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A tiny island nation just launched major effort to win back control of its ccTLD
- jmisavage 6y agoThe nation is Niue and their domain is .nu
- te_chris 6y agoCan someone update the title to reflect this?
- ddevault 6y agoYou could also read the first word of the article.
- slim 6y agoyou need to click to do that (and take the risk of downloading software from unknown sources)
- xacky 6y agoThat’s the definition of clickbait.
- mhh__ 6y agoIs it? I don't read articles to learn about the goings on in the .nu world, it's because the story may or may not be interesting. Ignoring that it's supposed to be against the rules, moaning about the title and article is really dull and often seems to correlate with people not actually clicking through at all.
- Semiapies 6y agoI miss the old days of RTFA.
- netsharc 6y agoIMO headlines should have as much information as possible, "The tiny island nation of Niue [...] ccTLD, .nu" is more informative than the current headline. It'd be like the heading "Prominent lawyer is now in hospital after contracting a disease" is less informative than "Rudy Giuliani, lawyer to President Trump, is in hospital after contracting Covid-19".
- mhh__ 6y agoBut the difference is I have heard of Giuliani, but not .nu If in 100 years time, we had an article like "Prominent Lawyer was ill during the pandemic of 2020, [insert anecdote here]", it would be the same kind of article as this one.
- netsharc 6y agoThen you would have been informed that .nu exists by the end of my headline. If that piqued your curiousity, you can then read the article.
- jolmg 6y agoI think the point is that the newsworthiness here is that a nation is fighting for control of their TLD. It doesn't really matter what nation it is, and most people have probably never heard of it. The issue is that there exists a nation at all that has this problem. I think most would assume that all ccTLDs are well under the control of their respective nations. IOW, I don't think headlines aim or should aim for information density, but rather focusing on the points that makes the story newsworthy to the target audience. Aiming for information density causes distraction from the point of the story and consequently maybe disinterest the specific potential readers the author is aiming for. Saying "a tiny island nation" rather than specifying the nation is also better because it focuses on the fact that its problem is probably due to being a tiny island nation, i.e. a nation that is largely unknown and ignored. Putting it like that might invoke sympathy. Saying "Niue" instead might cause the target audience to think the news is not really relevant to them since they don't know "Niue".
- te_chris 6y agoThey could literally just say 'Niue ....' instead of small island nation
- fortran77 6y agoI own and use a .nu domain. I hope I don’t lose it.
- Computeiful 6y agoIf they're sensible they'll keep all current domains and just redirect the profits
- xhkkffbf 6y agoThat's right. If you keep paying, I'm sure someone will cash your check.
- m12k 6y ago"nu" in Swedish and Danish means "now", so .nu has been used for catchy domain names in those countries for a while now.
- olodus 6y agoFor English speakers "nu" in Swedish means "now", so it was a really popular TLD here in the early Internet. I'm guessing it still kinda is but I don't see those domains as much anymore. I don't know much about its history though so someone maybe can correct me if the meaning of nu isn't the reason the TLD ended up in Sweden.
- hyperman1 6y agoIn Dutch nu also means now.
- Raphmedia 6y agoIt also means "naked" in french. For example, https :// homme. nu/ which directly translates to "man dot naked" (and reads as "naked.man"). (Broken the URL on purpose, don't go there. It's a risky site likely filled with malware.)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- josephcsible 6y agotl;dr: Years ago, Niue traded away their rights to the .nu TLD in exchange for free Internet access and Wi-Fi coverage for their entire country. Now that the value of .nu went up, they want to unilaterally revoke the deal and take it back.
- pueblito 6y agoI believe you are mistaken. They did not trade it away for WiFi and internet, this dispute is over 20 years old and isn’t because “now that the value of .nu went up”, and there is no deal to unilateral Revoke
- josephcsible 6y ago> They did not trade it away for WiFi and internet https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-10/tiny-nation-of-niue-wants-to-sue-giant-swedish-foundation/10585120 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-10/tiny-nation-of-niue-w... says "The IUSN took control of .nu in 2003, as part of a deal where its affiliates promised the tiny island of 1,600 people free wireless internet in exchange for managing the domain". Is that article mistaken too? Also, the parent article says "part of the profit he gained from controlling the .nu top-level domain was used to get the remote island connected to the internet, and his IUS-N Foundation said it continues to make significant contributions to maintain the island’s internet and telecommunication needs". > there is no deal to unilateral Revoke Yes there is. The parent article says "While Niue signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Semich around that time, it quickly backtracked" and "But Niue tore up the original deal".
