
Question mark hangs over trendy tech startup domains - shioyama
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/27/io_domains_uk_un/
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robalfonso
This is not the crisis it's being portrayed as. Up until a year or two ago.
.io was run directly by the ICB. It had issues as it's not straight forward
managing root level dns and the other related tasks of a registry.

Since then a company called Afilias is running .io (they also run .org, .info
among many others). Whoever maintains governance of the .io tld is separate
from the actual infrastructure running .io. As long as the owners of .io want
to keep cashing the checks then nothing will change as the whole operation is
outsourced. This is similar to the island of tuvalu outsourcing all of .tv to
verisign (they are the .com registry)

Source: I work in the domain industry

~~~
dmitrygr
I think the point is that if given to Mauritius, it will no longer be an
independent territory and thus will no longer warrant a ccTLD.

On the other hand, .su is still going strong

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bhouston
The .io domain name is both expensive and somewhat unreliable. For example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15293578](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15293578)

We have used it for many years at [https://clara.io](https://clara.io), but we
are moving away from it back to .com for all new services.

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senorjazz
10, probably more like 15 years ago, someone told me "if the .com is
available, get the .com - always the .com. If it isn't available, get a
different .com"

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sfoley
That’s pretty much my policy. It _baffles_ me that .io ever took off: 6x the
cost, significantly reliable, and probably less trustworthy to the average
user.

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ravenstine
Cost and reliability notwithstanding, I don't think most businesses who own
.io domain names are selling to the average customer.

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tzs
> This week, the UN's general assembly voted overwhelmingly 116-6 to condemn
> the UK's occupation of the Chagos Islands. The non-binding resolution
> endorsed a decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in February
> that said the UK continued claim was illegal and the islands should be
> returned to the former British territory of Mauritius

The UK is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and has veto power on
all substantive matters taken up by the Council.

Doesn't that mean that they can pretty much ignore anything the General
Assembly or most other international bodies tell them to do, just like the
United States, Russia, and China do, because actually enforcing anything
usually involves something that ends up requiring some kind of action that
will require Security Council approval?

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PatrolX
The UK paid Mauritius £3m for the islands. Mauritius was happy with the deal.

How is there anything illegal about it?

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untog
Legality isn't the issue here, it's morality.

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sammorrowdrums
That said I think there is some evidence of potentially criminal activity in
the treatment of those living on the islands. John Pilger famously made a
documentary about it.

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villgax
.ai is run manually by a hard working bloke in Anguila, ironic.

~~~
JasonFruit
I am missing the irony here. Help?

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jkaplowitz
The domain that often represents artificial intelligence is run very manually
by one human.

~~~
JasonFruit
Apparently I have none, artificial or otherwise. Thanks!

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cryptos
I've always found the .io domain somewhat laughable for tech companies. Maybe
its popularity was fueld by Google's I/O conference.

But except of legal affairs the climate crisis is the next reason not to rely
on this domain. If the humanity continues its course the ".io island" will
soon be under water.

~~~
rchaud
To me, it always seemed like a semi-jokey domain in the way solo developers
used to have "Made with [heart/coffee emoji] in San Francisco" on the footer
of their personal websites.

~~~
gowld
Solo developers? Don't big companies like AirBnB do that?

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mprev
Is there a precedent that points towards a possible outcome for .io? Has there
been a similar case of a country ceasing to exist with an impact on its gtld?

~~~
bhouston
Soviet Union. su:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su)

Czechoslovakia. cs:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cs)

Yugoslavia. yu:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.yu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.yu)

~~~
Someone
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-
level_domain#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-
level_domain#Historical_ccTLDs)

The most surprising one, IMO, is .oz, which was used for Australia. So, a top
level code was changed even though nothing substantial happened to the
country.

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homero
I remember the .ly dangers around 2011

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creeble
Anyone know the fallout from that? I see fewer .ly domains in general use, but
have there actually been registry policy changes?

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cwmma
considering that the .su domain still works fine, I kinda doubt .io will ever
go away even if the sea swallows the islands

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kabwj
I’m sure I saw this thread a few days ago with the same comments. Glitch?

~~~
eps
Mods sometimes boost an older post to the front page _and_ patch up the
timestamps on the comments. Perhaps that’s one on these?

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jnwkw
Return the islands? To whom? They are populated by "95.88% British / American"
it seems.

~~~
imdsm
Regardless of the moral questions surrounding the resettlement of the people
who lived on the islands, I do wonder what the legal implications are of
Mauritius accepting the money to begin with. Surely if you sell an Island, you
can't later claim that it still belongs to you?

In 1968 the "UK paid the self-governing colony of Mauritius £3m for the
islands" which equates to approximately £52m today[1]. At the very least, you
would expect that Mauritius would have to pay this back. But, there is also
the question of value. The islands, especially given the state of the world
today, are probably worth much more than £52m from a strategic point of view.

> Mauritius prime minister Pravind Jugnauth has attempted to smooth things
> over by saying the country is prepared to reach an agreement with the US and
> UK to allow the Diego Garcia military base to continue to exist – presumably
> in return for a fat check each year - arguing that such an approach would
> "provide a higher degree of legal certainty" than the current situation.

Yes, that /is/ a presumption, but seems quite likely. I still think my above
point about ownership stands. If a country sells an island, they surely also
sell any claims to sovereignty too. Looking into it further though, it doesn't
appear that the islands were sold, but that they were split off from the
territory (along with some others too) to form another, the British Indian
Ocean Territory. Mauritius was compensated the £3m.

So, I suppose what this really comes down to is the question of colonial
ownership, but the implications of this are huge, after all, the US, Canada,
Australia, aren't all these countries also former colonies?

[1] [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-
converter/](http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/) using 1965
as start year and 3,000,000 pounds as start value.

~~~
toyg
_> I do wonder what the legal implications are of Mauritius accepting the
money to begin with._

Foreign relations go by their own rules; the legal framework they operate
under is paper-thin and is constantly being rewritten, often under "might
makes right" principles only vaguely masked; but the last century was supposed
to mark a shift towards a system of "justice" between nations that works under
more humane principles.

For colonization in particular, the validity of this sort of transaction is
typically discounted by the self-evident disparity of knowledge and wealth
between actors: if I buy gold with seashells while pointing a gun at you, am I
really doing something "legal"? If I promise not to do X as part of the buy,
then I do it anyway - simply because my guns are bigger than yours - doesn't
that void the transaction? If I buy land where people live, then I break their
human rights, am I not infringing moral laws that transcend any specific legal
framework?

In this particular case, the problems are well-documented.

 _> I suppose what this really comes down to is the question of colonial
ownership, but the implications of this are huge_

Only to the untrained eye. Please read up on colonization and decolonization
efforts, there is plenty of material. The short story is: if UK and US really
believe the principles they have been using as basis of international law
since WWI, they should just accept they are wrong in this case, and make
amends. Otherwise, we revert to the pre-WWI situation where the world is a
jungle and the only thing that matters is the size of any given tiger.

