BREAKING: *.io domains might disappear soon
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
- The risk to .io domains right now is insane. I really hope this doesn't cause problems. Country Code TLDs (ccTLDs) are terrifying.
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S/O Ph4seOn3 for the awesome edit 🙏
So easy to fix, start a new country named Input Output, that's it!
He covered that at the start. Only countries can be 2 letters. Companies/etc needs to be Min 3
@@JayAntoney they literally said "start a new country"
@@JayAntoney you failed the test to ever get a visa to visit Input Output
Get In And Out to fund it.
I'm in, anyone else?
The gigabrain strat here is for Mauritius to keep the island still independent enough so the IANA keeps the domain going while they can get some of that sweeet moola.
That, or the deal could be slightly modified that one square meter (or maybe the military base) still remains part of the territory, making the Indian Ocean territories still something that exists.
Physically going to a place and stealing a TLD is actually crazy.
Yep!
That's the Balkans for ya XD
All the AI startups nervously checking Anguilla status as British Overseas Territory.....
Or actually preparing to shift on a trigger. I mean, if not, then they did they have business being an Internet startup anyway?
😂😂😂
This is why you shouldn't use a TLD that doesn't represent the purpose AND geographical location of your entity. Treating TLDs which are bound to geographical locations as vanity TLDs puts you at risk of exactly this, and when this happens YOU WHO CHOSE your domain and TLD names are the only one to blame for your mistake. The minute I learned how TLDs worked as a teen decades ago, I understood this.
@@scbtripwire but if a vanity TLD drives or increases business or adoption or engagement to your website or service, you should utilize that tool at least as much as your competitors are. But you shouldn't expect the landscape to remain static forever, build your tools to be robust against (nearly) all forms of change or advertise that they won't last forever.
@@asailijhijr You don't need to make the same mistake your competitors make. The flaw with this reasoning is that a domain name builds trust as people use it. When that disappears, people will look elsewhere and may find look-alike clone sites which distribute malware instead of landing on the service's true new location. Not all .io services will know about this change before they get a chance to register a new domain and warn their users. Yes the .io registrar might send site owners a notice, but not all will receive it or take it seriously.
Pretty much. Seems like people are just assuming they should be bailed out for bad decisions they made here (yes, using country TLDs for a tech company and exposing yourself to geopolitical tensions is a bad long-term decision).
@@BrotherCheng Exactly. I had tried to answer the other guy and my answer got removed. :/
I even ran into an example of this today, a game which is no longer being updated which relies on a .io. Even if the service gets moved the game is still dead and will no longer be playable due to no longer getting updated and relying on .io.
@@BrotherCheng every site should have multiple domains, you don't want the same url with a different TLD to be a different company.
Don't forget, that citizens of great britain lost their rights to their EU domains few years after leaving EU. You can loose your domain even when TLD remains.
10:34 -When the dude the created the IP, UDP and TCP protocols needs to step in to fix it, you know it must have been serious
the timestamp takes you right to where he says "negro"
That's just it, we could be using protocols that dynamically found other hosts etc but the powers that be would rather that there were central points to be able to destroy and do not favor decentralized networks (Even although the internet technically is a decentralized network, see netsplit). Its all about standardization really and "freedom" of information, like you can't just get a domain name without paying someone for it....
There is also .md domain which is owned by 🇲🇩 Republic of Moldova, but it's extensively used by doctors and clinics around the western world because MD also stands for Medical Doctor/Doctor of Medicine 🙃
While very unlikely, there is a small chance that in the future, Moldova and Romania might unite back, so the drama might start again around .md domain.
.su still exists even though the Soviet Union doesn't. Also nobody will just poof a TLD with millions of websites.
@@theairaccumulator7144 .su exists because of grandfather rights. Russia was supposed to shut it down, but they never got around to doing it. That won't happen now, because the rules won't allow it. IANA *might* allow someone to take it over, because if it gets entirely retired it could be resurrected if another country ends up with the ISO 3166 alpha-2 code IO, which would pose a security risk if someone registered currently existing names at that new future TLD registry.
@@theairaccumulator7144you tell Putin that and let us know how it goes
@@theairaccumulator7144 Soviet Union disappeared a long time ago, I think they updated the rules later to prevent new TLDs from staying like .su did.
Also Obsidian using .md as their domain because it is a markdown editor.
why does everything have to blow up on the internet at one point or another?
