This wouldn't be the first auction of high value domains What cases? (genuine question, pretty clueless about this!)
I was thinking of .MOBI auctioning off place names and popular words like flowers.mobi. It's not exactly analogous, but it's pretty close, reserved names released into registry auctions.
Does Verisign own the com namespace?
Given the presumptive renewal language in their contract, in practice, yes.
The reality, of course, is that no matter what the nominal procedure is, there will be auctions. The only question is who gets the money.
So why not ICANN / a trust fund. Once technical criteria were met, ORG was assigned on the basis of promised good works.
I think the .ORG transfer was a one time event that is unlikely to be repeated. In any event, IDNs make this a much more complex issue. What do we do with names that consist of a single accented Latin letter? Single Japanese kana? Single characters of Arabic, Hindi, etc. etc. etc. ? It's a swamp on which I'd much rather just pull the plug since I don't see much benefit in trying to trickle them out. R's, John