Nothing, because .io was operated by some wheeler-dealer without the authority of the UK. Apparently he just dumped money into the bank accounts of the various overseas territories he was selling the domain names for and they were OK with it?
He's since sold it on and now a hedge fund owns it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.io
Officially, the British Indian Ocean Territories will cease to exist, therefore so would the ISO 2-letter country code. However, ccTLDs have outlasted countries before, notably ".su" for the no longer existing USSR. I suspect that IANA would prioritise not breaking millions of domain names over trying to police ccTLDs.
Google's view on the matter is that .io is already effectively a gTLD rather than a ccTLD, like with .nu, .to, .tv, as most of the registrants run websites with a global audience or at least an audience other than the island nations whose ccTLDs they are.
As far as I can find .su is the exception in surviving, not the rule, and who operated the ccTLD is irrelevant to the question of whether ICANN decides to allow it to live on.
It does seem likely that ICANN won't kill off all existing registrations, but this is supposition, not an answer. If we look only at what they've done historically to ccTLDs the most likely outcome is that new registrations become locked and ICANN attempts to phase the .io TLD out.
They may break that trend now given how much they've already polluted the TLD space, but they may not, and I think your comment is a bit too optimistic. People with .io domains should absolutely be paying close attention here.
Edit: gnfargbl found the actual written policy [0].
I can't be the only person who read this and was curious about what other ccTLDs have existed and have since been removed, so here's the list of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain#...
There was also a .um for US minor outlying islands, removed in 2008.
That list doesn't seems complete, ".an" at least isn't in there [1]
That's not entirely true. .su is an exceptional reservation but it's not the only one with a tld. For instance ".uk" exists and ".ac" exists.
It's absolutely possible that someone will asking for an exceptional reservation for IO at ISO and it can be kept alive forever.
> It's absolutely possible that someone will asking for an exceptional reservation for IO at ISO and it can be kept alive forever.
I agree it's possible, I disagree with OP that it's a foregone conclusion.
At this point if I were the owner of a .io domain I would treat that as the unlikely best case scenario and start looking at what domain I'd fall back to if ICANN sticks to their rules.
Perhaps naive question: why can't they simply convert it from a ccTLD to a gTLD?
Two-letter domains are defined to be ccTLDs—if it's two letters, it's a country code domain. Breaking that rule would risk leaving a future ISO-standardized country unable to claim its domain because its code was already assigned to a tech startup gTLD.
As someone with an io domain, I really appreciate this post. I've had general fears that political decisions would be made that would make trouble for me on top of the standard business decisions to take as much as they can from me.
Now it seems likely I will only have to worry about the hedge funds!
Won't the hedge fund have to acquiesce to the ICANN if it demands that .Io be shut down? Afaik, ICANN only allows two letter domains for countries.
Alternatively ICANN might (should imo) transfer the TLD registrar to Mauritius.
That's a reassuring response from a reassuring username.
> I suspect that IANA would prioritise not breaking millions of domain names over trying to police ccTLDs.
I'm surprised this wouldn't be the default behavior for existing owners? Kinda making me re-think buying an IO domain for my personal stuff. Are gTLDs the safest option?
You should always be aware of political risks when buying a ccTLD. There's precedent that these have caused serious issues for domain holders, one notable example
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/12/24071036/queer-af-mastodo...
Outages and poor management are one possibility. Other is the fact that you have to trust the country running the ccTLD with DNSSEC keys. This might rule out things like using TLSA/DANE or SSHFP records.
I think more relevantly than DNSSEC, couldn't they issue TLS certificates using DNS-01 validation? You have to trust your DNS registry.
The gTLDs are also subject to the whims of a foreign country (usually the USA). The safest option is probably your own country's ccTLD, since any dispute would go solely through your own country's laws and courts (to which you're already subjected, by virtue of living there).
A hedge fund operates the .io domain, they don't AFAIK own it without restriction. As a ccTLD, what happens if Mauritius tells ICANN "nope, not theirs, ours now, it's an asset as part of the transfer of sovereignty". In fact, in the link you provide, it looks like people involved have already starting a repatriation effort.
Of course, in the end, it'll probably end up with no end-user impact because someone (the existing operator or a new one) will negotiate a deal ($$$) with Mauritius that will provide continuity of operations and (hopefully) be more beneficial to the people of Chagos.
