4 ms·

Why not just keep it? Most TLDs aren't even linked to a country, so if a country stops existing it would just become another TLD not linked to a country.

judge2020 4y ago
Someone has to assume ownership over the TLD, since ICANN’s halfway-official stance is that the country itself owns the TLD and ICANN simply acknowledges its existence. On top of that, unless it’s contracted out, the TLD registry operator is the country, so actual servers and operations would need to be taken over by another registry operator (I’m sure Google would be happy to do it).
- astralbijection 4y ago
  Adding onto that, from my understanding of the political situation, China has been repeatedly affirming that the country of Taiwan is not a country, but is actually a rogue province and fully part of China. If China were to take over Taiwan, then getting rid of the .tw domain would be one of the many symbolic ways it would strip Taiwan of its status as a sovereign nation, not to mention all the other material ways they would do so. It would probably not be immediate, because in the past, the process of removing domains has involved transition periods (i.e. moving from .yu to .me and .rs).
  - eloisius 4y ago
    Linking a TLD's fate to ISO-3166 is already perilous for Taiwan. According to that standard, Taiwan's name is "Taiwan (Province of China)"[1]. Seems odd for one province to have it's own country-level record, while other provinces of China do not, but we all countenance the absurdity because China gonna China. [1]: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:TW https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:TW
    - seszett 4y ago
      For some reason, almost all of French overseas départements and territories have ccTLDs even though they're not really used (sometimes by local administration or for locally relevant websites, but regular people just use .fr). They can be used by any French or EU citizen since they are in effect just additional ccTLDs of France. There are 12 of them I think, while the 97 other départements don't have their own ccTLD. I have no idea how this situation happened since most of these places were never countries at all or anything remotely close to it (New Caledonia and French Polynesia are the two that do make sense). It's a bit weird but it shows that Taiwan's situation isn't that special regarding TLDs.
      - Symbiote 4y ago
        ISO codes for territories and so on exist because they're useful: different rules apply, like customs, fishing, postage, telephones, tax, residence.
      - eloisius 4y ago
        I was saying the ISO 3166 is absurd, not the .tw TLD. ISO 3166 is absurd because it tacitly acknowledges that Taiwan is an independent state because it has its own record, but then parenthetically asserts that it's a province of China. Fujian isn't a top-level record of ISO 3166.
  - dontlaugh 4y ago
    The government on the island of Taiwan doesn't claim it to be a country by itself either, though. As the remnant of the side of the civil war that lost, they call themselves the Republic of China. They claim as territory all of China and more, including parts that the PRC has since relinquished.
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    Plenty of territories have their own TLDs. Many islands that are integral parts of countries have their own TLD (e.g. Reunion Island in France along with most French overseas territories). There is an 'hk' TLD and an 'mo' (macau) TLD and they don't seem to be going anywhere for the time being. The claim that 'tw' would be removed is just unfounded conjecture or FUD in my view.
  - maratc 4y ago
    > China has been repeatedly affirming that the country of Taiwan is not a country There are two countries claiming the title of "country of China", the PRC (holding the power on the mainland) and the ROC (holding the power on the island of Taiwan). Both insist there is only one "country of China", and of course both are insisting their respective regime is the one that should be governing it. None of the two suggest there is "a country of Taiwan". Indeed, the PRC "has been repeatedly affirming" that the other guys' state is "not a country, but is actually a rogue province and fully part of" themselves, but so has ROC! For the ROC, the mainland is actually a set of "rogue provinces" as well, and, somewhat amusingly, this also includes the "rogue province" known today as the country of Mongolia. The support for two independent countries (China without Taiwan, and separately Taiwan without China) is less than non-existing on the continent (to put it mildly), but (to the best of my understanding) in the last years has some support on the island.
CydeWeys 4y ago
TLDs require actual work to operate (I say this as someone responsible for running 46 TLDs). They won't just keep operating indefinitely absent an actual team responsible for running them.
- VTimofeenko 4y ago
  I am very curious - can you briefly summarize what activities are performed when one is "running a TLD"?
  - tephra 4y ago
    I'm a programmer at the Swedish Internet foundation which runs (or in industry terms: is the registry for) the .se and .nu (nuie) ccTLDs. Basically we are a big old database. When someone registers a new domain, via a registrar, they send us that information (most commonly via a protocol called EPP). So we get "this is the domain, registered by this person, it has these hosts, it is registered for this long, with these DS posts, for example. Different registrys have different rules, for example the .se domain has a set of allowed characters that you are allowed to use in your domain name, and rules on how long into the future a domain can be registered for. This data is then used to perform our most important job as a registry. Creating the zone file for our TLDs so that people could actually reach the domains. That is from the technical side. There's also a big support side with different aspects. There are abuse issues that need to be taken care of, ICANN has a dispute mechanism that people are involved in.
  - CydeWeys 4y ago
    Someone else already mentioned some of the technical aspects, but there are large customer support / contract / business relationship aspects too. You're maintaining business relationships with dozens of registrars, easily over a hundred. You're running a B2B-focused business with a large number of customers and there's random nonsense that's constantly coming up requiring human attention.
- klipt 4y ago
  Why is it more work to operate two small TLDs than one large one? If the total number of domains is the same?

