Patrick,
ICANN's prospective failure is evidently in the mind of the beholder. Besides producing a UDRP that allows trademark interests to convienently reverse-hijack domains
From the Wired article: [New.Net CEO] Hernand said New.net will follow ICANN's dispute resolution policy. "The system is not perfect. Trademark issues are complicated, but we determined this is the best approach for now." Sounds like new.net will be using the same UDRP that ICANN is.
and the selection of a handful of lackluster TLDs from a pool of applicants paying a non-refundable 50k fee in a completely arbitrary and capricious process,
I don't think anyone would claim ICANN has done a good job in dealing with adding top level domains. It isn't clear to me that new.net's approach is any better (in fact, I figure it is significantly worse). As an aside, I believe new.net approached Nominum to provide services and we declined -- we are interested in helping to make the DNS infrastructure better, not helping it devolve into chaos.
perhaps you could point to some of the many successes of ICANN as an organization?
Like plumbing, you should only notice ICANN when it breaks. The fact that ICANN continues to exist despite the absolute insanity now associated with the DNS is a success. Rgds, -drc