Yes, ICANN quacks like a regulatory body and walks like a regulatory body.
(Which I guess means that ICANN is a duck?)
My mind keeps going to vulture, but sure...
what provides ICANN with immunity from anti-trust laws?
My first instinct would be to note the diversity of ccTLDs, some of which have been business-modeled to directly compete with ICANN's generics.
To me it's always been one of the dirty little secrets of the domain world that .co has an entirely different governance / policy model compared to .com... yet neither the public nor most registrants even know a difference exists (let alone know what the differences are). Ditto .ly, .me, .nu, etc.
- Evan