judge2020 4y ago

Someone has to assume ownership over the TLD, since ICANN’s halfway-official stance is that the country itself owns the TLD and ICANN simply acknowledges its existence. On top of that, unless it’s contracted out, the TLD registry operator is the country, so actual servers and operations would need to be taken over by another registry operator (I’m sure Google would be happy to do it).

astralbijection 4y ago
Adding onto that, from my understanding of the political situation, China has been repeatedly affirming that the country of Taiwan is not a country, but is actually a rogue province and fully part of China. If China were to take over Taiwan, then getting rid of the .tw domain would be one of the many symbolic ways it would strip Taiwan of its status as a sovereign nation, not to mention all the other material ways they would do so. It would probably not be immediate, because in the past, the process of removing domains has involved transition periods (i.e. moving from .yu to .me and .rs).
- eloisius 4y ago
  Linking a TLD's fate to ISO-3166 is already perilous for Taiwan. According to that standard, Taiwan's name is "Taiwan (Province of China)"[1]. Seems odd for one province to have it's own country-level record, while other provinces of China do not, but we all countenance the absurdity because China gonna China. [1]: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:TW https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:TW
  - seszett 4y ago
    For some reason, almost all of French overseas départements and territories have ccTLDs even though they're not really used (sometimes by local administration or for locally relevant websites, but regular people just use .fr). They can be used by any French or EU citizen since they are in effect just additional ccTLDs of France. There are 12 of them I think, while the 97 other départements don't have their own ccTLD. I have no idea how this situation happened since most of these places were never countries at all or anything remotely close to it (New Caledonia and French Polynesia are the two that do make sense). It's a bit weird but it shows that Taiwan's situation isn't that special regarding TLDs.
    - Symbiote 4y ago
      ISO codes for territories and so on exist because they're useful: different rules apply, like customs, fishing, postage, telephones, tax, residence.
    - eloisius 4y ago
      I was saying the ISO 3166 is absurd, not the .tw TLD. ISO 3166 is absurd because it tacitly acknowledges that Taiwan is an independent state because it has its own record, but then parenthetically asserts that it's a province of China. Fujian isn't a top-level record of ISO 3166.
- dontlaugh 4y ago
  The government on the island of Taiwan doesn't claim it to be a country by itself either, though. As the remnant of the side of the civil war that lost, they call themselves the Republic of China. They claim as territory all of China and more, including parts that the PRC has since relinquished.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  Plenty of territories have their own TLDs. Many islands that are integral parts of countries have their own TLD (e.g. Reunion Island in France along with most French overseas territories). There is an 'hk' TLD and an 'mo' (macau) TLD and they don't seem to be going anywhere for the time being. The claim that 'tw' would be removed is just unfounded conjecture or FUD in my view.
- maratc 4y ago
  > China has been repeatedly affirming that the country of Taiwan is not a country There are two countries claiming the title of "country of China", the PRC (holding the power on the mainland) and the ROC (holding the power on the island of Taiwan). Both insist there is only one "country of China", and of course both are insisting their respective regime is the one that should be governing it. None of the two suggest there is "a country of Taiwan". Indeed, the PRC "has been repeatedly affirming" that the other guys' state is "not a country, but is actually a rogue province and fully part of" themselves, but so has ROC! For the ROC, the mainland is actually a set of "rogue provinces" as well, and, somewhat amusingly, this also includes the "rogue province" known today as the country of Mongolia. The support for two independent countries (China without Taiwan, and separately Taiwan without China) is less than non-existing on the continent (to put it mildly), but (to the best of my understanding) in the last years has some support on the island.

CydeWeys 4y ago

TLDs require actual work to operate (I say this as someone responsible for running 46 TLDs). They won't just keep operating indefinitely absent an actual team responsible for running them.

VTimofeenko 4y ago
I am very curious - can you briefly summarize what activities are performed when one is "running a TLD"?
- tephra 4y ago
  I'm a programmer at the Swedish Internet foundation which runs (or in industry terms: is the registry for) the .se and .nu (nuie) ccTLDs. Basically we are a big old database. When someone registers a new domain, via a registrar, they send us that information (most commonly via a protocol called EPP). So we get "this is the domain, registered by this person, it has these hosts, it is registered for this long, with these DS posts, for example. Different registrys have different rules, for example the .se domain has a set of allowed characters that you are allowed to use in your domain name, and rules on how long into the future a domain can be registered for. This data is then used to perform our most important job as a registry. Creating the zone file for our TLDs so that people could actually reach the domains. That is from the technical side. There's also a big support side with different aspects. There are abuse issues that need to be taken care of, ICANN has a dispute mechanism that people are involved in.
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  Someone else already mentioned some of the technical aspects, but there are large customer support / contract / business relationship aspects too. You're maintaining business relationships with dozens of registrars, easily over a hundred. You're running a B2B-focused business with a large number of customers and there's random nonsense that's constantly coming up requiring human attention.
klipt 4y ago
Why is it more work to operate two small TLDs than one large one? If the total number of domains is the same?