=> the merits are not only technical, the Internet simply doesn't work with an incoherent root zone.

I agree with you. I'm only an observer of what's happening.

I think one needs to reflect on the implications that a few of the world's largest ISPs appear to have made

=> the I for these ISPs no more stands for Internet.

History is full of examples of ISPs (e.g. AOL) who attempted to "garden wall" customers. Offering "enhanced" DNS is likely to be just one more business tool they use. It's just an observation - one may think it's wrong but that doesn't necessarily stop them from doing it.

If this percentage continues to grow, ICANN's ability to control what goes into the DNS would seem to be constrained.

=> as a French-speaker I have still troubles with the word control (French meaning is subtlely different)... So what is control in your statement?

It means that with any significant user base under an alternative root TLD, ICANN may be constrained from entering that TLD in the root - e.g., see http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,42373,00.html "During recent ICANN meetings, Cerf said that the existence of new "unauthorized" domains could lead ICANN -- in order to reduce potential ambiguity -- not to approve any similar domain name itself."

=> what about a parallel phone numbering system? (:-)

Sovereigns control the allocation of the E.164 numbering plan. Robert -- Robert Shaw <robert.shaw@itu.int> ITU Internet Strategy and Policy Advisor International Telecommunication Union <http://www.itu.int> Place des Nations, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland