Karl Auerbach has his own take on the value of the .COM metadata: "The contract gives Versign the right to develop a real-time data mining feed of a value that can not be easily overestimated.  Verisign, for example, can develop marketing data about the effectiveness of URL's in TV advertisements during sports games while the game is still in progress.  The data mining ability now granted to Verisign by ICANN will allow Verisign to recognize almost instantly 'what's hot and what's not'.  Advertisers and marketers are willing to pay big bucks for this kind of information.  It's not only a potential gold mine for Verisign but it's also a large step in the transformation of the internet into nothing but a giant advertisement and internet users into nothing but consumers. But wait, there's more!...."

For even more on this, I talk about the same contract provision in IPR55 (yesterday's podcast).