I agree with most of what Gord Cook has to say - except when he's talking about ICANN/IANA. His observations are usually rooted in some sort of reality, but to lay the blame for the dotCOM bubble at the feet of those that created ICANN is ludicrous. To tie it to a misguided perception that the "play is closed", equally silly.
"Had the cooperative agreement concluded in spring of 1997, as the NSF intended, the problem of institutionalizing the IANA function would have been forced out on an open table (or, possibly made moot) by the demand for (and creation of) additional TLDs. It might also have been forced into the courts. It certainly would have become more clear to many more people that one of the most critical underpinnings of the Internet, the IANA function, had no basis in law. Neither domestic nor international. If the play had been open, the high stakes mania that festered into the Internet bubble might well have not reached such a fever pitch. The industry might not have ridden so high and fallen so hard."
[March 2003, "The Cook Report On the Internet" (Executive Summary Version)]
The Rise and Fall of the Venture Capitalists and Valley Dreamers had virtually nothing to do with ICANN and almost everything to do with their own hubris. The rise and fall of ICANN, as with most, will stem from its own hubris, but these are chapters that have yet to be written.