I still miss .oz.
ICANN actually has a relevant written policy at https://www.iana.org/help/cctld-retirement.
The short answer is that -- if ICANN follows the policy -- then following the removal of IO from ISO-3166-2, the ccTLD has five years to initiate an orderly shutdown.
The ccTLD manager may request that this be extended to a maximum of ten years, but to do so they need to have reasons beyond a general desire to retain the existing ccTLD.
Great info!
Hope ICANN (a corrupt organization) doesn't "change its mind" about this at the last moment, due to some "lobbying" involved. We'll see!
Thank you for digging into this and getting an actual answer!
You're welcome. I think people here are often surprised that the internet registries actually spend time thinking about this stuff, and developing policy for it. But they do, and the results are easily accessible -- the link I provided was the top search engine hit for "icann cctld retirement policy".
From the policy document:
"ccTLD eligibility is determined by the associated country or territory being assigned in the ISO 3166-1 standard."
So how does a country code get removed from the ISO 3166-1 list? A cursory web search wasn't very revealing.
That's a very good question. I don't know; does any other HN'er?
The most information I can find is that the standard is maintained by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency [1]. Additions appear to be mostly at the direction of the United Nations [2], but I couldn't find a clear procedure as to how a country code is removed. I'm also unclear on who makes the decision to mark codes as exceptionally reserved.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166#ISO_3166_Maintenance_...
Does this mean that all .io domains will cease to exist?
.su still exists, so there's precedent for keeping a "legacy" ccTLD of a non-existing entity.
ICANN's position is that their policy is triggered by changes to ISO-3166. The code SU has not been removed from ISO-3166-2; instead it is "exceptionally reserved" (as is the code UK).
If the standards committee takes the same approach with IO, then it's possible that gives ICANN a route not to apply this policy. However, if IO is deleted completely, then my reading is the policy would apply.
The .su ccTLD survived the collapse of the Soviet Union [0], with Russia maintaining it. It sounds like ICANN has tried to get rid of it but had too much opposition.
On the other hand, .yu expired after being managed by Serbia for a few years [1].
If I had to guess I'd say .io will likely follow .su, not .yu, because there's enough lobbying power behind the TLD to at least keep resolving the existing domains. But from what I can see the default course for a ccTLD is to get phased out when its corresponding country disappears.
Edit: gnfargbl found the actual written policy [3].
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su
.su hopefully dies in the future. It is often used for cybercrime, neo-nazi websites and the russian controlled puppet government of certain russian controlled Ukrainian territories.
Hey now, it's also popular for some kinds of piracy, it's not all hate crimes! Plus, I think there are a few pun-oriented domain names that use .su?
TIL that the USSR had its own TLD. As a child, I always thought .su domains were specifically for warez uses.
The GDR (East Germany) also had its own TLD, .dd (for Deutsche Demokratische Republik), but it was never operated in the global DNS and there were only like two registrations.
It's actually kinda crazy that it has been kept. I personally think resolvers should not resolve that zone at all.
The crazy thing is that there's a list of actually agreed-upon root name servers and they maintain a uniform namespace for the internet.
I suspect the above statement isn't actually a true statement across the world, but at least for today the list of roots isn't generically ideological in the same way a broad set of "obvious truths" is now ideological.
Wait till you learn how russia kept the seat of ussr on the UN Security Council.
The .io registry is operated by Identity Digital which is a consolidation of a bunch of different registries from the last decade[1]. Identity Digital own (and sometimes just operate) many different TLDs and ccTLDs: most likely, the registrar will retain the right to operate the ccTLD and start paying license fees for each .io to Mauritius. The .tv ccTLD is the most famous example of this, as something like 15% of Tuvalu's GDP is from licensing of the .tv ccTLD.
[1] ICB acquired by Afilias, Afilias acquired by Donuts, Donuts rebranded to Identity Digital.
The ccTLD for Mauritius is .mu. The e British Indian Ocean territories stop existing once the UK releases its claims to the territories so there goes the country code of "io"
The country codes used for ccTLDs are arbitrary, I thought: they're roughly consistent with ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes but not exactly. Are there precedents to suggest a country can only have one ccTLD?
No, there's lots of counterexamples that are typically designed around subregions or territories (I understand there are nuances here, but this sets the general spirit of when this happens). The UK has .uk and .gb, US has .us and had .um , Austrailia has .au, .cx (Christmas Island), .cc (Cocos/Keeling Islands)
Had to look .gb up!
