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.ai website registrations are a windfall for tiny Anguilla

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Re: .ai website registrations are a windfall for tiny Anguilla

#111
post #80

It's odd ICANN has such a control to effect an countries income just by choosing a good abbreviation. I doubt the creators of the DNS system had any idea that domains would arbitrarily give some countries an extra form of income, profiting from people who could care less about the country it was created for. Why didn't ICANN just charge a flat fee for any string to resolve to an IP?

The whole point of the ccTLDs is that ICANN doesn’t really have any control over their contents—they’re “sovereign soil”, so to speak, and each country can do whatever it wants with its namespace. Which brings us to the answer to your question:

> Why didn't ICANN just charge a flat fee for any string to resolve to an IP?

Because ICANN doesn’t control what strings resolve! They delegate to registries (by putting NS records in the root resolvers), and for ccTLDs it’s up to each country to set policy and infrastructure to taste. If anything, the existence of gTLDs (like .com) where policy is set internationally is the unusual aspect of this arrangement.

Re: .ai website registrations are a windfall for tiny Anguilla

#112
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd ISO has such a control to effect an countries income just by choosing a good abbreviation. I doubt the creators of the DNS system had any idea that domains would arbitrarily give some countries an extra form of income, profiting from people who could care less about the country it was created for. Why didn't ISO just charge a flat fee for any string to resolve to an IP?

ISO created the country codes in 1974, prior to the invention of DNS.

[flagged]

Re: .ai website registrations are a windfall for tiny Anguilla

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure since it would no longer be a country TLD, you could easily say it’s a media TLD. Crisis averted. However, registrar responsibilities would be elsewhere. Google perhaps. Or maybe someone else. I’m sure that .tv is so ubiquitous that it falls under several categories.

That would be a possible solution but they would have to agree to change the rules for TLDs or make an exception, because right now the rules are very clear that only countries can have two letter TLDs.

Yes, and like previous countries that are no more, the TLDs still exist. We just need some international entity to keep processing the registrations.

Re: .ai website registrations are a windfall for tiny Anguilla

#114
post #26
post #18

Tuvalu (.tv), Libya (.ly), Anguilla (.ai). Matt of wordpress got ma.tt (Trinidad & Tobago). Some countries (eg, Canada) require some kind of residency. What other TLDs are special?

.co (Colombia) is a fairly popular alternative to .com. .fi (Finland) was used by crypto/web3 companies during the 2021-22 hype cycle because it associates with finance (as in DeFi = decentralized finance). .is (Iceland) and .at (Austria) are English words and can be used for cleverish domains that form sentences in URLs, as in: this.is/amazing

.co is a interesting case because there's also the convention of ".co.*". Is there a .co.co?

Re: .ai website registrations are a windfall for tiny Anguilla

#116
post #96

A really big looming question is what will happen to all the .tv domains, which provide 95% of Tuvalu's GDP (similar to how .ai is for Anguilla). The island is getting warn away by rougher seas and the ocean level is rising thanks to climate change. What happens when the island no longer exists? Does the country still exist? Should the .tv domain still exist? When Yugoslavia broke up they shut down its TLD, but this…

This is a myth. They did a study last decade that showed Tuvalu is actually gaining landmass. [0] https://phys.org/news/2018-02-pacific-nation-bigger.html

The PM at the time took contention to the publication of that article, saying that there was no increase in actual habitable land.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190326140508/https://kmt.news/...

Re: .ai website registrations are a windfall for tiny Anguilla

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure since it would no longer be a country TLD, you could easily say it’s a media TLD. Crisis averted. However, registrar responsibilities would be elsewhere. Google perhaps. Or maybe someone else. I’m sure that .tv is so ubiquitous that it falls under several categories.

That would be a possible solution but they would have to agree to change the rules for TLDs or make an exception, because right now the rules are very clear that only countries can have two letter TLDs.

* and the EU, and Antarctica (.aq)

Re: .ai website registrations are a windfall for tiny Anguilla

#118
post #96

A really big looming question is what will happen to all the .tv domains, which provide 95% of Tuvalu's GDP (similar to how .ai is for Anguilla). The island is getting warn away by rougher seas and the ocean level is rising thanks to climate change. What happens when the island no longer exists? Does the country still exist? Should the .tv domain still exist? When Yugoslavia broke up they shut down its TLD, but this…

This is a myth. They did a study last decade that showed Tuvalu is actually gaining landmass. [0] https://phys.org/news/2018-02-pacific-nation-bigger.html

Useful inhabitable landmass is the question I guess? If it's just the peaks of the island getting higher, then that land becomes increasingly hard to build on.

Re: .ai website registrations are a windfall for tiny Anguilla

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a myth. They did a study last decade that showed Tuvalu is actually gaining landmass. [0] https://phys.org/news/2018-02-pacific-nation-bigger.html

The PM at the time took contention to the publication of that article, saying that there was no increase in actual habitable land. https://web.archive.org/web/20190326140508/https://kmt.news/...

Yup. The study suggests that it's just the peaks getting higher, which means that even the peaks will become harder to build on as they become steeper.

Re: .ai website registrations are a windfall for tiny Anguilla

#120
post #18

Tuvalu (.tv), Libya (.ly), Anguilla (.ai). Matt of wordpress got ma.tt (Trinidad & Tobago). Some countries (eg, Canada) require some kind of residency. What other TLDs are special?

.gg is a bit more niche but I see it occasionally for gaming related sites (Guernsey)

Oh yeah that's a good one, it's become the TLD of choice for at least part of competitive gaming. Particularly melee.gg, but also magic.gg, racetime.gg, maxroll.gg, etc.
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