What ICANN can do is withdraw a companies domain administration privileges if they are in breach of their contract. I suspect that would bring them into line rather swiftly.

Im not surprised theyre having this problem, though. I have dealt with some of the registrars on that list, and they are *abysmally* incompetent. So if they are abetting malfeasors, it is almost certainly stupidity rather than malice.

What about those dodgy regsitrars that allow you to search for a domain name,and then if you don't register it immediately, they pass the domain name on to a thrid party company that registers it and asks you to buy it off them.

I know of one particular registrar that does this, and even uses one of it's own businesses to register the domains that were searched in the previous 48 hours.

Icann can't do anything if it doesn't have some legislature behind it. What can they do ? Can they impose fines and penalties ? Can they prosecute a corporation ? You can create many of those institutions that watch over the net, but if all they can do is talk and report, it's not very useful.