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Ask HN: What happens to ".io" TLD after UK gives back the Chagos Islands?

by MrsPeaches on 10/3/24, 11:18 AM with 205 comments

UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98ynejg4l5o

  • by dang on 10/3/24, 6:39 PM

    Related ongoing thread:

    UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41729325 - Oct 2024 (33 comments)

  • by amiga386 on 10/3/24, 12:32 PM

    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.

  • by gnfargbl on 10/3/24, 1:23 PM

    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.

  • by lolinder on 10/3/24, 12:41 PM

    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

    [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.yu

    [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41730559

  • by aimazon on 10/3/24, 12:25 PM

    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.

  • by sairamkunala on 10/3/24, 2:13 PM

    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...

  • by randompeach on 10/3/24, 11:35 AM

    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.

  • by theandrewbailey on 10/3/24, 2:25 PM

    This is a risk of using a ccTLD (of a country in which you don't reside) in your cute domain.

  • by ed_blackburn on 10/3/24, 2:30 PM

    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.

  • by sureIy on 10/3/24, 12:43 PM

    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.

  • by paxys on 10/3/24, 1:18 PM

    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.

  • by iambateman on 10/3/24, 1:01 PM

    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.

  • by cryptoboy2283 on 10/3/24, 12:15 PM

    > 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

  • by gpvos on 10/3/24, 1:13 PM

    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.

  • by MrsPeaches on 10/3/24, 11:18 AM

  • by chx on 10/3/24, 2:18 PM

    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.

    https://www.drawio.com/blog/move-diagrams-net

  • by NikkiA on 10/3/24, 3:51 PM

    The UK will be retaining a 99 year lease on Diego Garcia, so I imagine .io can still be referring to that for another hundred years or so; in a similar way to how .hk still exists, and existed at all.

  • by saaaaaam on 10/3/24, 8:23 PM

    I’m accidentally cross posting this because I left this thread to find the link then searched on HN and posted it to the wrong one.

    Worth reading Kevin Murphy’s piece here:

    https://domainincite.com/30395-future-of-io-domains-uncertai...

  • by drpossum on 10/3/24, 1:00 PM

    Is there anything that can be done to petition ICANN or some other authority to help preserve this?

  • by bubblesnort on 10/3/24, 12:05 PM

    Why not post this as a URL?

  • by N19PEDL2 on 10/5/24, 8:04 PM

    Perhaps Mauritius could just create the second-level domain .io.mu and move all .io websites there.

  • by dboreham on 10/3/24, 3:55 PM

    Without reading the article: do not ever depend on a dodgy ccTLD for your brand recognition or other important thing.

  • by craigmj on 10/3/24, 6:00 PM

    Like the Elgin Marbles, the UK won't return the lot.

  • by digitalsurgeonz on 10/3/24, 2:18 PM

    good riddance.

  • by hermannj314 on 10/3/24, 1:10 PM

    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.

  • by gjvc on 10/3/24, 12:08 PM

    nothing