With the demise of X.400 e-mail and IANA's general aim of one TLD per country, use of .gb declined; the domain remains in existence, but it is not currently open to new domain registrations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.gb
NB I was curious as to whether .gb would be strict and exclude NI - who get to use .ie if they want...
Well, my employers have a Mauritian domain. I shall have to volunteer to scope out the Mauritian tech scene, which, to be fair, I've heard positive things about before. So now I will have to do my research justice and attend in person.
This is an excellent plan and will doubtless pay long-term dividends for your employer who would be wise to fully fund your research. However do be aware that the μTech scene is largely a closed shop, and you shouldn't expect to make serious connections on your first visit. It's likely that you'll need to be there for at least a week every six months, perhaps for two or three years.
I think it warrants establishing a permanent base of operations, running continuous training sessions for the benefit of the whole company. Obviously I'm talking about on-site training, which is much more beneficial than remote courses.
The .io TLD will disappear, but given its huge use I expect ICANN to allow an especially long transition period.
Since it's two letters long, it cannot be retained as a generic TLD, as it's in the country TLD namespace and might be reused as such for a different country in the (very far) future. With only 26*26 = 676 possibilities and currently around 200 countries you just can't keep old codes around without an extremely good reason.
This is a risk of using a ccTLD (of a country in which you don't reside) in your cute domain.
Do people really think ICANN will make a large number of popular startups/websites/apps unusable overnight based on a technicality? That's not how the world works. .io has a globally recognized registrar and they will continue doing business as they do today.
I don't think they'd do it overnight, but I can absolutely see them locking future registrations and setting an expiration date.
They might get enough complaints that they have to keep extending that date indefinitely. And they might not choose to do it at all in this case. But they've been very clear over the years what ccTLDs are supposed to be for, and their first instinct will be to preserve the integrity of the naming system as designed, not to preserve startups who bet on them ignoring their own rules.
Lots of people lost their domains when .tk (and the many other free domains) died and got reborn.
There's a list of ccTLDs that died. .yu expired in 2010. .zr moved mostly to .cd in 2001.
Perhaps .io will not disappear immediately, but it can definitely fall under new management, possibly with double or triple the already high fees for good measure, or registrations will be restricted to the people of Mauritius.
A TLD will not keep existing just because people use it, especially a TLD belonging to a specific government such as .io or .ai.
Do people really think ICANN will make a large number of popular startups/websites/apps unusable overnight based on a technicality? That's not how the world works.
That's precisely how the world works. When you build your business on another business, these things happen. And especially on the internet.
Anyone who's been on the internet for more than a decade or so will have seen that random business-changing tectonic shifts happen all the time.
If you've always grown up in the current era of "stable" and ubiquitous internet, it may seem like it's always been there and always will be. It hasn't. It won't.
Crimes against humanity, colonialism, recognition of territorial integrity are not a "technicality".
The British Indian Ocean Territory was always a walking example of all of the above. It was created by the UK, illegally, to keep a strategic military base instead of liberating it with the rest of the previous colony, Mauritius. It was never OK, and it was never OK to use .io. If I had to make an analogy with the real world, it would be like paying to sleep in a house that you knew was stolen from its actual and rightful owner who is now living under a bridge. You are strictly morally in the wrong.
BIOT will longer exist, so logically .io shouldn't either. None of that is a "technicality".
It could well morph into "MIOT", maintaining the CC for the benefit of Mauritian citizens. After all, western interests have already extracted benefits from their land for decades, it would be only just that they get to keep some of those benefits forever. Indians didn't demolish all buildings and railroads built for British benefit, they just repurposed for their own; the same should probably happen here.
How can you possibly get so worked up about a history you clearly know nothing about?
Feel free to point out anything I got wrong.
Let’s start my comment new /o\
My guess is that noting will happen for now. It’s mostly a decision that ICANN working groups have to figure out. But given the current size of the .io zone and that we already have a non existing cctld (.su for Soviet Unite), I’m pretty confident it will exist in the mid-term future.
.su is administered by the Russian national registry, because Russia is de facto the Soviet Union’s successor state. In this case, though, would .io stay with the UK or come under Mauritian control? It’s not clear.