It's enough to deal with JS alone, now we have to keep an eye out for .io domains as well? Sigh.....
.js isn't a TLD... maybe we need to create another platform nation like Sealand.
Sssssshh don't give Google/Alpha any ideas! @@Kane0123
@@Kane0123js isnt a tld but its still hell
So, let me get this straight. A country literally *ceases to exist* and you care about a domain suffix? Am I reading this right?
@@PhilipAlexanderHassialisno one really gives a fk man. Indian ocean didn’t exist until the tld existed. Let’s be honest.
As someone who literally works on a .io domain (and a shareholder in the company) - so I'm obviously fairly biased - you might be surprised that I'm personally for the strict enforcement of these rules. The decision maker behind us choosing to use .io probably had no idea it was a ccTLD (Neither did I until I read this article earlier; good to know all 2-letter TLDs are ccTLDs).
There are few things I enjoy less than inconsistent rulings, and if ICANN can somehow stick to their own rules here, and overpower a multitide of multi-million/billion dollar companies (of which mine is far from one of them) I can respect them a lot more.
Might not need to. If the UK can have BIOT as an independent state, then so can Mauritius (eg as another commenter suggested, MIOT). Transfer is just a transfer. Since BIOT is effectively zero population this is a minimally disruptive solution that strongly benefits Mauritius and quo.
I would not be surprised if this happens. There are many possible solutions and this one is the most satisfying for all involved.
Rip all IO games
I remember one of the hosts of the Syntax podcast mentioned that he used to have a website with a .af domain. But once the Taliban took over Afghanistan, they seized the domain name and barred him from using it. Just goes to show how fragile the ownership of ccTLDs can be
Yeah.. ccTLDs are subject to whatever happens politically in a country as well as geopolitics, they are fragile.
I do use a number of domains in the ccTLD of the country of which I am a citizen, but for anything serious I use generic/global TLDs.
Fancy ccTLDs are certainly usefull for marketing purposes, and nothing wrong with using them for that, but never rely on them outside maybe the one of your home country provided it is stable and bound to exist for as long as you need it...
Chagos (officially British Indian Ocean Territory) had no permanent population, all the existing people having been carried off by the British (I guess this is technically ethnic cleansing). So .io was a country code without any people. Pretty risky.
The people of Chagos didn't get their land back by the way, it went to Mauritius, who had a decent legal claim over it. Chagosians aren't really happy about this outcome.
Which is why this .io case is more or less similar to the cases described earlier in the article. Just because the UK is handing it over occupied land does not necessarily mean they are handing it over to the right party or that the descendants of the indigenous people are going to acquiesce.
@@thevivariumforhalfmeasures7698 why this is different is that the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were bang-to-rights real countries, with real people in them, and seats at the UN and everything. BIOT was a territory of another state, with no people, no sovereignty, and no recognition. It was always a big long term risk when it came to TLDs.
@@thevivariumforhalfmeasures7698 there are only about 50 expected to return, so there's not really a choice no matter how annoyed they are, because you can't really have a functional self-governing state made up of 50 people (most of whom are going to be pensioners). It's crap for them, but it's just not practical in any way, realistically, the UK/US divesting means it has to be Mauritius taking over
@@DanielCouper-vf5zhpart of the fact there are so few, is the island most of them come from, no one is allowed to inhabit it "for the next 99 years"
@@t1nytim oh I know, it's horrendous what was done
The real conversation that needs to take place is why two-character domains are country-owned when that is clearly not how the internet operates presently. There needs to be a reckoning between the real-world use and these rules.
It is clearly how virtually all 2 letter TLDs are used. .io, .ai etc are rather the exceptions.
And beyond that, if we start changing the 'rules' because some people refused to actually look into what they are using because they thought it is fancy, that entire internet thing soon will stop working.
So basically incorrect use of TLDs is coming home to roost?
money talks
How is it incorrect use though? On the official website he showed it literally states:
"Anyone, anywhere can register"
There's also nothing in the sales terms and conditions which state you have to use it in a certain way.
@@philadams9254 I’d say it’s more about suitability for purpose, risk assessment, and design of the rules around country code domains than legality
If the owner of the TLD decides that vanity domains are an acceptable use, then by definition it's not misused.
@@philadams9254 it is incorrect because CC-TLDs are Country Code TLDs, if a country goes away, it goes away, if your website is not related to that country, it shouldn't be on a Country Code TLD. Marketing is irrelevant.
