Comment by rafram
7 months ago
The British Indian Ocean Territory is probably better known in the tech world for its top-level domain: .io.
7 months ago
The British Indian Ocean Territory is probably better known in the tech world for its top-level domain: .io.
Ok now THAT is interesting. I always thought it was a tech-focused domain, for input/output. :)
The two-letter ones are all countries/regions/territories. See also .su for a blast (thankfully not literal) from the past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su
Which is owned by a hedge fund, and thankfully not part of this deal (so it's not at risk!)
TLD "owners" own TLDs in much the same way that we own domains, and it's very possible that ICANN phases out the .io domain when the British Indian Ocean Territory ceases to exist. From what we gathered in the other thread it somewhat depends on what ISO decides to do with its codes.
At a minimum I expect that control over the .io domain will go to Mauritius and they'll be able to reassign it as desired (since they never contracted with the hedge fund). But the typical path for a code when its country goes defunct is to get phased out.
The more I think about it, the more I agree that this is the likely outcome.
IO has been in the ISO standard forever, so there's plenty of historical precedent (like UK). Furthermore, it continues to be descriptive of a specific part of the world (like SU). The easy move here is for the ISO committee to mark IO as exceptionally reserved, for ICANN to declare that this of course makes it a special historical case which sets no precedent, and for everything to continue mostly as usual.
This assumes, of course, that ICANN aren't looking to make some kind of example/statement about misuse of ccTLDs. If they are, things may be different.
It being owned by a hedge fund doesn't change the fact that ICAAN policies will retire the ccTLD.
Whether they choose to NOT APPLY those policies is a different matter that, again, isn't changed by who owns it but instead by use.
What are some new countries we can create so we end up with a cool TLD?
There’s gotta be someone willing to fund this.
.js would be quite a popular one.
It might well be at risk.
Extensive discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41729526
TL;DR: ICANN policy forces deletion if CC disappears from the ISO list of countries, with one famous exception (.su); but Mauritius could cut a Tuvalu-style deal to maintain it.