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There is also a good, ethical reason to stop using .io domains completely, as the territory's population had no say in the governance of the TLD and are deprive
by MistahKoala 9y ago
There is also a good, ethical reason to stop using .io domains completely, as the territory's population had no say in the governance of the TLD and are deprived of any revenue from it.
- jandrese 9y agoIs it expected that the population of a country would benefit directly from TLD sales? I have not seen a dime of the proceeds from .us. I guess the money probably goes into the treasury, but it can't be more than a drop in the bucket. I still think TLDs in general were a mistake. It always felt life a leftover from the old Usenet dominated Internet. The Internet quickly outgrew the categorization system and we ended up where we are today with most everything being shoved in .com because it was the least strict.
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y agoIts far more than this, the original inhabitants of .io were forcibly removed from these islands by the UK in the 60s. The whole situation with a UK company running this TLD is just the icing on the cake. gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-k-is-making-web-domain-profits-from-a-shady-cold-war-land-deal/
- pmyteh 9y agoThe population of the British Indian Ocean Territory were all deported, to clear the island of Diego Garcia for a large US airbase. It's one of the grubbiest recent bits of British imperial manoevering.
- eponeponepon 9y agoGrubby is an understatement. We "persuaded" people off the island by (for instance) not letting them back in when they returned from holidays, rationing their food and drink, and literally gassing their dogs in front of them. Edit to add: just to be clear, the UK had bought these people's homeland something like five years previously. Bought.
- jameskegel 9y ago>literally gassing their dogs in front of them. This hits me from a deep emotional place. We shouldn't do things like this. The deeper and more connected this giant web becomes for me, and the more parts I know about, the more everything I've ever known comes into question. It feels as if the final episode will be the big reveal that Bruce Wayne is on the therapist's lounge discovering his second alter-ego, the Joker.
- jjawssd 9y agoWhat is this giant web you are referring to?
- Confiks 9y agoAnd "recent" here doesn't only mean "the 1970s". TIL: "In 2016, the British government denied the right of the Chagossians to return to the islands after a 45-year legal dispute". [1] Also, in 2009 an attempt was made to prevent resettlement by declaring the area a marine reserve. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagossians#Court_battle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagossians#Court_battle [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_Chagossians_from_the_Chagos_Archipelago#Diplomatic_cables_leaks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depopulation_of_Chagossians_fr...
- namelost 9y agoSounds like the UK has effectively given away the atoll to the US. The US is not going to pack up their very important torture base just because the UK asks them to. Denying the islanders permission to return is just a face-saving move to avoid admitting that the UK no longer controls the territory.
- spraak 9y agoI think of this everytime I see .io domains :/ It's a very sad story.
- _ps6d 9y agoTuvalu makes "several million dollars a year" from .tv domains [1], and their total GDP is only ~$35M, so at least in Tuvalu's case it's in the range of 10% of their GDP. [1]: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-16340072 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-16340072
- smsm42 9y ago> I have not seen a dime of the proceeds from .us. On the scales of US budget, it's not likely that income of any government enterprise would noticeably affect your personal income. It may be different for smaller nations. There is a difference, though, between "the legal representative of the country controls the domain and gets money from it, which they distribute as they see fit" and "somebody having no connection with the country controls the domain and gets money from it". The first may not be ideal, especially for countries with oppressive governments, but makes sense. The second makes much less sense, if we talk about geographic domains at least.
- MistahKoala 9y ago> Is it expected that the population of a country would benefit directly from TLD sales? I have not seen a dime of the proceeds from .us. On the scale of a territory like BIOT, it is a reasonable expectation; Tuvalu is a high-profile example. However, the point is that there are no Chagossian representatives who have had a say in the organisation or governance of the territory's Internet infrastructure. There are a multitude of possibilities for how the .io ccTLD could be operated, but Chagossians have not had the opportunity to influence or decide them. In the absence of that, it seems right that the relatively lucrative .io registration business is used in some way to the benefit of displaced Chagossians.
- thehardsphere 9y agoSerious question: does it have still have a significant civilian population? Wikipedia makes it kinda read like anyone who was living there was depopulated to make room for military bases and contractors who are working on military bases.
- eponeponepon 9y agoYep, that's exactly what people take issue with. Just for extra kicks, because we're nice that way, we also made a huge swathe of the area a 'Marine Protected Area' in 2010, so it's now even less likely that the original inhabitants (most of whom are now, of course, aging and/or elderly) will ever get to move back.
- MichaelGG 9y agoThat's totally flawed reasoning. The people, if they had their own governance, would not have .IO for Indian Ocean Territories. They'd have some other not anywhere as cool ccTLD. .IO is something the British Government created, not the locals.
- 45h34jh53k4j 9y agoWhat? The people, known as Îlois or Chagos Islanders, could well have had .io as this represents the native name of their land.
- Symbiote 9y agoIt means (British) Indian Ocean (Territory). If it were part of Mauritius, it would fall under the existing MU.
- MistahKoala 9y agoI'll politely point out that your response is flawed and incorrect. As self-governing British territories, Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands, Bermuda etc. all have ccTLDs pertaining to their ISO 3166-1 designations. Because of that, it isn't the British government that creates the ccTLD. There is no basis to say that BIOT would not have the .io ccTLD if its domestic population was self-governing.
- beejiu 9y agoIs it ethical to reward people simply because the abbreviation of their country is a certain 2 letters? That seems the opposite of ethical.
- unethical_ban 9y agoIt seems unethical?
- virgulino 9y agoThere is a good documentary about it, "Stealing a Nation". Free on vimeo: https://vimeo.com/17401157 https://vimeo.com/17401157
- threatofrain 9y agoI don't see why any nation should have claim to assemblies of letters and words in another language in another land. Should China have claim to the word China? No more than America should have claim to 美國 or アメリカ.
- MistahKoala 9y agoI don't see how your facetious point has any relevance here.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]