Their terms are also irrelevent because they are governed by IANA and IANAs terms apply and exceed their terms.
Maybe we could convince Iowa to secede
omfg
Wouldn't that be .ia
I think this is a good reminder that the digital world is not a separate world. It’s all the same world. We have 1. It’s not some kind of transcendant departure from the material realm with its own endlessly stable laws and systems, it’s a bunch of wires and and committees lol
For now. Then we'll have 2 worlds. Then 3...
.dd was also a domain that seized to exist. It was the TLD of East Germany but was dropped after the reunification. From what I could find it was never really used though, just assigned.
As a Slovenian I find it hilarious we took the yu domain name. Btw yugoslavia broke up into 7 countries not just the 4 making the situation even more messy.
russia has both ru (russia) and su (soviet union), not to mention рф (cyrillic for rf - russian federation)
ended in 2010
I think your skepticism is right. Unlike the examples used, where the TLD's would only ever be used as a ccTLD. TLD's like "fm", "gg", "io", "me", and "tv" have found heavy use outside the ccTLD space, and in the "io" case almost exclusively so. As such I think (hope) the the decision will ultimately be made to convert it to a gTLD, also creating an umbrella of protection for other TLD's that find their way into the common vernacular like "io".
Exactly what I think will happen
The rules says it can't be done. And I think those rules were there for years, so it shouldn't come as a surprise for .io domain owners that this could happen
@@se6369 Rules are meant to evolve with the times and the rules have been broken before (as mentioned in the video) to deal with special situations. I think this will be viewed as one of those special unforeseen situations that may actually result in a rules change. There is value in them changing the rule, as it increases the value of any domain using one of these ccTLD's, and increases confidence in the system overall. Yank away a TLD from millions of sites globally, and you erode the confidence in the system overall. There is an economic impact here as well that the rules simply cannot ignore. There is a lot of money in "io" and a lot of big brands using it, and branded around it. The economic pressure here will be extreme.
ICANN also puts themselves at risk by failing to adapt to the situation, their authority is only by convention, and as users of the internet we can point to an alternate source of authority for naming if we ultimately disagree (same way we got people in countries to bypass censorship walls in the past). If anyone remembers back in the early 2000's we had alternate TLD providers (new-dot-net comes to mind), before ICANN smartened up and expanded the gTLD's in 2010. One simply needed to point at a different set of root DNS servers, and you could resolve any of the new TLD's transparently along side of the currently "accepted" TLD's. This movement was slowly gaining traction until ICANN added to the gTLD's. Imagine for a moment if Google made such a change, and altered their root mirror to point at an alternate authority? This would open up the world to these altTLD's in an instant, as many rely on their public root DNS servers at 8-8-8-8 as a source of DNS authority. All it takes is the right people in the right places to make a change, and the rest of us will be blissfully unaware.
@@se6369 well it seems that YT ate my rather lengthy reply. Not going to retype it all, so here is the tldr of it.
Rules are meant to evolve with the times and there is precedent for breaking the rules in certain situations as mentioned in the video. I think this is a unforeseen situation that may actually result in a rules change before yanking away a TLD form thousands of domains globally. The economic pressure here will be enormous, and the consequences for ICANN could be dire if they do not adapt. ICANN exists by convention only, and if the right people in the right places decided to go around them they could. Back in the early 2000's we had altTLD providers, and that movement was growing eroding ICANN's authority until ICANN smartened up and expanded the gTLD's in 2010. If ICANN does decide to ignore the economic impact, I can see this becoming the wild west again with DNS, and alternate authority providers coming back into play.
Why should countries have their TLDs seized just because a bunch of westerners want to use them? Those countries use these TLDs as a source of income. What you're suggesting is international theft for the benefit of western corporations.
What I learned from this is, we need more countries to get all combinations of 2 letter TLDs.
Guernsey isn't so much of a country, as a big bank with a few roads, and a WHOLE lot of dirty money
Sounds like London, the British empire just became a bank. Just as the Roman empire became a church.
That escalated quickly
US people and geography.
And home to a breed of cattle, but that's neither here or there.
I mean Guernsey isn't a country at all
I don't have much sympathy for companies abusing a random country code to get a "fancy" domain name. It completely breaks the expectation that country codes refer to countries! And of course when a country somehow ceases to exist it doesn't make sense to maintain a domain name referring to that old country. Everyone will know what the new domain is, it's obviously the new country code that the company now serves, assuming everyone uses domain names as intended.
