It’s a Registrar (Internic and other web hosts) that registers and charges for domain names, not ICANN. Your ISP does not register your domain. Some ISPs are possibly also Registrars but they are 2 separate things.
I have had a computer forever, but I still do not understand how the internet works.
But out of that ignorance has grown a suspicion that we are already getting fleeced.
When I started long ago it was DOS, Compu-Serve and the big floppy disk.
So I progressed from there to Windows and AOL etc.
Eventually I got fed up with windoze and moved to linux.
Linux at that time was so totally different that I was lost. You had to do everything for yourself.
So when I set up my email I had no idea what I was doing.
I could send and receive emails with no problem, and as I was in a business that required either lots of phone calls or emails, there were a lot of emails. No problem.
After some time period, I would have a problem sending emails to companies that I had previously had no problems with.
And Spamhaus reared its ugly head.
I learned that one must have an ISP. The reason? Spamhaus was going to end spam. To end spam, they had to end the idea that just anyone could log on to the internet. Heaven forbid that you could sign up without Spamhaus knowing that you were an honorable person.
So I paid my money to join up with an ISP.
The point is that by accident I found out that you really do not need an ISP except that the internet has been rigged to force you to use an ISP. Google, AOL Yahoo and all of them would be unnecessary except for the need for someone to give you credentials attesting that you are not a spammer.
Isn’t it nice that they stopped spam?
The internet will always be there because it has become a huge marketing tool..
But I believe that it has also become a rip-off as far as email, news groups and web page management is concerned.
Now some tech will explain how ignorant I am, and I admit it, but the fact remains that I sent hundreds of emails without an ISP. They went out over my home phone line to ATT and from there to the internet and I always got replies.
The days of the cable modem and 12 Kps.
And the fact remains that spam has not been eliminated. It is much more efficient and effective to build your own spam filter into your machine.
If the UN ruins the internet as we now know it, I am sure someone will design software that will allow us to communicate in much the same way as we do now.