The British Indian Ocean Territory will soon cease to exists. ICANN will remove the .io domain if no external forces will get involved with a lot of sway. There will probably be couple of years of grace period for transition.
What is the plan for itch.io in the future?
This is more of a "Look! This is important. Keep track of it or you will have a bad time." than an actual question.
Sources:
The Disappearance of an Internet Domain
UK will give sovereignty of Chagos Islands to Mauritius
Ha! I posted the same in https://itch.io/t/4182603/io-eventual-disappareance haha. Will delete it there so there is no double topic, so here is a copy of what I had wrote (pretty much the same questioning):
.io eventual disappareance
According to https://every.to/p/the-disappearance-of-an-internet-domain :
[…] these rules […] will soon apply to the .io domain. They are firm, and they are clear. Once the country code no longer exists, the domain must cease to exist, too, ideally within three to five years. Like a tenant being told that their landlord is selling up and they must move, every individual and company who uses a .io domain will be told the same.
That’s years away, but that’ll apply to itch.io!
So just starting a discussion about it :)
Branding wise, I guess it could be just “itch”.
Domain wise though, there will have to be some sort of transition to something else.
Not that many straightforward “itch” domains are available, and many are parked like itch.games and itch.com and itch.net. At least itch.io already owns itch.zone, so maybe that might become the main domain?
Aren't there rules in that rule book too, that sites with a country tld should be actually be located in that country? Like .us only being for United States and .fr only for France based companies and so on? Or at least to localize the site for people living in that country?
Well, if there are such rules, they are not adhering to those too. So enforcing that other rule about disappearing country tld is cherry picking.
@redonihunter: I guess that doesn’t apply everywhere. The URL shortener bit.ly isn’t really located in Lybia, and the t.co isn’t in Colombia either.
I know that Catalunia handler (for .cat domains) restricts this TLD only for sites in Catalan language or related to the Catalunia… but doesn’t have territorial restrictions.
I think that it’s the ruler who makes the rules… And if I was the owner of a small-territory / small-population TLD, I think I’d open it for foreigners, because it’d increase my potential income.
So it would hinge on there being a rule if there can be 2 letter tld that are not country specific. The common usage is, that for some 2 letter tld that country specific meaning is not existing. So at least this rule is pointless and should be adjusted.
Also, and probably the most important thing, who would inherit the "rights" to .io, if the country no longer exists. Since small countries seem to generate income by this, this is all about money. There are over a million .io domains, I read somewhere.
I expect a lot of squabbling about this, till it either becomes a "regular" tld or some people abuse their power to try to destroy it, because they could not benefit from it.
The regular is in quotes, because those tld that are not country codes or com or org are not really in use much. They exist, yeah, but does anyone regularly use one of those? Do they make up more than 1% of the internet traffic? I seriously doubt that.
The rules are clear. only country domains can be 2 letters, to match the 2 letter country codes they are based on. if we allowed other 2 letter domains, a collision could easily occur. for example, if Scotland became in independent country, we already have an issue as the obvious 2 letter domains (.sc or .al) are both taken already (sechelles and albania) so something like .sq would likely be used. but we only have even that less than ideal option because people can't otherwise use .sq .
No one associates .io with that "country" it belongs to. And the only problem that could arise would be, if a real country emerges that would be given the IO country code. Which is unlikely, because it was already historically used. Codes like SU will not be reused either. Or BU, DD, YU.
This domain stuff is not international law or something. The tld .eu is not a country either and it exists and there are iso codes that have no tld, so much for clear rules. If they wanted, they could have 1 letter tlds.
Anyway, there is no need to reserve the 2 letter code io, as it will not be reused. For 2 letter codes that are not in use, this is different, as they are reserved for emerging countries like Scotland might be.
In my opinion the only thing they could argue about, who has authority to give new .io domains in the future. But converting the .io from country to general should not be a problem.
At the time those other tld were removed the internet was a bit smaller and those country codes were much more locally used. This time it is high profile hosts that are not local usage. So for hosts and users, they better find a solution.
.gb and .uk are both for the same country. Also .io is associated with that country as well. And politically. .gg and .je also belong to the British. Those two are not even countries to begin with. They are "crown property".
And since no .io domain ever was registrated to anyone living there, on account of the area bein non inhabitated (by civilians) before the internet arose, the domain registration in this case was dubious from day 1. For all intents and purposes it was used as a general tld from day 1.
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Oh, and the nic for io is this one. And they also do .ac and .sh, two more British tld.
Internet Computer Bureau Ltd (ICB) is the country code top level domain manager and registry operator for the .IO, .AC, and .SH top level domains and is located in the United Kingdom.
None of those are the same country. They are distinct countries.
And the gb / uk thing exists because of the northern ireland situation. Its an exception and a very old one and gb does not refer to uk, but uk does include gb.
Each distinct political area has one tld.
While .io might not have been registered by an inhabitant, the country code it is sourced from WAS used by people living there and continues to be used officially today.
My point is, they should not try to enforce rules they did not enforce in spirit previously. That they even allowed the .io tld to be used at all speaks volumes. It was never used as a country tld. It was always used for people and companies not living there.
Iso country codes are one thing, but top level domains are an internet thing. They could just as well have designed it with the 3 letter iso country codes. That is even more techy. Internet of Things. .iot And Ireland would have .irl which would be very popular I guess, as it also means in real life. Or they could have used any other design for dns and country specific name resolving.
What they did use is the 2 letter iso codes wherever possible and refused to allow 2 letter tld to reserve for new iso codes. But that code is burned in iso. They will not re-use it for another country. So it is free for usage as a general tld. We shall see how sensible they will handle it. Could turn out either way.
