Jordan,

I neither support nor oppose the idea, however…

Giving both the right to operate the IANA functions, and the responsibility for operating the Root Zone, to the same entity would be far worse in respect of accountability and creating a new massively centralised power structure in Internet Governance than even the current idea of simply transferring IANA to ICANN in perpetuity.

The implementation of the names related IANA functions is largely the operation of the Root Zone, so i am not sure i understand why/how you have counted this as double rights?

Because today, there are two agreements and three parties:

NTIA which essentially "owns" the DNS, and offers two contracts/agreements:
- to ICANN to be the IANA functions administrator

Nit: IANA Functions Operator.

- to Verisign to be the Root Zone Maintainer 

Yes.

If I read your suggestion right, you seem to think folding all that into one organisation would be OK.

What change do you believe would be implied by the merging of these two functions?

Specifically, given the Root Zone Maintainer is the sole entity that is able to _unilaterally_ change (or refuse to change) the root zone and have those changes published (subject of course to legal repercussions) how would merging the "user interface" (that is, the IANA Function Operator) into the Root Zone Maintainer pragmatically change the accountability model?

Thanks,
-drc
(ICANN CTO, but speaking only for myself)