Don't forget a very good reason gTLDs are a scam: it's a land-grab by the enormously wealthy—those who can afford the opening bid of $185,000—that shuts out the plebes like you and I.
Domains have always been a business, otherwise .com domains would be free, the fact that the opening bid is 185k reflects even more that domains are a business.
You can still get a good 2nd level domain for way less than 185k, just look for it.
Also, depending on your country, some domains are free, for ex., in my country .edu.mx is free for schools, and .gob.mx is free for government.
The free .tk domains also exist, because the government of Tokelau Islands found better to use the TLD as tourism advertisement.
At the end of the day, the gTLDs are a good thing, because the value of domains like sex.com won't be $12 million anymore, you can get sex.<anythingelse> for way less.
You'll need to walk me through how that's a scam. Fair warning; If you start down the path of asserting that you deserve everything you desire I'll have a very hard time believing you.
Two simple TLDs: .porn and .sucks. The wealthy people who applied for those (and were approved) will enjoy every entity being forced to buy their names of those domains, if they want to avoid obama.sucks or taylorswift.porn. That is called extortion, regardless of whether or not someone "asserts they deserve everything they desire" (as if that lessens the shitty crimes of another).
Whats the difference between obamasucks.com, obamasucks.net, obamasucks.org, ... and obama.sucks?
If you really want to prevent any possible domain which contains "obama" and "sucks" from being registered, there is a serious problem with freedom of speech.
In the case of .porn, do you know you can submit your trademarks to the ICANN so they enforce them? ex.
The process is long, arduous, and holds no guarantee for the victim of extortion that the case will be ruled in their favor. Some of these cases go on for years before a ruling is made, especially in the case of corporations or people that are not necessarily household names. And this is when the paperwork is in order. I think this pay-to-play DNS naming scheme is awful and clearly a rigged system supporting an oligarchy.
What victim? What extortion? What are you talking about? You are just simply hating a process you hadn't even tried just for the sake of hating it.
Even before the existence of gTLDs there were stupid legal cases because companies like Apple felt entitled over a domain like a.pl[1]
If you own <trademark>, you are not entitled to own every <trademark>.<tld> combination unless <trademark>.<tld> is related to your business, taking the example from apple, you (Apple) may be entitled to own apple.computer and apple.inc, but not apple.groceries
The ICANN guarantees (if you register your trademark) that only you (Apple) will be able to register apple.computer, apple.inc, and every other apple.<tld> closely related to your trademark, but if you don't want to register those domains, nobody else will be able to register them. Where is the extortion in that?
Your arguments about extortions and supporting oligarchies are simply ideological fallacies. Selling domains is a business, and people with enough funds will profit from them whenever you like it or not.
Except that they do, all the time, as I said previously. The extortions and the victims come in when this oligarchy of the wealthy registrars apply for and are approved a TLD which is for the obvious purpose of making everyone buy theirname.shithead to prevent a literal theirname.shithead website. This is extortion on a different level, and it's not hard to see it, so it's apparent you're denying the obvious in order to support your (incorrect) assertions.
