4 ms·

It doesn't really matter at all. The land didn't come with a .io ccTLD. It's dervived from a name the British chose, so it's not like they stole the domain name

It doesn't really matter at all. The land didn't come with a .io ccTLD. It's dervived from a name the British chose, so it's not like they stole the domain name from those people, right? Displacing settlers is a different question.

walrus01 9y ago
I think the morally questionable problem is this: I am highly doubtful that the original inhabitants of the islands are receiving any revenue whatsoever from the corporation which runs .IO. At least the small pacific island nation states that have hired third parties to run their ccTLD have contracts and agreements in place for a revenue share.
- mattmanser 9y ago
  I am similarly outraged that I haven't had any cheques from Nominet come through the post recently and as a UK tax paying citizen I am outraged at this oversight. I want my £10!
- jpttsn 9y ago
  Are the original inhabitants of these islands still alive?
  - venning 9y ago
    Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagossians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagossians
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Why should they get any revenue from .io? The .io is an invention of the government and has nothing to do with the original inhabitants. The "original" people were removed well before .io even existed. Might as well demand they get paid for any inventions the military makes while testing stuff out there. And if the British hadn't done this and gave control over to the people living there 50 years ago, they wouldn't get .io either, because they wouldn't call themselves British Indian Ocean Territories. They'd have used something reflecting the name in their language. So again, this is a "resource" purely created by the British government being there. Maybe it's terribly unfair and bad what they've done to those peoples, but .io doesn't figure into that at all. Edit: I suppose if they had their own nation state, they could make some money that they couldn't otherwise. But why stop at domain names (which, again, wouldn't be .io, it'd be .cx or something for Chagossians)? They can't issue passports, a potentially valuable resource, not being a sovereign nation. They can't run "tax haven" schemes, etc. Seems like getting upset over .io itself is pointless compared to all the other stuff they could do with an internationally recognized government.
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    When Britain (and thus the US) decide they no longer require the island for a naval base, it will be given to Mauritius. The .IO domain would eventually be deleted, and that territory represented under the existing .MU (Mauritius) domain. Judging by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.mu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.mu I don't think the Mauritian people have much benefit from the arrangements for .MU.
    - vertex-four 9y ago
      .SU - for the Soviet Union - still exists, I somewhat doubt that many TLDs will ever be deleted in general.
      - kijeda 9y ago
        .SU is actually the only former country with a TLD still delegated, and quite a few have been removed. In recent years .AN, .TP, .YU, .ZR have been phased out representing former countries.
mcv 9y ago
Still, why does the UK need a special TLD for a naval base?
- Symbiote 9y ago
  Because the domain name system uses ISO-8859, which provides codes for "countries, territories and islands". The standard provides codes for such places since different law often applies in territories and on islands. (See also: UM, TW, EH, AQ, SH, SJ, and many others.)
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    I think you mixed up your ISOs. ISO-8859 is for 8bit character encodings.
  - moo360 9y ago
    I think you mean ISO-3166-1, ISO-8859 is a standard for character encoding eg: latin1 (which is probably why you know it).
- kijeda 9y ago
  IANA allows delegation of country-code TLDs for all countries and territories represented in the ISO 3166-1 standard. The thing to bear in mind is this standard is used for a number of different purposes historically that has informed territories and other "non"-countries being added. For example, it is used by postal services for routing physical mail. A lot of far flung island dependencies are coded individually because their mail wouldn't route through their mother country but through other ports. The addition of "EU", while not a country, reflected the needs of the "EUR" currency code when the Euro was introduced (the first two letters of ISO 4217 currency codes are derived from the ISO 3166-1 standard).

walrus01 9y ago

I think the morally questionable problem is this: I am highly doubtful that the original inhabitants of the islands are receiving any revenue whatsoever from the corporation which runs .IO. At least the small pacific island nation states that have hired third parties to run their ccTLD have contracts and agreements in place for a revenue share.

mattmanser 9y ago
I am similarly outraged that I haven't had any cheques from Nominet come through the post recently and as a UK tax paying citizen I am outraged at this oversight. I want my £10!
jpttsn 9y ago
Are the original inhabitants of these islands still alive?
- venning 9y ago
  Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagossians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagossians
MichaelGG 9y ago
Why should they get any revenue from .io? The .io is an invention of the government and has nothing to do with the original inhabitants. The "original" people were removed well before .io even existed. Might as well demand they get paid for any inventions the military makes while testing stuff out there. And if the British hadn't done this and gave control over to the people living there 50 years ago, they wouldn't get .io either, because they wouldn't call themselves British Indian Ocean Territories. They'd have used something reflecting the name in their language. So again, this is a "resource" purely created by the British government being there. Maybe it's terribly unfair and bad what they've done to those peoples, but .io doesn't figure into that at all. Edit: I suppose if they had their own nation state, they could make some money that they couldn't otherwise. But why stop at domain names (which, again, wouldn't be .io, it'd be .cx or something for Chagossians)? They can't issue passports, a potentially valuable resource, not being a sovereign nation. They can't run "tax haven" schemes, etc. Seems like getting upset over .io itself is pointless compared to all the other stuff they could do with an internationally recognized government.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  When Britain (and thus the US) decide they no longer require the island for a naval base, it will be given to Mauritius. The .IO domain would eventually be deleted, and that territory represented under the existing .MU (Mauritius) domain. Judging by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.mu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.mu I don't think the Mauritian people have much benefit from the arrangements for .MU.
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    .SU - for the Soviet Union - still exists, I somewhat doubt that many TLDs will ever be deleted in general.
    - kijeda 9y ago
      .SU is actually the only former country with a TLD still delegated, and quite a few have been removed. In recent years .AN, .TP, .YU, .ZR have been phased out representing former countries.

mcv 9y ago

Still, why does the UK need a special TLD for a naval base?

Symbiote 9y ago
Because the domain name system uses ISO-8859, which provides codes for "countries, territories and islands". The standard provides codes for such places since different law often applies in territories and on islands. (See also: UM, TW, EH, AQ, SH, SJ, and many others.)
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  I think you mixed up your ISOs. ISO-8859 is for 8bit character encodings.
- moo360 9y ago
  I think you mean ISO-3166-1, ISO-8859 is a standard for character encoding eg: latin1 (which is probably why you know it).
kijeda 9y ago
IANA allows delegation of country-code TLDs for all countries and territories represented in the ISO 3166-1 standard. The thing to bear in mind is this standard is used for a number of different purposes historically that has informed territories and other "non"-countries being added. For example, it is used by postal services for routing physical mail. A lot of far flung island dependencies are coded individually because their mail wouldn't route through their mother country but through other ports. The addition of "EU", while not a country, reflected the needs of the "EUR" currency code when the Euro was introduced (the first two letters of ISO 4217 currency codes are derived from the ISO 3166-1 standard).