11 ms·
What happens when a ccTLD is retired? Exploring the potential risks of .io
- FearNotDaniel 6y agoLet me get this straight... people whose businesses rely on the existence of the .io TLD are donating to a campaign group that wants the TLD's raison d'être to be abolished? Smart. I mean, consider a hypothetical. Let's say there's a whole swathe of businesses that have no connection to the American South, but for whatever hipster reasons occurred briefly in their subculture, all have brand logos that feature the confederate flag. At some point, someone points out that this flag represents the fight to defend slavery and lots of African-Americans and their supporters are still very upset that justice has not been done. Do the hipster business owners say to themselves: oh dear, I don't like this ugly historical incident that is indicated by a significant part of our branding, and neither do my customers more to that matter, so I'd better stop using that flag and rebrand to something else? Or do they say, actually I think the flag is really pretty and it makes my organisation look modern and cool, so how about I assuage my guilt by donating to a support group that just happens to be also campaigning for the abolition of that flag that I want to continue to use? If you don't think the BIOT should exist, don't stake your business on its continuing existence. And good luck invading Diego Garcia, it's much more heavily defended than the Falklands were.
- samatman 6y agoActually, let's not consider that hypothetical. Let's consider the actual scenario, in which .io and the BIOT are thoroughly divorced in the minds of basically everyone. In that case, someone with a .io domain might well want to separate the two-letter string from its problematic origins. It's just two letters, after all, and this is the only context in which they are associated with the BIOT. I don't see a movement to abolish stars in heraldry, despite their prominent placement in the Confederate flag and the association with Communism. That seems more germane.
- FearNotDaniel 6y agoWell sure, while you're at it let's take .tv away from the Government of Tuvalu. It's just two letters right, nobody else associates it with that island nation either. Funnily enough, the same legal reasoning that claims BIOT should not exist (dividing a colony before granting independence) could also be applied to Tuvalu if you wanted to argue that it has no legal right to be a separate state independent of Kiribati. The only difference is, Tuvalu's separation was in accord with the wishes of its indigenous people whereas the Chagos Islanders were shipped elsewhere. But then, nobody bothered asking the indigenous peoples of the USA how they felt about a new nation being founded on their land, and we all seem to tolerate the existence of that somewhat irritating country.
- qeternity 6y agoTell that to the .ly’s
- icedchai 6y agoI doubt .io will disappear. .su is still running decades after the fall of the USSR.
- joyj2nd 6y agowell, fuck.yu became fuck.me
- chrononaut 6y agoFor context .yu was the ccTLD for Yugoslavia, and .me is the ccTLD for Montenegro, which is one of the states formerly part of Yugoslavia before its dissolution.
- jandrese 6y agoHow many .yu domains were registered when Yugoslavia broke up? Back in 1992 most people had never even heard of the Internet, especially in politically unstable third world countries. You could probably count the number of .yu domains registered on your hands.
- reaperducer 6y agoBy virtue of being a former Soviet satellite, .yu was second-world, not third-world.
- EwanToo 6y agoI think the .su TLD shows what happens, i.e. not much https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su
- kspacewalk2 6y ago.yu ccTLD shows what else can happen, i.e. domains of ex-countries can be killed off.
- MivLives 6y agoThis whole thing kinda makes me nervous for using a .in and not being from India.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- freehunter 6y agoIs India in danger of being made an ex-country like Yugoslavia?
- unmole 6y agoWhy? There are no restrictions on using .in domains.
- fanf2 6y agoAnd, in the 1990s, .cs for Czechoslovakia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cs
- Aloha 6y agoThis article strikes as blog spam to push this companies domain migration service.
- voldacar 6y agoDoes the current TLD system even make sense? There is a .amazon, a .google, a .cancerresearch, a .sex, a .rich (which costs thousands of dollars btw). Plenty of them such as .io and .tv are all completely untethered from their original meanings/purposes. At this point, a website is just a string with a '.' in it somewhere. Instead of having 1500+ discretely decided upon TLDs why not just let people just create their own TLDs as long as they have a server to host the DNS?
