With good reason (Score 5)

According to the court filing, ICANN just doens't want to give reseller privledges to Afternic because of past violations of domain registration policies. While Register.com and Network Solutions are themselves not very customer friendly, Afternic went as far as massregistering domain names under made up names of people and companies, squatted on them, and then resold them. ICANN is is worried that if they let Afternic become a reseller, they'll take thier list of 5000 or so choice domains (and their equivants when the new TLDs become available) that ICANN obtained from afternic internal documents and set them aside in a higher priced area. It'll be interesting to see how this one plays out in court