The user is the endpoint of this process. However, I don't think the users know they are affected. I feel they are affected in a couple ways, 1- the domain requested is more likely to resolve if it is parked at a ppc provider. 2- they may be misled by typos and the like (phishing), but not necessarily unique to this matter. 3- unreliability of the dns, one day it's here, next day it's not.
Don't forget the loss of user choice. Before domain tasting, you could configure your software to use any typo correction system you want, or none at all. Now you get sold to the highest bidder.
To be more consistant, I think ICANN should introduce a one-size fits all for the different categories of TLD, meaining ccTLDs should have a set of rules and gTLDs should have a similar but unrelated set.
ICANN doesn't set rules for ccTLDs, and I'm not aware of any ccTLD with anything like ICANN's AGP so that's not at issue. I agree that in order to avoid putting some registries at a disadvantage relative to others, they all should have the same rule. If we can't get rid of the AGP, which never solved an important problem, I like Bob Parsons' suggestion to make the 75c ICANN fee nonrefundable. R's, John