228
submitted 1 month ago by Sunny@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 81 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Because .io is the top level country code domain for the British Indian Ocean Territory, and once a country ceases to exist, the top level domain is supposed to be phased out according to the IANA rules and eventually discontinued by the ICANN.
There are no .yu, .dd, .cs, or .tp domains left. The only exception I know is .su (soviet union).

[-] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 month ago

Well they better make another damn exception.

[-] Nougat@fedia.io 35 points 1 month ago

The only reason .su still exists is because Russia said they would decommission it and then never did. ICANN chose not to let that happen again, which explains their choice to decommission the later ones.

[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 36 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

What the fuck is the point of decommissioning them entirely, though? What value does that do anybody? Is there another country waiting in the wings? There are 1500 TLD's already.

The obvious non-dickhead solution would be to transition the mgmt of .io from a ccTLD to a gTLD. "Rules" is not an answer.

[-] FaceDeer@fedia.io 30 points 1 month ago

Yeah, the whole concept of "national" TLDs is proving to be a rather poor one in practice. Very few of them actually make sense in the way they're used.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 month ago

That sounds more like an issue of enforcement than anything. If anyone can register a domain with your country's extension, it's not really your country's extension.

If we handled it properly, those domains would have value.

[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world -1 points 1 month ago

Yes, but when management fails the impact should not be imposed on the subordinates for following the process; it should be entirely on management.

In practice, this would mean creating a more stringent DNS approach to ccTLD's that does not impact existing domains until if/when they choose to adopt it. Ultimately it just shows ICANN's inadequacy &/or incompetence, which I guarantee has more to do with it's management than it's engineers/workers.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Ultimately it just shows ICANN’s inadequacy &/or incompetence,

I’m pretty sure it’s intentional that the owners of the top level domain set the rules for it. Why should ICANN control someone else’s portion of the internet?

This was especially a big deal as the internet expanded from the US to a global presence - you can understand why various countries wouldn’t want US control over their “territory”, wouldn’t cooperate without some form of self-determination

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Exactly, and I say this as a US citizen who benefits from a US-centric system.

[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I'm not talking about ICANN or the US controlling other countries domains. This problem goes way back to net, org, com — basically all "rules" applied since inception were loosey goosey suggestions that depended on nothing more than convention, and were not well thought out.

So deleting .io would really be on-brand, and a continuation of that incompetence.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Not at all. The rules were developed over time as the internet expanded from a handful of us research institutions to the global presence it is today. As other people in this thread mentioned, the present country code top level domain rules were developed from fiascoes like .su and .yu. Now they do have solid rules: they should follow them, regardless of corporate speculation and profiteering

[-] echodot@feddit.uk 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

ccTLDs are pointless anyway. They always end up getting used in unexpected ways and it always causes problems. It doesn't do anyone any real benefit having them exist anyway. For example the US doesn't even use theirs.

The sensible thing to do would be to stop worrying about it and just let it carry on existing.

Even Google uses a ccTLD for that link shortener for YouTube.

[-] 0x0@programming.dev 15 points 1 month ago

Still, too much money on .io to be shutdown.

[-] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Maybe. But it's up to ICANN and their rules, money might not be relevant to them, and with .io, there literally isn't a single person or company that uses it "correctly" as country TLDs are primarily intended to be used by entities connected to that country, and the territory has no permanent residents, unlike with .su.
On the flip side, that might work for the case too as well - maybe ICANN decides to make it a generic TLD, like .com or .org instead as it's not really directly connected to a country?
We shall see.

[-] 0x0@programming.dev 10 points 1 month ago

as country TLDs are primarily intended to be used by entities connected to that country

Primarily, sure, but quite a few of them get abused, check the notes column. A glaring one these days is .ai, as are youtu.be and, of course, goatse.cx.

[-] billiam0202@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago

Tuvalu make around $10 million a year- about one-sixth of their gdp- from licensing .tv.

[-] jj4211@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

money might not be relevant to them

Hilarious.

[-] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Why would how much money Mauritius might or might not make be any relevance to ICANN, a US non-profit?

[-] jj4211@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Because money means influence. Whether it's the nation to benefit or the myriad of US tech companies that want it to stay, or other international interests, it's way too much potential influence and I suspect cannot be ignored for some strict adherence to rules that no one really would care to defend.

[-] tja@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 month ago

Well, they should have chosen a gTld

[-] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 5 points 1 month ago

.io is just too big to fail.

[-] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 15 points 1 month ago

There's plenty of non country domains too. Just make it into some acronym or have it mean I/O or whatever.

[-] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 34 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

There are sure, but none are two letters because those are restricted to country codes. Specifically the ISO 3166-1 alpha 2

[-] Lazycog@sopuli.xyz 18 points 1 month ago

IIRC two letter domains are reserved for country specific domains, the non-country domains start with three letters.

[-] toynbee@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

For anyone who is not familiar, your day would surely be improved by watching the Map Men video on this topic.

[-] Dasnap@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

"They have to get rid of it unless they decide not to."

I assume it's just gonna be inherited by Mauritius.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

Then it's going to be an autonomous territory (like e.g. the Faroer) called the Mauritian Indian Ocean Territory. Countries don't need to be sovereign to exist and have ISO codes. If Mauritius wants to they can do it even if the IANA insists on the letter of their rules.

this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
228 points (97.5% liked)

Technology

59670 readers
1764 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS