I don't know if your mention of a wonderful internet of five years ago is sarcasm, there had already been many years of spam, virii, and domain hijacking for just three examples, the only difference there is that those who don't play nice are now much more experienced, sophisticated, and arguably successful, and that those of us who used to fight this on a volunteer basis have mostly been replaced by corporations whom I don't think have been any more successful. I don't blame that on a money issue in most cases, although some corps charge excessively (and have a vested interest in the problems continuing to exist), I blame it more on the inertia caused by sheer size, and this is nowhere more obvious than in most any issue ICANN addresses. I don't much mind their glacial pace most of the time as they aren't usually going in the direction I agree with anyway.

As to how did this happen, that I do put down to a money issue, or at least a lust for money issue. One of the reasons for creating ICANN was to reign in NetSol, partly by creating competition. At this they have been partially successful, though this is more to the credit of the competitors than any actions ICANN has taken, and has also created new problems due to ICANN's lust for money as they have accredited far too many registrars, many of them outright scammers, and have never disaccredited even one SFAIK, which to me is a far bigger issue that NetSol's monetization methods, not that those should be applauded or ignored. Follow the (lust for) money and you'll get an almost complete answer to what happened to the wonderful internet /end rant. -g