It only becomes a problem when you abuse the country codes for a basically a pun with no actual connection to the country.
(Hard to write comments about domain names without accidentally having the comment be deleted for containing a url)
Claiming that this is "abusing" a ccTLD is more than a tad bit hyperbolic. The internet is a much, much different place than it was when these domains were created in the first place, plus, the idea that somehow the companies/brands which are registering and utilizing the .io ccTLD are abusing the country code for a cool domain name is made even more ridiculous when you consider that the actual parties responsible for the maintenance of the TLD itself had sold off the rights/control over it a few decades ago, similar to how the government of Tuvalu did for the .tv ccTLD, to a private commercial registrar so as to allow them to facilitate registrations and earn income.
@@dieselbaby Okay, maybe "abuse" is too strong and implies too much malice; but using a country code for something completely unrelated to said country, i.e. for a pun or otherwise fancy domain name is definitely "misuse"/"using it incorrectly".
The fact that the maintainers and registrars are making it easy to misuse the country code for such uses doesn't make it a "correct" use of the country codes. But of course these registrars who are deliberately selling a country code as a "generic" TLD despite knowing well it's not are even more to blame for the misuse than the buyers who have been misled by them, especially if it's a random civilian who's bought it. But I would expect a company to do a minimum of research on how domain names actually work before basing their entire branding on a domain name.
@@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug It is only an abuse if the domain owner decides it is abuse.
Why is this a surprise? If the TLD you choose is a ccTLD and there is no more country, there is no more TLD.
Not necessarily. .SU still exists, the Soviet Union does not.
@@Terigena does not _yet_. There is a certain somehow who misses it and tries to recreate it
@@modernkennnern ...but it does not. The existence of extremists doesn't qualify for a ccTLD
@@Terigena that's because a) SU is a code that is reserved indefinitely and b) the Russian government pleaded to keep it. Brits won't care about a random domain that isn't even controlled by the government, and they already has tons of domains (uk, ac, gg, je, im, vg, ky, sb, ms, pn, sh, tc, ai, bm, fk, gi, gs)
@@Terigena because Russia had no TLD of its own for 3 years after USSR collapsed, and nowadays refuses to comply to the request
.io is not owned by the UK government, not sure how they assign ccTLDs by ICANN but they gave it to some random guy in the 90s who has sold it to another company since so doubt the UK gov will get involved since they make no money from it anyway. I think it will go and some private equity firm which owns it will take the loss.
I guess I can be the one to take the controversial stance that decolonization can be prioritized over cute domain names
You don't understand, not having a specific couple of characters at the end of a website is a complete travesty! It's the worst thing that's happened in my life since starbucks didn't bring back my favorite seasonal menu item!
You're not even thinking about the impact on crypto startups man. Do you not have a heart?!
Decolonization??? Smh
@@Kane0123 ha ha
Nothing about the specific history of Chagos, Mauritius, and the UK confirms to the traditional story of colonisation. Standard priors don't apply here.
"an island cluster"... I guess the word archipelago is too hard! Haha
For some reason, this made me think of "pirate linguist is quite superfluous" from Jack Sparrow by SkyMarshell Arts
While the incorrect use of TLDs should be curbed, I feel like the IANA should have some coordination to have processes for phase-outs like with .io. If you have to phase out one because of this kind of issue (or people using a terrible one like .mp4), IANA should at least take back the TLD in and say to owners "you have up to 6 months to migrate your domain, or up to 1 year if your domain's license is longer, to swap out of your license"
An exception should *not* be made for the io domain
Since all two character TLDs are country codes, there should be increased visibility into what those special TLDs are, but the consequences of using those domains is on the web master just like any other domain
Should just require a presence in the country?
@@Kane0123 Yes, the country, which will no longer exist
I support this. There are rules in place, they make sense, they are quite clear (aka not ambigous) which means predictability. So we should strive for them to be respected, so they stay in place. Going against it will make things more ambiguous and, ultimately, complicated, which will not benefit us in the long run.
@@Winnetou17 why should normal people care about the arbitrary rules created when the internet was a completely different place? The times of "webmasters" are long gone. Strictly following silly rules about that 2 letters could only represent a country and country-related things benefits only people on a spectrum who like things nicely sorted and organized, reduces opportunities for business branding, and makes no difference to ordinary people
@@svuvich I said why...
