> although the Chagossians were definitely screwed out of their home, it doesn't follow that they have been screwed out of ".io" money.
Two thoughts:
1) What if the resource from the Chagossians' island was oil and not a domain name; would that be different? Wouldn't your same argument about rents apply?
2) Maybe rents in general are an accident of history, as you say, but why should the UK benefit from this accident and not the Chagossians? If oil was found under your home, would you mind giving the revenue to the UK, since its presence and value is an accident of history?
I agree that the constraint on TLDs is mostly artificial.
1) Different entirely. First, "mineral rights" are decided in various ways, but one of those is actual possession of the overlying real estate. So, when one's land is stolen, one's valuable mineral resources might also be stolen. The connection between the string "io" and the Chagos Islands is much more tenuous.
2) Not quite what I meant. If ICANN or somesuch were to decide to repossess ".io" from UK and give the proceeds to the Chagos Islands Refugees' Association, I would applaud. Arguably, other displaced and conquered peoples might similarly deserve a TLD. The point is that a process must be followed, and until it is the Chagossians have no particular claim to this or any other alphabetic string.
This sort of thing leads to finicky rulings everywhere, though. For example, if I build an airport, I probably will have to compulsorily purchase a bunch of land from people and demolish their homes. I must purchase the land at the market price (at least according to UK law) so that they are left in the same financial position after the purchase.
Now say that 50 years later, its realised that there's a whole load of diamonds under the airport (not known to anyone). Clearly, we would not compensate the original owners.
The only difference here is that the people who owned the land were not compensated for it. Those people are now mostly dead or nearly dead.
Two thoughts:
1) What if the resource from the Chagossians' island was oil and not a domain name; would that be different? Wouldn't your same argument about rents apply?
2) Maybe rents in general are an accident of history, as you say, but why should the UK benefit from this accident and not the Chagossians? If oil was found under your home, would you mind giving the revenue to the UK, since its presence and value is an accident of history?
I agree that the constraint on TLDs is mostly artificial.