bill - 1:23 am on Jan 8, 2010 (gmt 0)

Well, to be fair, .com isn't a ccTLD. ;)

Every ccTLD should only be available for that country.

I'm not sure I agree with that in all cases. What about expats from that country living/working abroad? What about legitimate trademark holders who want to protect themselves internationally?

Opening up a ccTLD the way that China did with the .CN domain really opened a Pandora's box for them internationally. They wanted to tout the number of registrations during the Olympics to show the popularity of domain, but it really got out of control with the low prices when the spammers jumped in.