If normal people don't care, that means they won't care the other way around either. If we're honest, normal people don't care that much about domain names anyway. They're not typing them, and in many situations they're not seeing them either. Many people use their phones where apps rule. And apps don't show domain names.
Yeah, it reduces branding opportunities. But it's not like it's terrible without it, like they have no way of expressing themselves. I'm not worried about businesses at all.
link rot’s about to go crazy
Google IO literally means Google British Indian Ocean Territory
Time to break up googles control of the indian ocean
“I’m terrified and you should be too”. Very sensationalist by the one person everyone expects to be over the top lol
just dont fuck with the .dev domain and ill be ight
It's owned by Google and made publicly for devs to use. Unless Google does something, it should be good.
@@andresaliba because Google never kills its things
@@ojvribeiroGoogle Hangouts: “Why do I hear boss music?”
@@andresalibaIIRC it was sold to square space or something like that. I actually transferred my .dev domain to CloudFlare because square space was horrible.
@@ojvribeiro 🤣
Self inflicted wound, honestly.
It’s not bad, just part of the process. We just need to research TLDs better instead of jumping on the hype.
11:00 Yeah random countries, like .us another ccTLD owned by a random country.
Yeah, if only there where a system to know which TLDs are country TLDs! 😅
(For anyone not knowing: 2-letter TLDs are cTLDs.)
.us is the ccTLD for the United States.
@@dieselbaby Yeah exactly.
I am working in the tech-field of medical applications. This is a typical occurrence in this field. Billions if not trillions of dollars are lost in the blink of an eye when you do not respect the regulations. Yes, more than whatever Apple is worth is lost in the blink of an eye. All hail the regulations (which are there for a good reason).
I have to say these honest and authentic ad presentations is something refreshing and do generate interest to these companies.
ccTLD, gTLD... My first thought is, why not have "legacy TLDs" (gTLD)? Once a ccTLD is set to disappear, ownership could transfer to either the new country, or ICANN. I'm sure there's lots of issues with such an approach, but just retiring an entire TLD is also not without problems
And I doubt a new country code (both the 2 and 3 letter ones) will be allocated to a former one or it could confuse things when using old data.
I don't think ICANN would really want to take on a ccTLD, ccTLDs are way less restricted than normal TLDs and it sets a really weird precedent.
@@itskdog Country codes can be reassigned and have been reassigned before. AI, CS, GE, and SK are such examples.
Eventually you'll run out of two letter TLDs for countries then
Couldn’t Mauritius simply keep the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) as a separate territory under its sovereignty, similar to how Britain currently administers it? They could potentially rename it to MIOT or something similar. This seems like a straightforward solution.
yes, well said. Someone with money will likely make that call, and the money does talk. There is no good reason for Mauritius to decline, especially when BIOT has literally no population (meaning no actual time or effort investment, just a name change).
I guess it's obvious what will happen - they have to be seen legally decommissioning it, but they know the ubiquity of it in tech too. Nothing stops them using after the fact.
it should be handed to a Chagoan trust for the Chagoan people.
Correct pronunciation of Mauritius is “more-rish-us”
Correct
"Myrrh-rish-us". "Myrrh" as in the Myrrh and Frankincense they gave to Jesus. "Us" pronounced more like "ess", the same way as the "us" at the end of tetanus.
Currently living there ,the way he pronunce it …😂
@@Jwareness Good shout. Subtle difference but probably more how I would pronounce it too
Smarty-pants
Even if the io TLD is spared, this seems like reason enough for anyone using it to start thinking about moving away from any cctld.
Maybe a new country could be created for the purpose of registering the io abbreviation with ISO and thus maintain continuity of .io with IANA. It would just have to be admitted to the United Nations with a 2/3rds vote.
That's so stupid I can't even ...
Why would 2/3 vote for it though..
It was a meme domain, or more precisely, it was used as one. What did you expect?
Now that Dodo Land has gained The Chaos Islands, perhaps they'll be ready to restart their bioengineering project...
The problem here is that in most organizations i have worked in, the default is that the domains of that org are controlled by the PR units of these orgs. And not a lot of people know about internet governance, at least the PR units.
Given the comment about how much money these TLDs can bring in to small countries, this could have a huge impact on them and people who invested in generic TLDs. If .io goes away, I’d imagine the price for country code domains will fall and the money will shift to holders of other TLDs.
