Next, on what basis do you make the claim that .coop and .cat have failed to attract the predicted support from their nominal communities?
Arithmetic, mostly. There are 40,000 co-ops in the United States, 160,000 in Europe, and apparently several million world-wide, yet there are only 6700 domains in .COOP. I would find it hard to say that under 3% takeup was significant support. The population of Catalonia is about the same as that of Switzerland or Hong Kong. There are 47,000 domains in .CAT, over 200,000 in .HK, and about two million in .CH. Of those 47,000, about 7,000 have DNS on Nominalia's servers, and spot checking suggests most of those are parked. I suppose one could argue in both cases that the existence of any registrations at all shows "support", in which case .MUSEUM is a rousing success, too. R's, John PS:
I don't think you caught the sense of my point that the transparency and accountability issue may transcend any specific case or controversy, however, as I pointed out, all theories of ICANN liability wait for a first test, and so are all equally hypothetical.
You're certainly right that it's hypothetical, since as far as I can recall, no case against ICANN since Karl Auerbach's has gone to trial, but I don't see how this disagrees at all with my theory that ICANN fears discovery because it would be embarassing. It would show how opaque and unaccountable ICANN is.