- richardwhiuk 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25445597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25445597 suggests a completely different story.
- suifbwish 6y agoSounds like someone trying to spin a narrative to make their case sound more like a human rights issue. I’m not biting. What they did made perfect sense. They traded something they couldn’t use for something they could. cCTLD for internet. The majority of the websites that host under the .nu name have nothing to do with the country. The country should not have a right to potentially interfere with the online stability of thousands of websites using that TLD just because they suddenly want it back. If they wanted it, they should never have given up control of it to begin with. In 2010 I had 4000 bitcoin but traded it for a new graphics card online. Should I be able to claim colonialism and say that I was swindled and I demand my rightful bitcoin back in full? No that would be ridiculous. So is asking for anything back you sold or traded after having received payment, especially when the price of the item you are asking for back has gone up thousands of times higher.
- pbiggar 6y agoGood, I hope they get it. The fact that anyone other than the Niue people get to decide what to do with their domain is ludicrous. The claim of "neo-colonialism" is exactly right.
- thrill 6y ago"Their" domain exists because the entire concept of the domain system was created out of thin air - the people of Niue didn't create it and in fact voluntarily ceded control of it, but of course because "they didn't recognize the financial benefit control". Well no kidding, few realized the potential of the web. The use of neo-colonialism is just expansive use of a term for marketing reasons.
- 1996 6y ago> because "they didn't recognize the financial benefit control". Well no kidding, few realized the potential of the web. They were assigned a TLD, and fed wrong advice by an advisor who breached his trust duty, then did a swinging door from government to industry > The advisor to the Government at that time was an ex-peace corp volunteer named Richard Saint Clair. Mr Saint Clair told the Government that the name meant nothing, that it was of no value or significance, and there was nothing that could be done. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Saint Clair then left his post as advisor and joined with Mr Semich in his organization – IUSN > The use of neo-colonialism is just expansive use of a term for marketing reasons. No, it's more like palladium ore being discovered on your property, and you signing it away in exchange of free internet for life. It's called swindling
- darepublic 6y agoNo it's not like palladium ore being found in your property. It's like 100 years in the future in a different language then your own some arrangement of symbols which theoretically could be construed to refer to you is used in intellectual property by parties for purposes completely alien to you. But you realize that there is money to made and you say where is my rightful piece of a pie I didn't know existed and was baked by complete strangers
- sorenjan 6y agoI found this article from 2011 with some more backstory: > In 1997 IANA, without the approval of the Niuean Government, delegated the ccTLD for Niue to a businessman, William Semich, who lives in the United States. The advisor to the Government at that time was an ex-peace corp volunteer named Richard Saint Clair. Mr Saint Clair told the Government that the name meant nothing, that it was of no value or significance, and there was nothing that could be done. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Saint Clair then left his post as advisor and joined with Mr Semich in his organization – IUSN. The Government of Niue has been working every since to regain its ccTLD. http://domainincite.com/4357-niue-the-myth-of-the-wifi-nation http://domainincite.com/4357-niue-the-myth-of-the-wifi-natio... There were also a lawsuit by the same lawyer in 2018, maybe this is part of the same process. http://domainincite.com/23705-exclusive-tiny-island-sues-to-take-control-of-lucrative-nu http://domainincite.com/23705-exclusive-tiny-island-sues-to-... I've always been hesitant of using other countries' TLDs like .nu, .tv, .ly, since I don't know what will happen with them in three years or where the money goes.
- smt88 6y ago> I've always been hesitant of using other countries' TLDs like .nu, .tv, .ly, since I don't know what will happen with them in three years or where the money goes. On that note, .co and .io are so widely used now, I can't even imagine what would happen if their governance changed...
- mike_d 6y agoIt wasn't until the Second Civil War in 2014 that all the cool internet kids realized bit.ly and others were financially subsidizing the Libyan government and that a likely change of government could make their startup disappear overnight.
- nindalf 6y ago“Financially subsidising” to the tune of a few hundred dollars a year? For a petro state that earned billions in revenue from oil and gas? There’s no need for the subtle condescension here - “cool internet kids”.
- bagpuss 6y agoThis has to be a contender for strangest country name origin story : Subsequent settlers were surprised to find vegetation on the chunk of coral rising from the sea, calling the place Niue, which in the local language means, "Look, there's a coconut."
