ICANN is apparently mooting the release of the reserved single letter domain names. There are some in existence already such as www.q.com which leads to Qwest, www.x.com which leads to Paypal and www.z.com which is used by Nissan. So why not others? What about numbers? Would 3.com be up for grabs? There is a mobile company and a ICT company that would battle it out for that domain.
If ICANN does release the unclaimed names it is an ideal opportunity for transparent auctions to be held. But who holds the auctions and gets the money? Some domains have been sold in the past for more than US$1 million? It might be the registrars. But why reward them for simply creating many registrars to access the pool of returned domains with high capacity/high computer power access. The registries could auction the released names but why make a gift of millions of dollars to companies such as Verisign which have monopolies in that segment of the business and, in their case, are getting a proposed right to price increases.
If ICANN does decide to go with this release then a transparent auction with one or more worthy causes would seem the best option. It would not be easy to pick one or more worthy charities and this is not ICANN's role. Perhaps a trust fund for training Internet engineers, technicians and so forth in developing countries could be a possibility.
