• exu@feditown.com
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    20 days ago

    Because two letter TLDs are reserved for countries. They made the mistake already with .su

    • SquiffSquiff@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Oh wow! And that reservation makes so much sense under these circumstances. Obviously, we could never consider the possibility of a three-letter TLD for a country or migrating a two-letter TLD to a non country specific name because reasons.

      • cornshark@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        Can you imagine what would happen if you were to look at a domain like .io and not immediately know it was a country tld? There would be chaos. Rioting in the streets

      • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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        19 days ago

        The reason is because ccTLDs need to match the alpha-2 code of the country as it exists in ISO 3166-1. This is because IANA doesn’t want to be the arbiter of which countries exist or not. You get a code, you get a ccTLD. No code, no ccTLD.

        • LazyPyro@lemm.ee
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          19 days ago

          ccTLDs need to match the alpha-2 code of the country as it exists in ISO 3166-1

          Not to refute your point or anything but just wanted to point out that there are two exceptions in popular use… One of the top used ones in fact, the United Kingdom, whose code is actually GB. .gb is reserved but not in use and instead the .uk ccTLD is used.

          The other one is .eu

          It makes me wonder if Mauritius could/would request an exception for .io in a similar manner to what the UK did with having .gb AND .uk.

          • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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            19 days ago

            The coexistence of .gb and .uk is only because .uk predates the rule by a few months. You could say it was grandfathered in, though they are both reserved in ISO 3166-1. This one isn’t a good example of something that can happen decades after the rule was put in place.

            As for .eu it isn’t really an exception, .eu is reserved in ISO 3166-1.

          • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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            19 days ago

            Yes I have. ccTLDs are 2 characters, as I specified above. To make .io into a gTLD you’d need to add a third character, which wouldn’t do anything to help the companies who are using .io today.

            The companies who are using .io who aren’t associated with the Indian Ocean Territories will however have 5 years (or 10 if an extension is requested) to migrate to a gTLD before .io is retired.