The IANA contract at the heart of the argument only points to other servers. So, for example, if you wish to go to "example.com," the query will go first to the root zone file – edited by the IANA contract – and it will say where to go to find all the addresses underneath .com. It is that file – in this case run by Verisign – that then points to individual website addresses.
(In reality of course, there is an enormous amount of extra capacity and caching built into the internet, so your computer will very rarely, if ever, go directly to either the root zone file or even Verisign's file to find out where "example.com" is.)
This last presents the possibility that IANA could be made irrelevant. As part of that caching the root zone is mirrored. If the operators of the mirrors were to decide that one of their number should be the primary instead of IANA then IANA becomes irrelevant or, at best just another mirror. Ongoing governance issues around the IANA contract provide a plausible enough pretext for such a move, at least on a temporary basis, should they so decide.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
