They also own .sucks... of which they were charging $2500 per domain. I don't know why these manipulative TLDs are allowable without considerable regulation. This latest example seems to be more directly extortion, and is likely illegal in many places.
Yeah, this whole TLD expansion program seems like it was extremely poorly handled by ICANN. I think it was a good idea to expand TLDs beyond the country codes and the original ones (TLDs like .travel or .nyc are genuinely useful), but approving TLDs that could be used for defamation (like .sucks) or scams like this is clearly a huge mistake. Also, putting it in the hands of private companies that can charge extortionate rates for domains is just terrible.