Like the other remnants of the British Empire, the British Indian Ocean Territory was never a part of the UK. It was just land that we (the UK) expropriated from Mauritius at independence. A just solution would be for Mauritius, as the (now) actual successor state, to control dot-io.
IMO what will probably happen is that ICANN "promotes" the zone to being yet another top-level non-country code domain like .biz or .horse etc. Which is effectively what it is now.
Edit to add:
I don't think the .su precedent is applicable here. The Soviet Union was an internationally recognised state with a population, military, Montevideo Convention duties, seat at the UN, etc. The BIOT was and is nothing like that.
This isn't quite true for Ascension or the Falkland Islands, they were both uninhabited when discovered and they're not part of any existing country
I'm not sure of the point you're making.
Sure, there's a lot of evidence that they were "terra nullius" before being claimed for the British empire. But the Chagos archipelago was inhabited utill its population was compulsorily expelled in the mid twentieth century.
I was surprised to discover that Ascension even has a ccTLD. I guess I assumed that the population was wholly military.
> I was surprised to discover that Ascension even has a ccTLD
That's because it was created by the same guy who created .io and .sh - British DNS "pioneer" Paul Kane, who clearly had a passion for finding remaining corners of the British Empire that could "claim" a bit of internet land (for his own profit).
Turning dot-io into a gTLD is certainly seems like the best course of action, but I think it's far from likely that ICANN will do that considering that there are no other two-letter gTLDs.
Why would the length of the domain name matter?
There are not that many two letter codes (a comment said 26*26= 676) and they are reserved for country codes. Global tlds are three letters and up (eg com org etc)
By policy, 2-letter TLDs are reserved for ccTLDs, matching ISO country codes.
because there are fewer combinations of two-letter codes. This is also why they are reserved to actual countries.
> In this case, though, would .io stay with the UK or come under Mauritian control? It’s not clear.
Before the retirement of .yu, Slovenia wanted to hold on to it, but it was not the successor state of Yugoslavia so they had to relinquish control and pass it to Serbia. So going by that logic, it would not stay in the UK (for long).
British Indian Ocean Territory isn’t a state, it’s just a territory with a military base on it, so there is no successor state.
It’s like if Guantanamo Bay had its own ccTLD.
The land will go to Mauritius, the legal entity of British Indian Ocean Territory will cease to exist (presumably).
> The land will go to Mauritius
Mauritius could decide to incorporate it as "Mauritius Indian Ocean Territory", hence maintaining the CC. I expect .io owners will likely suggest something like that, while showing them how much money they could get from a 10-15% deal similar to what Tuvalu has for .tv. Nobody likes to burn money.
I recognize this, but that’s the closest equivalent.
ccTLDs other than .su have been retired when the country they represented ceased to exist or got renamed. .zr, .tp, .cs (twice?) according to [0]
I agree with you though, there doesn't seem to be a strong rule for this kind of thing and all interested parties would likely prefer for .io to continue to exist, so it will continue to exist, probably under Mauritius's ownership.
[0] https://snapshot.internetx.com/en/these-tlds-do-not-exist-an...
The fact that there is an answer other than “every TLD will definitely exist until the death of the internet itself” is wild to me.
The "internet" has died several times already.
I doubt I could send email to anyone on bitnet or via a UUCP bang path, for example.
This iteration of the internet is pretty big; it may not die (where you live) but it will likely continue fragmenting into a loosely coupled set of affiliated networks with semi-realtime gateways between them (see also UUCP / bitnet).
> This iteration of the internet is pretty big; it may not die (where you live) but it will likely continue fragmenting into a loosely coupled set of affiliated networks [...]
Isn't the Internet already a "loosely coupled set of affiliated networks", with each AS being a separate network?
Yes -- to some degree. And "AS" could mean "BGP AS" or it could mean "country or alliance of countries" -- the internet as seen in the west vs iran are likely very different things.
Maybe skynet uses one set of roots and thenet uses a different set of roots and freenet has taken the IPs of the roots and sends you to their dns heirarchy and they also mandate that you have their set of CAs.
But as of right now people don't carry different phones to communicate on different internets (though they do have different chat / voice communication applications / networks).
UUCP / bitnet were (are?) store-and-forward gateway mechanisms. "If you want to send email to that google address you have to send it as friend@gmail.com@@freenet_audit and it'll be forwarded if the filters approve."
