ICANN has been using IANA for extortion, in particular trying to force
the country-code folks to sign up. For whatever reason, the US govt
put out a notice saying "unless we get complaints, we're just gonna give
ICANN continued control of IANA."
Fortunately, folks noticed, and some good folks -- e.g., Malamud et al --
are intending to submit proposals to run IANA. That would be a way good
thing.
http://www.icannwatch.org/search.pl?query=iana , perhaps starting with
http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/03/2251256&mode=thread
/r$
