https://every.to/p/the-disappearance-of-an-internet-domain
"On October 3, the British government announced that it was giving up
sovereignty over a small tropical atoll in the Indian Ocean known as the Chagos
Islands. The islands would be handed over to the neighboring island country of
Mauritius, about 1,100 miles off the southeastern coast of Africa.
The story did not make the tech press, but perhaps it should have. The decision
to transfer the islands to their new owner will result in the loss of one of
the tech and gaming industry’s preferred top-level domains: .io.
Whether it’s Github.io, gaming site itch.io, or even Google I/O (which arguably
kicked off the trend in 2008), .io has been a constant presence in the tech
lexicon. Its popularity is sometimes explained by how it represents the
abbreviation for “input/output,” or the data received and processed by any
system. What’s not often acknowledged is that it’s more than a quippy domain.
It’s a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) related to a nation—meaning it
involves politics far beyond the digital world.
Since 1968, the UK and U.S have operated a major military base on the Chagos
Islands (officially known as the British Indian Ocean Territory), but the
neighboring nation of Mauritius has always disputed British sovereignty over
them. The Mauritian government has long argued that the British illegally
retained control when Mauritius gained independence. It has taken over 50
years, but that dispute has finally been resolved. In return for a 99-year
lease for the military base, the islands will become part of Mauritius.
Once this treaty is signed, the British Indian Ocean Territory will cease to
exist. Various international bodies will update their records. In particular,
the International Standard for Organization (ISO) will remove country code “IO”
from its specification. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which
creates and delegates top-level domains, uses this specification to determine
which top-level country domains should exist. Once IO is removed, the IANA will
refuse to allow any new registrations with a .io domain. It will also
automatically begin the process of retiring existing ones. (There is no
official count of the number of extant .io domains.)
Officially, .io—and countless websites—will disappear. At a time when domains
can go for millions of dollars, it’s a shocking reminder that there are forces
outside of the internet that still affect our digital lives."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