My point is that there have been a variety of different internets in the past; this one got the name "the internet" but there's no reason it won't fragment (more) into a morass semi-incompatible fragments.
I recall there was an outage 6 years ago. And many companies migrated to dot com over night.
https://hackernoon.com/stop-using-io-domain-names-for-produc...
> The US-UK base will remain on Diego Garcia – a key factor enabling the deal to go forward at a time of growing geopolitical rivalries in the region between Western countries, India, and China.
So nothing really changes lol. Just a couple of paperwork remarks
I think this will depend on the treaty.
If Diego Garcia remains as UK-sovereign land, then since different laws (etc) apply it's likely ISO would keep the IO code for it.
If Mauritius keeps the islands they gain with a different status (tax, immigration and so on) compared to the rest of Mauritius, then a code might be needed for that — but Mauritius probably won't be keen on "IO".
If the whole lot becomes 'ordinary Mauritius' then the code is no longer needed and will be removed.
> So nothing really changes lol
A crime against humanity begins to get fixed. Chagosians will finally be allowed to go back to their homes. Mauritius will get paid a rent for the lease of the Diego Garcia base from the US.
Also, Mauritius is a signatory of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and thus no nuclear weapons are allowed within its territory. TBD if there will be a special agreement allowing special sovereignty for the US/UK, which might allow the US to station nuclear weapons there (which it probably currently does).
So there's definitely change. The UK and US finally accepted their crime, which is extremely rare. Genuinely, are there other examples of them suffering consequences (even if their consequences are a return to the status quo, ish), for other of their violations of international law and/or crimes against humanity? None come to mind.
> might allow the US to station nuclear weapons there (which it probably currently does)
It's a bit more than probable - being one of the very few places in the world where nuclear submarines can dock. It's also extremely unlikely to change; even if no specific verbiage is in the treaty, US/UK will likely continue to do as they please; Mauritius will simply look the other way in exchange for money and protection. Realpolitik is a thing.
Who would Mauritius need protection from?
Money will probably be the only thing to convince them.
Protection is not just about military matters - it's about relationships. Mauritius will likely want to push other stuff at the UN level, bid for money from international bodies, etc etc... US help in those matters will be valuable.
Per TFA, Mauritius will be able to resettle the other islands, so this isn't just a paperwork change.
Mauritius will get 'financial support' for 'leasing' the military base and resettlement can happen on the other islands
There's no way the US would ever give up Diego Garcia without an actual fight, it's way too useful
Diego Garcia isn't the only island in the territory.
Link to BBC article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98ynejg4l5o
In an ideal world, orphan TLDs should be kept alive until a new country with that code is born. New registrations should be closed though.
Is there anything that can be done to petition ICANN or some other authority to help preserve this?
draw.io has moved from the .io domain in 2020 . Their arguments were precise and persuasive. After that I do not know why would anyone stay on there.
good riddance.
Why not post this as a URL?
I did, but none of the articles about this news that are currently available mention the .io issue.
The article says nothing about .Io, it's mostly about Diego Garcia.
I feel like some of you are going to run for politics in a few decades and owning a .io domain with no residence or operation in that part of the world, while technically not wrong at the time, will be the seen with the same disdain as blackface, cultural appropriation, or wearing a Nazi uniform to a Halloween party.
It seems in poor taste to use your privileges to perform digital colonization, revise the intention that .IO was never about Indian Ocean territory, and justify it all simply because it was a convenient way at the time for you to get attention and make money.
"That part of the world" - christ mate its just a military base
The fact that, as you say, "it's just a military base" is the consequence of the forced eviction of the local population (around 1,500 people) in 1968 by the US and the UK.
And blackface is just a costume. I think there's some necessary context to understand GP's comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Chagossians
I think you don’t realize how bad this sounds. Like, have you wondered why it’s “just a military base”?
in a few decades, you people will view five thousand other things with the same disdain.
no one outside your isolated little echo chambers gives a shit though.
"What do you mean, 'you people' ? "
nothing
That is not possible. However it's possible that "not much" will happen, but the .io domain would have to move to the control of another country with the current rules in place. For historic precedent on this you can look at the .yu domain which was forcefully transferred to Serbia (more precisely FR Yugoslavia) when Slovenia did not want to give it up.
I don't think it's very likely that it will be retired given the state of .su.