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His vision was to internationalize the oversight body of the Internet naming system, to structure it less like a spider and more like a starfish. (A starfish, you see, can regrow lost limbs.) To some extent, the dashing security expert Rod Beckstrom has accomplished that as President and CEO of ICANN since mid-2009, most notably by removing the U.S. Dept. of Commerce from its direct oversight role over ICANN.

Come the end of his term next July, Beckstrom will leave the President and CEO role of ICANN, presumably to resume his career as a world-renowned security expert. But in the twilight period of his term he may have to fight at least two more significant battles, neither of which may conclude before his departure. First and foremost is ICANN's adoption of a controversial generic top-level domain (gTLD) plan for the domain name system - one which would give any applicant with $185,000 to spare (PDF available here) a new root domain of its own alongside .com, .net, and .org.