- mjayhn 6y agoBecause the lucky few on top of the tld chain are still making fortunes. Ironically I see the internet going back to keywords/search terms in the future (aol keywords). I hope the tld hegemony is eventually a distant memory.
- edoceo 6y agoThen https://www.opennic.org https://www.opennic.org is for you! Welcome friend!
- bluedevil2k 6y agoThe .fur domain is ... interesting
- echelon 6y agoThat exists? It's probably all furries, then. Exit: I totally missed the GP post. OpenNic allows any TLD to be created.
- str34ml1n3 6y agoThat's really cool, but none of the listed projects seem to work (e.g. grep.geek, post.uu, be.libre, opennic.chan...). Am I missing something? Do I have to do something special to access these domains?
- edoceo 6y ago
- mmm_grayons 6y agoDomains really shouldn't be tied to country of origin. Conceptually, it doesn't make sense to restrict DNS based on geopolitical boundaries. If a foreign company wants to register a .us domain, for instance, nothing should stop it.
- disiplus 6y agothe country should manage its own domain. every country has it own set of rules, and for me as a citizen of country i would not want it to be managed by another country where the thing im doing might be illegal but in my own is not. i agree there are not many reasons to not being able to buy a domain from another country but as is with telephone numbers in alot of countries u have to have some residence in a country to get a phone number (for example germany) the domain could be like that.
- jandrese 6y agoSo much for the idea of the Internet breaking down political boundaries. I know it's been dead for a long time now, but there was a thought in the early days that it didn't matter where you where or who you are on the Internet, everybody has the same access and opportunities.
- reaperducer 6y agoWhy not both? Countries manage their country-specific domains, and global entities manage the rest. The second part is exactly what is happening now. We just need to get the first in line.
- a1369209993 6y agoThe second part doesn't work either; see .org currently. Tor (with .onion addresses) is the only extant DNS mechanism that technically works (and not well) and that's practically unusable for >99% of people.
- DeathArrow 6y ago
- blibble 6y agoit's too strategic for the UK to want to give up and there's no mechanism to force it to do, so there's no particular reason to be worried that it will similarly the linked Guardian article makes a fuss about the UK's security council seat, which again, the UK will never give up, and again, there's no mechanism to remove it
- scythe 6y agoMore importantly, the whole reason that the UK owns the islands, and the reason it evicted the Chagossians, was because the United States wanted them to. The UK will not lose its place on the UNSC for doing the bidding of the US. The UK likewise will not give up its territory because they would much rather piss off the ICJ than the US. The islands are a UK colony only in name; they are a US colony in reality. I feel bad for the Chagossians. I think they should be compensated much better and allowed to return home. But the relinquishment of Diego Garcia is not happening, and the argument that an archipelago over 2000 kilometers away is an "integral part" of Mauritius is clearly motivated reasoning.
- xxpor 6y agoGiven how little care is given to the Marshallese in the US, where we literally nuked their islands out of existence, I can't imagine anyone's going to care about BIOT any time soon.
- vinay427 6y agoThe US didn't "literally" nuke their islands out of existence. It did, however, render most all of it unsafe for inhabitation.
- xxpor 6y agoWhat do you call what Ivy Mike did to Elugelab?
- DeathArrow 6y agoI imagine Soviet leaders were jealous. US destroyed other people's islands while they had to destroy their own in the Arctic Ocean.
- jedberg 6y agoIt seems that there is an easy solution here that is being overlooked. Allow any country to nominate their ccTLD for conversion to gTLD, and make that automatic when a country dissolves. Hold an auction for the gTLD for anyone who qualifies under the existing gTLD rules, and the highest bidder gets to run the gTLD. The proceeds of the auction go to the country that owned the ccTLD. A lot of small countries would probably gladly put up their ccTLDs for auction for the one time cash infusion, and in cases like this, if the country does get turned back over, the acquiring country would probably be glad to have the money. This solution seems like an everyone wins scenario. The TLD continues to exist and some government gets a small cash infusion.
