
What happens to country specific TLD's in a war involving that country? - polm23
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50821462/what-happens-to-country-specific-tlds-in-a-war-involving-that-country/50867495#50867495
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PaulKeeble
It doesn't even have to be a war. There are plenty of people in the United
Kingdom who own .EU domains and won't be able to renew them after Britain
leaves the union since buying and renewing them requires the owner to have an
address inside of the union. IIRC the newspapers reported it impacted 10s of
thousands of addresses.

~~~
otoburb
>> _[...] requires the owner to have an address inside of the union._

This would bode well for programs like the Estonian e-residency[1] initiative
as I believe they also provide an EU address, although it might mean having to
legally transfer ownership of the .eu domains from UK entities to the Estonian
entity if any businesses are thinking of going through with this.

[1] [https://e-resident.gov.ee/](https://e-resident.gov.ee/)

~~~
itake
What if in 20 years Estonia decides to leave as well? It seems like .eu is not
a very reliable TLD.

~~~
craftyguy
It's not any less reliable than other TLDs. Any nation that owns a TLD can
basically do the same thing.

~~~
blocked_again
There are a lot of TLDs owned by companies like Google, Verizon etc

~~~
craftyguy
I don't see how those would be any more reliable, since companies generally
act in their best interest (which may not always be in your best interest if,
for example, you find yourself suddenly competing with them)

~~~
blocked_again
A domain system on Blockchain is the solution then.

~~~
satsuma
5 years ago we'd send it to the cloud.

~~~
craftyguy
"Just do <insert current trendy buzzword here>." has been a common response
for decades to any problem.

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Rjevski
I’m actually surprised what happened to the SK (Slovakian) TLD mentioned in
that answer - it seems to have been taken over by fraud, then the fraudulent
new owner of the TLD sold out to some company abroad and they’re now trying to
sell out again, and apparently a contract prevents the state from doing
anything?

How is that possible? Why can’t the government just ask ICANN to delegate the
TLD to a legitimate entity and tell the greedy fraudulent one to fuck right
off?

~~~
pmlnr
Eastern Europe - if you know someone, or you're someone's someone, these
things regularly happen.

~~~
zaarn
I mean it's not inherently bad the entire way. Having a good friend in Poland
means I get cheap brakes for my car.

~~~
pc86
"Grift is fine as long as it benefits me."

~~~
zaarn
My friend benefits too or is this because he's east european?

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olivermarks
Bit.ly is a good example: .ly was the Libyan dns until the political changes
there. Bit.ly is now bitly.com

.ly is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Libya. In 2011, the
bit.ly address was set to redirect to bitly.com.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitly)

Therefore relying on using convenient ccTLD suffixes from third word states as
part of a western world url might not be a great idea longer term depending on
political change and hostile actions.

~~~
jstanley
That doesn't really show the point you're trying to make.

What I gather from reading the wikipedia article is that they registered
bitly.com after the Libyan government seized a .ly domain that was
incompatible with their ideology. Nothing to do with the war.

And that decision is a bit questionable anyway. It's quite likely that more
.com domains have been seized by the US government than .ly domains seized by
the Libyan government.

~~~
Already__Taken
> And that decision is a bit questionable anyway. It's quite likely that more
> .com domains have been seized by the US government than .ly domains seized
> by the Libyan government.

Depends on how you factor in the appeals process going in your favour.

~~~
olivermarks
I think the 'seizing by Libyan Government' thing is a bit of a red herring.

I wrote this on ZDnet way back in 2011 on this topic
[https://www.zdnet.com/article/dead-ly-urls-and-
authoritarian...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/dead-ly-urls-and-
authoritarian-social-network-tracking/)

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ljw1001
IDK, but I've been anxious AF for a chance to use Afghanistan's, and it
doesn't seem to be actively administered.

~~~
tutts
I once looked into whether it was possible to get a ".ck" domain name, for
juvenile and obvious yet potentially humorous domains. It turns out that
that's Cook Islands' TLD, and they don't allow direct use of it... instead,
they've done the same thing as the UK did, and only allowed domains under
".co.ck".

~~~
anewhnaccount2
Nathan Barley dot cock

~~~
justincormack
It was trashbat.co.ck which sadly seems to be down right now.

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Salamat
The US has the power to influence the conflict by cutting them off the
internet: Cutting off the internet of Syria in 2011 and planting viruses in
Iranian networks [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/us/politics/cyber-
command...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/us/politics/cyber-command-
trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share)

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jmkni
I’m surprised that question hasn’t been closed as off-topic!

~~~
kcolford
Nah, instead we migrated it to super user, the site for everything programing
adjacent.

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wruza
In-house DNS is an obvious and convenient service to locate hosts on your
network. But take it world-wide, and I don’t think it is a greatest idea that
could work. Names are random and volatile, and there is no sensible geography
that you may use to look for alternatives or to extend your experience. IRL
when you want to party, you go to club streets and active places. When you
want to buy, you go to big stores. When you want to rest, you look for a park.
If you’re into something big and incompatible (like religion, subculture or
language), you go to “your land”. But DNS cannot give you that — it void-
separates similar and recognizable locations. It is so tech-y and not humane.
This void is abused by many to push you to where you’ll spend your value and
have nowhere else to go.

Of course, implementing that can be a rock hard task with many real-world
complications and abuse prevention, but I would like to open my browser and
not see the same fckng nine plates that I visit everyday, instead viewing the
live, high-precision public map of the internet that is worth exploring
endlessly. TLDs (if any) and country control in that scheme could be designed
completely politics irrelevant.

(inb4: TMDH, SL, MC, MMORPG etc)

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shakethemonkey
The KW domain was removed after Iraq invaded Kuwait. [1]

[1] [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.protocols.tcp-
ip.domain...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.protocols.tcp-
ip.domains/68GjTG8QtIU/spAgICUkmcwJ)

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zeveb
That's why I think what we actually need is domain certificates on the SPKI
model, where k of n countries must agree that an entity has the right to use a
domain. Anything that the U.S., U.K., Russia, China, Eritrea, Chile, Mexico,
Canada, Germany & Chad agree on is _probably_ true enough, despite what one
might think of each of those states individually.

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magissima
I hope the British Indian Ocean Territory doesn't go to war!

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coldcode
A question I want to know is what happens if the country splits into multiple
countries?

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jacksmith21006
You do NOT need war to have problems. Look at France taking the domain away
from the American that owned it for years without any compensation.

"France Seized the Domain France.com from Its Long-Time Owner. Now He's Suing"

[http://fortune.com/2018/04/30/france-domain-name-france-
com/](http://fortune.com/2018/04/30/france-domain-name-france-com/)

~~~
kuschku
As did the US when they seized Megaupload.com from a German, living in New
Zealand, who had broken neither German nor New Zealandish law (at least that
time).

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Latteland
Well hey man, that was copyright stealing, there are special rules for that.

~~~
erric
And entire FBI divisions devoted to investigation of these rules

