21st Century Edom
Dare commented on an article about large-scale cybersquatting. Dare calls out the large advertising services for egging on this kind of behavior, but the thing about that article that got me wondering was the actions of various governments to enable large-scale squatting on typos - I frequently drop the o in .com, for example, which due to the deal cut between Cameroon and a cybersquatter, leads you to a parked page of advertising. The same is true for .om (Oman), and Tuvalu set the precedent years ago by cutting a deal for the .tv TLD. This practice of selling of a country's digital birthright makes me wonder how these deals have actually bettered the lives of the citizens - I believe in Tuvalu's case, citizens receive a stipend from the sale of the TLD, but I still wonder whether this stipend has actually raised the standard of living in these countries.
It seems to me that for a modicum of technical ability, combined with something like AdSense for Domains, a country could set itself up with its own revenue stream. This may be the digital equivalent of (American) Indian casinos, setting up an outsized revenue stream in exchange for a privileged bit of property.