> I think that if Turkmenistan moves fast, it can make a lot of money
> out of the identity between its two-letter domain abbreviation and
> the standard English-language symbol for "trademark."
well... turkmenistan handed administrative control of its 'country- code top-level domain' (ccTLD) registrar to a company by the name of NetNames, which tried to do just that. but they didn't get very far, onaccounta the gubmint of turkmenistan took a rather dim view of 'second-level domains' (SLDs) that were obscene under turkmeni- stani law. and the intellectual property mafia took an equally dim view of a ccTLD ('.tm') that might 'confuse consumers' with trade- marks and whatnot with a '.tm' suffix. so that effort hasn't gotten very far, and i doubt it ever will.
nor have many others with serendipitous cognates: '.tv' for tuvalu, for example. the TV people shut their ass down, pretty much: i'm pretty sure they're still 'in negotiations.'
the only one that's really worked well is tonga's '.to', which is run by a couple of savvy blokes, eric gullichsen and eric lyons, who had the good sense to enlist the help of the crown prince of tonga. there are lots of cute SLDs under it that are doing well: come.to, talk.to, and so on. of course, it helps that the crown prince is the majority shareholder in Tonic ('.to-N[etwork] I[nformation] C[enter],' get it?), the company that's registering .to SLDs; but, then again, all the profits go to a distance-learning program in tonga, so...
the only ccTLD with any promise is russia's '.ru', since the NIC for russia seems to have decided that so-called 'cybersquatting' is just entrepreneurial business at its best. good for them.
cheers, t