In the face of nearly unanimous opposition from the ICANN "constituencies," the ICANN Board has approved settlement with VeriSign. VeriSign (which had sued ICANN when ICANN forced it to shutter the SiteFinder disservice), learns that lawsuits lead to better contracts (quasi-perpetual hold on .com, complete with datamining and price raises); the domain name registrars and other ICANN participants learn that cooperative behavior is less productive than lawsuits; and the rest of us learn that unless we can foot the bill for lawyers of our own, our voice in the ICANN "policy development process" is meaningless. My tremendous respect for the directors who voted against the settlement.