The risk here seems obvious to me. To base your business on a TLD like this without understanding the risks is foolish. Large companies buy them up so bad actors can't use them to fool their customers.
I don’t know as soon as heard Google and Microsoft will be affected I was not that worried. If they want to keep it around I am sure they will find the right people to pay off.
A generic tld can be restricted too ! Most of them are owned by private companies that can impose their conditions as long as it respects their original agreement with the ICANN. Most of them (if not all) are easily accessible tho, you just have to rent them as usual.
One thing that should not be ignored is the fact that a domain is an asset that makes money to the one that holds it. When territories secede or pass hands, there are usually negotiations of how to handle certain assets. If things are left unclear in those negotiation or a debate arises, there is a good chance IANA will just fall back on their rules rather than getting tied up in all of that (with possibly extending a grace period on how long existing domains can remain). What's more, glancing over Wikipedia, it seems that .io already has some controversy on how it has been handled
I would love to see io deleted, just for the hubris of the internet to be brought in check, for adopting a ccTLD for the "aesthetic", rather than it's intended use.
whats the intended use for .moe and .gay then
@@StellaEFZ those are just regular TLDs, not country code TLDs
@@timj11dude same stuff is going on with .tv
@@timj11dude ah my bad, I didnt read the cc part of your comment, sorry
Why should domain names be locked to countries to begin with though, no one is asking that it seems like 🤔
yeah honestly this is good, even if the short term consequences are going to suck. maybe we would all do well to put a little more into what tlds we choose
Aren't the IANA guys smart enought to just keep it? Like instead of disrupting and destroying, change the standard 🤷🏽♂
I feel like a “bailout” along these lines is the most likely outcome
State and Intl bodies don’t have the same flexibility that people or companies do. People working there may have the same idea you do, but can’t implement due to limitations of law or treaty. The only way to change something like this is with either new laws, or sufficient pressure from the right places to ignore the rule.
yes and they most likely will... the tld “su” still exists to this day, and there’s no Soviet Union. Registration of them is still allowed as well, so the author of this article did basically 0 research.
@@gabrielpi314 They could take it over and say no new registrations and let Verisign manage it (who already manages root zone along with, com, net, org... for ICANN). Basically just keep it spinning as is.
The problem with su is they let Russia manage it while just getting a promise of no new registrations and that is it with no way to enforce that restriction.
Finally, if we were going to go by ISO 3166 2 letter country codes but due to the fact it was being used before that standard was written, UK generally uses uk (with a special exception) and not gb (UK controls both, some uk government sites where under gb for a bit but it doesn't accept new registrations and has basically disappeared from use).
@@Kas-tleIt was mentioned the rules changed after that, wasn't it?
I always thought it was stupid for people to use country code domains for purposes other than what they were intended, which was to be specific to things about that country. People who used .io or such rather than a non-country-specific TLD only have themselves to blame.
I think this article should have cited the exact rules the IANA set up. That would have made this a lot more clear on the severity.
It’s pronounced “maw-rish-us”
PS I love how the article is published on a Tongan ccTLD 😆
In Finnland theres a part called Åland. It has the .ax TLD. So if that island can do simmilar to Åland and be a sufficient autonom island in Maritius it may be saved :)
Finishing the video with a "I think it'll be fine" after listing several examples to the contrary is wild. The precedent is already set.
The IO registry successfully branded itself as a great option for tech-adjacent businesses, it was a smart move to generate income. In stark contrast, look at the madness that happened with TK back in the day.
Simply put, the knowledge that country-specific TLDs are a thing should be the main takeaway of all of this. Understand the reasoning before making your brand reliant on something that is not within your control.
The point is, that there may be a point in (future) history, where a country could be founded with a claim for the same ISO-code. Would be crazy, but not impossible.
I learned this in the early 2000s when i tried to register "teh" as a company in the Cook Islands. Nathan Barley got one, it's well plastic. Keep it livid, yeah.
I missed this one on stream! Really shocking to see a domain that is THIS widely used dissapear.
You are all panicking without any reason. You probably don’t know, but there is an active ccTLD of a country that doesn’t exist for the last 34 years - Soviet Union. The domain .SU is still active. The same for .IO. It’s just a domain, Mauritius will just have one more ccTLD.
