TLDs are a non-tangible arrangement of characters that are defined by a committee at a whim. The countries they are given to have not contributed anything to make them worth more. I don't see how that can be seen as a scam when they don't get free money based on a random decision by someone outside of their country.
That's not actually true, the guy who made them originally was from the west and those countries didn't contribute because they had no chance of any digital infrastructure yet but top level country domains use caracters from the correspinding countries name and those are all determind in the same way so you essentially use their name without their permission or based on scetchy and scummy legally binding agreements!
If you tried to trademark any of these tlds, it would fail horribly.
TV, ML, IO etc are literally just two letter combinations and they are descriptive by nature. There is no real way to claim ownership on just two letters, especially when they have an accepted understanding as being geographically descriptive.
If you could do this, concepts such as maps would also be infringement.
Additionally, the IANA is who is in charge of assigning TLDs, which is in turn controlled by ICANN. IANA gets to appoint trustees for country code TLDs and has the authority to take that control back.
IANA is based in the United States(though it has stakeholders globally) and has the authority to revoke TLD (unlikely to happen, but well within their rights and control) and more likely, to re delegate control to another authority, if they found the currently appointed trustee to be abusing the control of the TLD.
TLDs are a non-tangible arrangement of characters that are defined by a committee at a whim. The countries they are given to have not contributed anything to make them worth more. I don't see how that can be seen as a scam when they don't get free money based on a random decision by someone outside of their country.
That's not actually true, the guy who made them originally was from the west and those countries didn't contribute because they had no chance of any digital infrastructure yet but top level country domains use caracters from the correspinding countries name and those are all determind in the same way so you essentially use their name without their permission or based on scetchy and scummy legally binding agreements!
If you tried to trademark any of these tlds, it would fail horribly.
TV, ML, IO etc are literally just two letter combinations and they are descriptive by nature. There is no real way to claim ownership on just two letters, especially when they have an accepted understanding as being geographically descriptive.
If you could do this, concepts such as maps would also be infringement.
Additionally, the IANA is who is in charge of assigning TLDs, which is in turn controlled by ICANN. IANA gets to appoint trustees for country code TLDs and has the authority to take that control back.
IANA is based in the United States(though it has stakeholders globally) and has the authority to revoke TLD (unlikely to happen, but well within their rights and control) and more likely, to re delegate control to another authority, if they found the currently appointed trustee to be abusing the control of the TLD.