- koheripbal 6y agoI'm not sure everybody wins. What happens if a malicious country buys the tld and then appropriates the domains and/or redirects traffic?
- jedberg 6y agoThe gTLD transfer rules already supposedly prevent this. But this is a risk with the transfer of any gTLD.
- dmurray 6y agoWhat's the difference between this and the current situation where countries can also sell or lease their ccTLD to the highest bidder? Are the gTLD registrars held to stricter standards when it comes to continuity of service?
- jedberg 6y agoIt's functionally the same but removes government control for a one time cash infusion, so it makes the incentives a bit different.
- swiley 6y agoReally? I'm not so sure about that. Many countries make a lot of money just renting their ccTLD out. Sure many would probably do it but I don't think it's 1) good, it's nice that we have eg gov.uk Even if you don't live in the UK. 2) Economically beneficial to most countries that would elect to do it in the long term.
- smkellat 6y agoA nice, spammy scare piece. The bit about the UK somehow losing its permanent seat on the UN Security Council over Diego Garcia was a wee bit off. The UN’s charter would have to be changed to change the permanent members of the Security Council. Those same permanent members can veto any such proposed change. They can’t be forced out without rupturing things to the point of just creating a separate UN 2.0 excluding the UK and probably the USA too.
- hanoz 6y agoBafflingly absurd to suggest a permanent seat at the council could be forfeit over such a matter. These seats are occupied by the victors of the last world war, and will continue to be so until the results of the next one.
- AmericanChopper 6y agoI wouldn’t be so sure about that. The League of Nations failed, and then disbanded. The UN fails constantly, but has decided to simply become more irrelevant overtime rather than disbanding. I can’t see why a fresh world war would convince them to change tack.
- gowld 6y agoThe League of Nations was created by the winners of WWI and disbanded by the events of WWIIz exactly as parent wrote.
- AmericanChopper 6y agoThe League of Nations was disbanded because it was entirely ineffective at achieving what it had set out to do, as was evident from the outbreak of WWII. The UN had the same goals as the LoN, and has been equally ineffective at achieving them. It has failed to prevent a single war, it has failed to prevent a single genocide, it has failed to resolve a single territorial dispute, and has not had a single successful peacekeeping mission (and given the human rights abuse committed by UN peacekeepers, there’s a compelling case that the peacekeeping mission as a whole has caused more harm than good). Those are the primary reasons that both of those organisations were founded, not as a winners club of the previous world war. The argument for why the LoN was disbanded also applies to the UN, but to an even greater extent. The only difference being that the UN has chosen to continue existing, in a state of total irrelevance. Given the 75 year track record, I see no reason to believe that failing to prevent yet another war would somehow become the tipping point for this organisation.
- gfody 6y agoI hosted a little file sharing utility at fy.lc that recently vanished from the internet. I guess I always suspected this was a possibility given the general jankiness of nic.lc but it's still pretty disappointing. Nobody should run anything serious on a ccTLD.
- josteink 6y ago> Nobody should run anything serious on a ccTLD. Except of course if they’re from the country in question, in which case it carries extra end-user trust.
- gfody 6y agoI'd trust a .com over a .lc even in Saint Lucia, ymmv
- josteink 6y agoTo the contrary, in lots of European countries even international brands buys ccTLDs for their regional sites, because that’s what the local population expects. .com is often considered the “American” TLD, and you want to go to your local store, with local offers, prices and which speaks your language. .com often effectively means you need to import and pay customs, and nobody wants that. Not having an appropriate ccTLD will be major drawback in lots of markets. Nobody serious about their business is going to risk that.
- DeathArrow 6y agoWe prefer ccTLD for local audience and .com for global audience. We even use .eu if audience is just EU. Having a .com seems strange in my country. But I think that more and more websites desire to target an international audience so battle over .com domains gets tougher and tougher. I won't be surprised when I'll see the first .com domain being sold for $1 million.
- DeathArrow 6y agoCommon wisdom says that is best to use a .com domain if target an international audience. But how to pay millions of dollars for a reasonable short name if you start a new business?