Mauritius needs to just increase the renewal fee by 10% and cash in. Why the heck not.
It’s wild people didn’t know this. 🤣
they could make a "generic" domain like .i-o and move to that or smtn like that
Brainwave: How about we don't base what TLDs exist on the whims of governments, and we just assign TLDs according to what actual _people_ want to use?
I don't get it. Just open up all letter codes at the top level (1-10 characters). Update DNS server mappings... done. It's a-z how hard can it be?
The main problem is the price, its renewal price is unreasonably high.
"Microsoft, Google, Apple, have all founded the country and will each keep an employee there year round"
This is so stupid, the area will still be known as 'British Indian Ocean' or simply 'Indian Ocean' after the treaty is signed, so therefore the domain should stay, however it makes sense that it wont.
It's 10000% extremely unlikely that the domain continues to exist, if the UK government managed it instead, it would probably cause controversy and the new government is avoiding that as much as possible, so it's much easier to let Mauritius sunset the domain themselves.
I'm confused... Why aren't you hosting your images on your own domain?
Let’s be fair, it was probably a stupid idea for so many of us to use country-specific TLDs for business purposes.
This is a good thing! The use of two letter domains by people not in the country that those two letter domains represent maybe allowed, but I think it's basically fraud.
The best case is that the United Kingdom assumes full ownership and control of the .io TLD.
If you think about it hopefully this turns out to be good news. ICANN can just move the TLD from being India Ocean to being Input Output once these islands are back with Mauritius 🇲🇺
*says they dont require a 4hr ad*
*goes on to do a 4hr ad*
Domains should be decentralized. The current system is just stupid.
hns should be accepted as standard
The problem is the names have to live somewhere. In order for a decentralized dns to work our entire global infrastructure would have to change.
If domains were decentralized it would be so much more inefficient... also it would open up more attacks and domain squatting if you can register millions of domains in a fraction of a second.
Was this Starmers hidden agenda?
A stark reminder that everything in virtual space is volatile and can simply vanish overnight.
Tbh I don't like io domains and try to avoid sites who use them lol
Past that a simple search shows it's not going anywhere lol
The IANA could make an exception to their rules, and let .io become the only two letter gTLD. They'd probably want some sort of agreement with the ISO to avoid them reusing io as a country code though.
IANA should just create an archive list of ccTLDs and add io to it. Have different rules for it and keep serving for old/new domains
Another precent is hk. When the British handed back Hong Kong to China, hk continued, and the regional government there is ultimately responsible for it. Same with Macau (mo) when Portugal handed that back to China.
That would suck. I have a few .io domains that I really like and use for my personal projects.
I'm glad I also went ahead and got the same domain names with the .space TLD.
only lasts until Elon claims he owns space, and then .space will go away, and you'll have to use .elon instead /s
It will be ok. I lived in Mauritius for 8 years. They'll keep it going , they are very switched on about this. They've been in a battle for their .mu domain from the early 2000s so have some history dealing with TLDs
Given that Google started the trend, Google should create a country called Input/Output to save us.
With Britain still in effective control of Diego Garcia in a sort of Hong Kong deal, not sure there's a reason for the territory to go away.
We probably need an Earthican domain, but who would be in charge of managing the funds?
It's just occurred to me that another way you could answer the "how many countries are there"/"what counts as a country" question, is to see if they have their own TLD. Does Taiwan have one? Is that a thing people fight over? It must be, if it got that contentious over .yu
That's not a good way to count countries, for example the Virgin Islands are definitly not a country but they have a ccTLD, or the Antarktis has a ccTLD, but definitly not a country.
Just convert the governmental registrations to a generic one through the normal registrars...
You mean .su is not an abbreviation of sus?
half the internet is about to break. nice
While I am happy for the islands not being owned by the British government, this will definitely be bad for those many websites within the tech space that depend and run their websites with IO domains. While many of them are used by crypto bros, there are a lot of legitimate businesses that are running off of an IO domain such as, well, even some websites owned by Google and other tech giants.
is interesting that in this sense, these territories are "countries"
Catalonia has its own TLD without ever having been a country. Why can't the .io TLD just keep existing?
.cat is for the language and culture. It is a gTLD not a 2 letter ccTLD
Can't we just create a country using that country code and manage the ccTLD?
ISO is the International Organization for Standardization.
I'm super happy with my dev domain. Browsers refuse to connect if the website is not served over https.