It does make me wonder if I hosted my own root servers for a new dotCom tld would I get chased down by the internet police?
It's a bit like signing your website certificate with your own root certificate. The protocol itself is agnostic to who issues the root certificates, but good luck convincing distros to install yours by default, so your website will only be accessible by people who go far out of their way to install it.
It's a shame, because ICANN being under US jurisdiction is effectively an attack against the DNS.
Agreed. At least in 2016 we got the US to give up its veto power to the PTI which has global oversight. Still ofc the ICANN is just another company based in Los Angeles and falls under California and US legal jurisdiction. I would much prefer control be transferred to the UN ITU