- stakkur 6y agoDouglas Adams must have written this. There's no other plausible explanation.
- gostsamo 6y agoMore like Pratchett.
- gostsamo 6y agoHonestly people, I don't know what is so problematic about Pratchett. For the last day this comment is receiving almost equal amounts of up and down votes every now and then for reasons unobtainable to me. For those interested, check Fantastic Light and the geographic naming conventions described there. Adams is also fantastic humorist but he does not play with the names of places the same way and prefers to just make them long and convoluted.
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoIt is probably spurious, just like so many folk etymologies of the names of towns based on something the founder supposedly said as he caught sight of the area.
- im3w1l 6y agoNiue has a population of ~1600. That's a lot of tlds per capita. It's not obvious to me why dns should be a way of transferring money from populous countries to sparsely populated countries.
- teruakohatu 6y agoMany (not all) small islands also have a disproportionately large EEZ. Why should that depend on population anymore than domain names? > transferring money from populous countries to sparsely populated countries. If small countries have something large countries want then what is wrong with transferring money.
- suifbwish 6y agoThe thing is they don’t have it anymore. They are crying and asking for it back now that it became valuable.
- bovermyer 6y agoThat almost sounds like you think sparsely populated countries don't deserve money, even if it's rightfully theirs by international law.
- im3w1l 6y agoIt sounds like they signed away rights and are now trying to make a moral argument to claw them back. So it think it's totally fair to bring other moral arguments to the table.
- JJMcJ 6y agoPer the article they didn't even sign away, the .nu domain was just given to somebody.
- im3w1l 6y ago> While Niue signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Semich around that time, it quickly backtracked, claiming it did not understand what it was agreeing to or the financial benefit control of the webspace could confer. Anyway I'm no longer sure I hold the opinion that kicked this thread off, but I want to include that quote to clear up the facts.
- sam0x17 6y agoBack when I was a teenager I owned a .nu domain. Glad I don't anymore!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- latenightcoding 6y agoI thought it was going to be .ws
- rovr138 6y agoI hope this succeeds so that there's a case with background so that the Puerto Rio government can fight back for their .PR TLD. There's a lot of drama behind this one too. As I understand it, it was started by the University of PR by a professor. Things started moving and a company, Gauss Research Laboratory, Inc, was established. He moved everything to it and they're the ones operating this now. It's $1,000 dollars to register a .PR domain and $1,000 a year to renew the domain. No one barely uses it in PR. If you want to register a domain in PR, you add pr to the domain and register a .com, example `examplepr.com`. The whole thing has been in courts and being fought over for years. . I'm adding here a link to a blog in spanish from the ex CIO of the island about it and shows how things happened with links to web.archive.org, https://giangonz.com/cio-essays/pagarias-100-por-una-lata-de-salsa-de-tomate/ https://giangonz.com/cio-essays/pagarias-100-por-una-lata-de... This is the google translated link, https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://giangonz.com/cio-essays/pagarias-100-por-una-lata-de-salsa-de-tomate/ https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
- hirako2000 6y agoWhich makes me wonder about ipv4 spaces... Should they not be owned by each country's proportional part of the global population rather being allocated to corporates who first got their hands on them?
- young_unixer 6y agoccTLDs were a mistake. We should strive for neutral (as possible) and general-purpose technology. Political relationships and problems should be dealed with using political means, not by making technology cater to specific types of human/political relationships (e.g. nationality). Imagine if IP packets had "country of origin" and "country of destination" headers. Stupid, right? Well, the same principle applies for TLDs. I'm not denying that there's some intrinsic political arbitrarity in assigning numbers/names to people and companies (and accepting the use of those numbers/names) but adding countries into the mix makes the problem much worse.
- JJMcJ 6y agoAlong the same lines, for a time the Cameroonian TLD ".cm" was used where any mistyping of the TLD, like "ycombinator.cm" would go to a link farm. Somebody paid some money to the local domain authority for that to happen. I believe the country's authority ended that; now a holder must be a Cameroonian entity to get a domain.
- aasasd 6y agoWell now I have to question why in the two geographic decks in my Anki Niue is not mentioned. (Realistically, I'm unlikely to learn to distinguish all those islands in Oceania, but still.)
- Bakary 6y agoIt's in the Ultimate Geography pack. Coincidentally happened to be one of the first cards in my case.