The contract to run .tv domain is up for grabs

Somewhere in a box I have the faxes I exchanged with the prime minister of Tuvalu in, I think, 1996 or 1997, explaining to him what the Internet is, what domains are, that they have an assigned ccTLD, why it might be valuable, and how my little ISP could help by registering subdomains.

(We meant to give them all the domain fees and build and host the Web sites for the media companies we expected to flock to the new TLD. That was a hot business in the '90s, kids.)

He didn't get it.

Better-capitalized investors came along a couple of years later and offered the next PM $50 million for the marketing rights, forming a company which eventually got bought by Verisign, which I guess is the contract that is expiring now.