"Their" domain exists because the entire concept of the domain system was created out of thin air - the people of Niue didn't create it and in fact voluntarily ceded control of it, but of course because "they didn't recognize the financial benefit control". Well no kidding, few realized the potential of the web. The use of neo-colonialism is just expansive use of a term for marketing reasons.

It's not clear at all that they "voluntarily ceded control of it". The exact chain of events is disputed, but it appears quite possible that Niue never had control of their ccTLD at all -- that it was first delegated to someone outside the Niue government, without that government's approval, and that this error was never corrected.

> because "they didn't recognize the financial benefit control". Well no kidding, few realized the potential of the web.

They were assigned a TLD, and fed wrong advice by an advisor who breached his trust duty, then did a swinging door from government to industry

> The advisor to the Government at that time was an ex-peace corp volunteer named Richard Saint Clair. Mr Saint Clair told the Government that the name meant nothing, that it was of no value or significance, and there was nothing that could be done. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Saint Clair then left his post as advisor and joined with Mr Semich in his organization – IUSN

> The use of neo-colonialism is just expansive use of a term for marketing reasons.

No, it's more like palladium ore being discovered on your property, and you signing it away in exchange of free internet for life.

It's called swindling

No it's not like palladium ore being found in your property. It's like 100 years in the future in a different language then your own some arrangement of symbols which theoretically could be construed to refer to you is used in intellectual property by parties for purposes completely alien to you. But you realize that there is money to made and you say where is my rightful piece of a pie I didn't know existed and was baked by complete strangers

> Well no kidding, few realised the potential of the web.

Not just the web. This is how Africa was raped of its resources. Tribes being convinced to part with hundreds of thousands of hectares of "useless" land that they had no idea had mineral wealth under it.

NU is also stands for Northwestern University among many others.

Who to say the letters NU should belong to this small country and not to other people with equal emotional attachment to these letters?

Why not create a a new .niue TLD?

Because unlike other TLDs, the two-letter root domains are well-defined as ccTLDs way back in 1990 defining it as "following ISO 3166" two-letter code, and ISO has assigned Niue as NU. The only exception now is .UK and .SU (United Kingdom is technically GB but before ICANN it was assigned both UK and GB and Soviet Union is gone but it has became de facto ccTLD for CIS).

There's no requirement to follow 1990s rules.

There is definitely a requirement to following international treaties unless everyone agrees to withdraw it.

Every ccTLD is assigned based on the nation's ISO 3166-1 country code. Why should the citizens of Niue be forced to use a nonstandard ccTLD?

> There's no requirement to follow 1990s rules.

Which are still followed, and has actually a special status in international law (not just in ICANN) which unlike gTLDs (which .niue will be) means that these are literally untouchable even when, I don't know, a hostile country has hosted a command center on their ccTLD?

> Because it would circumvent this drama and make everyone happy.

That is your opinion. It's unlike .TV where Tuvalu has freely make the choice and still consents Verisign to manage .TV, it's literally Niue having no say on .NU

> ISO is not anything particularly special. There are a lot of silly ISOs out there. T Niue government was not even consulted when they were assigned NU.

The UK was not consulted either, and they want to have the code UK.

> It was just a bunch of white people assigning countries letters.

You know, a country can definitely request overhauling or overturning the ISO 3166 if they wanted to. You know why they didn't? Because they are at least ambivalent to it.

> It was just a bunch of white people assigning countries letters.

was? white people?

https://committee.iso.org/files/live/sites/tc176/files/Image...

^ quite a few non 'white' people, as if that would be a valid discriminator anyway

edit: current ISO president is an african from kenya:

https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/news/eddy-njoroge-now...