Interesting indeed. As far as just the domains go, is there any reason that Namecoin could not serve as a wholly alternate domain name system...and not just limited to .bit? If so, perhaps one could make a 'market cap' valuation argument, which would further support the 'backing' notion.

In effect, to users of Internet Explorer, RealNames became a domain registry which was capable of registering names that worked without needing to belong to a top level domain such as ".com" or ".net". RealNames and its backers expected this to be a lucrative source of income, and it raised more than $130m of funding for its venture.