Because .io is the top level country code domain for the British Indian Ocean Territory, and once a country ceases to exist, the top level domain is supposed to be phased out according to the IANA rules and eventually discontinued by the ICANN.
There are no .yu, .dd, .cs, or .tp domains left. The only exception I know is .su (soviet union).
Applied-for gTLD strings in ASCII must be composed of three or more visually distinct characters. Two-character ASCII strings are not permitted, to avoid conflicting with current and future country-codes based on the ISO 3166-1 standard.
Maybe. But it’s up to ICANN and their rules, money might not be relevant to them, and with .io, there literally isn’t a single person or company that uses it “correctly” as country TLDs are primarily intended to be used by entities connected to that country, and the territory has no permanent residents, unlike with .su.
On the flip side, that might work for the case too as well - maybe ICANN decides to make it a generic TLD, like .com or .org instead as it’s not really directly connected to a country?
We shall see.
as country TLDs are primarily intended to be used by entities connected to that country
Primarily, sure, but quite a few of them get abused, check the notes column. A glaring one these days is .ai, as are youtu.be and, of course, goatse.cx.
The only reason .su still exists is because Russia said they would decommission it and then never did. ICANN chose not to let that happen again, which explains their choice to decommission the later ones.
What the fuck is the point of decommissioning them entirely, though? What value does that do anybody? Is there another country waiting in the wings? There are 1500 TLD’s already.
The obvious non-dickhead solution would be to transition the mgmt of .io from a ccTLD to a gTLD. “Rules” is not an answer.
ccTLDs are pointless anyway. They always end up getting used in unexpected ways and it always causes problems. It doesn’t do anyone any real benefit having them exist anyway. For example the US doesn’t even use theirs.
The sensible thing to do would be to stop worrying about it and just let it carry on existing.
Even Google uses a ccTLD for that link shortener for YouTube.
Yeah, the whole concept of “national” TLDs is proving to be a rather poor one in practice. Very few of them actually make sense in the way they’re used.
That sounds more like an issue of enforcement than anything. If anyone can register a domain with your country’s extension, it’s not really your country’s extension.
If we handled it properly, those domains would have value.
Yes, but when management fails the impact should not be imposed on the subordinates for following the process; it should be entirely on management.
In practice, this would mean creating a more stringent DNS approach to ccTLD’s that does not impact existing domains until if/when they choose to adopt it. Ultimately it just shows ICANN’s inadequacy &/or incompetence, which I guarantee has more to do with it’s management than it’s engineers/workers.
Because .io is the top level country code domain for the British Indian Ocean Territory, and once a country ceases to exist, the top level domain is supposed to be phased out according to the IANA rules and eventually discontinued by the ICANN.
There are no .yu, .dd, .cs, or .tp domains left. The only exception I know is .su (soviet union).
There’s plenty of non country domains too. Just make it into some acronym or have it mean I/O or whatever.
There are sure, but none are two letters because those are restricted to country codes. Specifically the ISO 3166-1 alpha 2
Still, too much money on
.ioto be shutdown.Well, they should have chosen a gTld
So they could just transform .io to a gTLD without causing any downtime.
EDIT: Apparently not that easy :(
2.12 Can a New gTLD name be 2 letters?
Applied-for gTLD strings in ASCII must be composed of three or more visually distinct characters. Two-character ASCII strings are not permitted, to avoid conflicting with current and future country-codes based on the ISO 3166-1 standard.
Either way a policy change is needed.
Maybe. But it’s up to ICANN and their rules, money might not be relevant to them, and with .io, there literally isn’t a single person or company that uses it “correctly” as country TLDs are primarily intended to be used by entities connected to that country, and the territory has no permanent residents, unlike with .su.
On the flip side, that might work for the case too as well - maybe ICANN decides to make it a generic TLD, like .com or .org instead as it’s not really directly connected to a country?
We shall see.
Primarily, sure, but quite a few of them get abused, check the notes column. A glaring one these days is
.ai, as areyoutu.beand, of course,goatse.cx.Tuvalu make around $10 million a year- about one-sixth of their gdp- from licensing
.tv.Well they better make another damn exception.
The only reason .su still exists is because Russia said they would decommission it and then never did. ICANN chose not to let that happen again, which explains their choice to decommission the later ones.
What the fuck is the point of decommissioning them entirely, though? What value does that do anybody? Is there another country waiting in the wings? There are 1500 TLD’s already.
The obvious non-dickhead solution would be to transition the mgmt of
.iofrom a ccTLD to a gTLD. “Rules” is not an answer.ccTLDs are pointless anyway. They always end up getting used in unexpected ways and it always causes problems. It doesn’t do anyone any real benefit having them exist anyway. For example the US doesn’t even use theirs.
The sensible thing to do would be to stop worrying about it and just let it carry on existing.
Even Google uses a ccTLD for that link shortener for YouTube.
Yeah, the whole concept of “national” TLDs is proving to be a rather poor one in practice. Very few of them actually make sense in the way they’re used.
That sounds more like an issue of enforcement than anything. If anyone can register a domain with your country’s extension, it’s not really your country’s extension.
If we handled it properly, those domains would have value.
Yes, but when management fails the impact should not be imposed on the subordinates for following the process; it should be entirely on management.
In practice, this would mean creating a more stringent DNS approach to ccTLD’s that does not impact existing domains until if/when they choose to adopt it. Ultimately it just shows ICANN’s inadequacy &/or incompetence, which I guarantee has more to do with it’s management than it’s engineers/workers.