased.