At first, www.nic.cx was giving out free .cx domains and it was good. Then they waited until many people had settled with their domains and proceeded to impose a fee, even for the people who had registered theirs for free. The fee is still far less than what Network Solutions charges for a .com, .net, or .org, but it was still a pretty cheap trick to play on unsuspecting people.

Actually, the Christmas Island government (inexplicably, an external territory of Australia gets its own country code) weren't getting jack from the sale of .cx, which was managed by a British company selling second-level domains on a first-come, first-served basis for ten pounds a year. Unsurprisingly, the govt soon clicked onto just how much one of these TLD dealies could profit a small island like theirs (for example, .tv is by far the number one export for Tuvalu).

Nowadays, .cx is under a slightly different multiple-whoring arrangement (many registrars, one registry) where Christmas Island gets roughly ten bucks a year per domain.