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4mo ago

Will the .io domain cease to exist? | Tuta

tuta.com Will the .io domain cease to exist? | Tuta

Great Britain is returning Chagos Islands to Mauritius. How will this affect the .io domain?

Will the .io domain cease to exist? | Tuta

67 comments

- while funny, it would cause me so many headaches either directly or indirectly that is completely cancels out
  
  It would cause me a large number of professional headaches but I still think it’ll be funnier than that.
- One of our spinoff companies wants to act so badly like a start up and be edgy they moved everything to a .io domain. This would be icing on the cake for how cowboy they manage everything.

Yes, there is laws, IANA says that ideally in 3-5 years all the .io will be gone, like the .yu ones, they do not exist anymore.
- The .su domain is still active and the Soviet Union does not exist for more than 30 years now.
  
  yes because at the time they didn't know what to do, and gave .su to the .ru guys. For .yu it was also a little bit messy with multiple new countries wanting to control it. This is when IANA made laws to properly handle end of ccTLD like this, .yu does not exist anymore, it will be the same for .io
  https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/su.html
  https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/yu.html
- I doubt it. The cited precedent of .yu didn't have a ton of big international commercial interest, but .io does.
  They will absolutely find a rationale to change what io means when ISO retires io. The "laws" will be tweaked, ignored, or loopholed around.
  
  They're not laws anyway. They are just things that ICANN say. It's very easy to change the rules it's not like they have to be consulted on or anything

Jesus Christ this will be a major pain in the ass if it goes through... I'm really not in the mood of having to reconfigure all my self hosted services to a new domain.
- Do it anyway. Having anything behind a TLD that is tied to the political control of a tiny geographic area is insanely careless
  
  Maybe, but I had no idea this was tied to a country. I thought it was a novelty tld, like xyz and art. You know, like input/output so io.

Considering my instance has .io domain, I hope not

I'm surprised it's not mentioned in the article, but also complicating this situation is the Chagos refugees seeking to take control of the TLD and/or receive reparations from the current registrar.

Nooo, what will become of my beloved fedia.io?

RIP my @tuta.io email address lmao

RIP itch.io

No.
Why would Mauritius turn down a source of revenue?
- 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).
  
  Well they better make another damn exception.
  
  Still, too much money on .io to be shutdown.
  
  There's plenty of non country domains too. Just make it into some acronym or have it mean I/O or whatever.
  
  For anyone who is not familiar, your day would surely be improved by watching the Map Men video on this topic.
  
  "They have to get rid of it unless they decide not to."
  I assume it's just gonna be inherited by Mauritius.
  
  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.

Really not looking forward to the idea of github.io links all becoming dead. So many repos with documentation at a github.io URL, with those links spread all across plaintext files and Stack Overflow and forums

fight for chagossian self-rule so that we can keep having .io addresses

Why not just let people have whatever suffix they want?
- They do, that’s why this is an issue in the first place. The purpose of ccTLDs is to host domains associated with a particular country. If the country stops existing, there’s no reason to use that country’s ccTLD. The problem is they let anyone register domains under this ccTLD even if they have no association with that country, hence the situation we’re in.
  
  Actually I believe you had to be a British national to register. Well at least you're supposed to be a British national I'm not sure how much they checked.
- Some amount of organization is a good thing for many reasons. Think of an analogy to roads where basic traffic rules allow everyone the freedom to travel wherever and however but subject to the rules of locales. Feel free to pick your own domain within any generally recognized top level domain, according to the rules established by that tld.
  In particular, two character top level domains are reserved for ownership by specific countries. They get to say who can have a presence there, under what standards, and they deserve any profit made from that. This was a way of giving everyone a voice, to expand it beyond the us, to give many interests their own home

TLDR: no
Interesting to see how no one bothered to read the article.
- Real TL;DR: Maybe.
  History tells us YES. Money tells us NO.
- The article said companies profit from it, so their prediction is no. It’s just an opinion, and not supported by any legal or diplomatic action in the article.
  My opinion is it should cease to exist. Two letter domains are country codes and IANA policy is it should match a list maintained by the UN. IANA has no business deciding for itself and has said it doesn’t want to, and they’re opening themselves to all sorts of liability and complications should they stray from that. If the UN no longer says its a valid country, it needs to no longer be a country code domain, and that’s too bad for any companies speculating on its future
- I did read the article. The answer is inconclusive not an definitive no.
  According to all the rules it should stop existing, taking common sense into account it'll carry on. Thing is it remains to be seen where the common sense will be taken into account. Common sense isn't all that common.

Good.

67 comments