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How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?

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Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?

#111

Post by johnecheck »

os2warpman wrote: post #106
franciscop wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a country for you? How do you define it? Is the land size that important?

A country must have a people. Who are the people of the Vatican? The only persons who live there are temporary government employees and not even all of them are citizens because that is optional. You cannot own property, vote for your government, start your own business, go to school, buy anything except what is stocked in the small canteen, or go to the hospital if you are a Vatican citizen and odds are pretty good…

Your definition ignores international recognition.

Ultimately, whether you get to act like a country (go to the UN, engage in diplomacy, hold territory) is in large part based on whether other countries recognize you as such. I don't know that it defines country-hood but it's part of the puzzle.

The Vatican is a fascinating example since it's clearly a very different sort of entity than the rest of the countries, yet is still recognized by most of the world's nations.

Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?

#112

Post by neurostimulant »

int_19h wrote: post #99
jkaplowitz wrote: post #8

Presumably way the same as .google and all the other special-purpose organization-specific domains. Blame ICANN for allowing any public or private organization who can meet the requirements to buy and operate a gTLD back in 2012: https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/global-support/faqs... And as per another comment in this thread, they’re doing another round of this in 2026: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4…

The weird thing is, are they even meaningfully used? I don't think I've ever seen a .google URL in the wild, neither for their websites nor for API endpoints.

Well, there is https://www.registry.google/

Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?

#113

Post by 627467 »

int_19h wrote: post #101
gerikson wrote: post #3

> The Ismaili Imamat is a supra-national entity, representing the succession of Imams since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. ( https://ismaili.imamat/#introduction ) The Aga Khan is the leader of the Ismaili Imamat. They have as good a claim to a TLD as Berlin, if not more.

However, "imamat" by itself is a generic term, so it's not clear why it should be controlled by a single organization that happens to have it in the name.

Aren't there tons of generic terms gTLD controlled by a single organizations now?

Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?

#114

Post by abhiyerra »

0x3f wrote: post #60
arcfour wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon/AWS use them (.aws), so does Google (.google) but I agree, it is pretty funny how many companies seemed to get on board (out of fear of being left out?) and then...didn't use them for some reason?

Google does use theirs for public-facing landing pages even [1], just not uniformly, but that's very on-brand for Google as an org. Where have you seen .aws in use though? [1] e.g. https://quantumai.google/

https://calculator.aws

Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?

#115

Post by ccgreg »

int_19h wrote: post #101
gerikson wrote: post #3

> The Ismaili Imamat is a supra-national entity, representing the succession of Imams since the time of the Prophet Muhammad. ( https://ismaili.imamat/#introduction ) The Aga Khan is the leader of the Ismaili Imamat. They have as good a claim to a TLD as Berlin, if not more.

However, "imamat" by itself is a generic term, so it's not clear why it should be controlled by a single organization that happens to have it in the name.

Given that this discussion was started by someone mentioning only these 3 related things, I'd guess that the motivation might a negative one.

Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?

#116

Post by jkaplowitz »

maxbond wrote: post #66
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vatican City is a theocracy, not a religion. You'd technically have to add .uk and many more to the list if you're broadening to all nations with a state religion.

It's the central bureaucratic/theocratic function of a major world religion which, it just so happens, is organized as a micronation instead of as a foundation or something like that. The primary function of the UK is not to run the Anglican church, nor is their king generally thought of as their primary leader.

Interestingly, legally, the Holy See and the Vatican City State are not the same thing.

The one which is the global seat of the Roman Catholic Church, which has existed since ancient times including for a time without any territory after the Papal States were lost, which is internationally sovereign, and the one to which ambassadors to the "Vatican" are accredited is the Holy See, not the Vatican City State.

The one that has .va is Vatican City State, which was created only in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the (then-)Kingdom of Italy. That treaty was signed to return a certain degree of independent territorial authority to the Holy See, including the Vatican City State where it has full sovereignty, to give financial compensation to the Church / the Holy See for the loss of the Papal States, and to address a few other matters.

Yes, the Vatican City State is under the governance of the Holy See as a sovereign entity, but it's the Holy See that's sovereign, not the Vatican City State - and the Holy See would remain legally intact if the Vatican City State were to be physically conquered by a foreign power.

ISO country codes which lead to ccTLD domain names like .va are often given more on the basis of internationally recognized/relevant territorial definition than on the basis of international recognized/relevant sovereignty where those two things diverge. After all, the British Indian Ocean Territory has never itself been sovereign under that name, and Taiwan's international sovereignty is a controversial question, but .io and .tw ccTLDs were still assigned and are universally recognized. it's for the same reason that .va goes with the territory and not with the global church.

Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?

#117

Post by kmoser »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #64
ahoka wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take: TLDs should not exist but parking domains should not be allowed.

And cost if domains should increase near exponentially with the more you own. One domain? $10/year, two domains: $50, three: $250, etc.

Without rigorous ID requirements, that restriction can be circumvented easily.

Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?

#118

Post by thayne »

xp84 wrote: post #87
827a wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that private entities can monopolize gTLDs, including words that aren't even made-up or reasonably copy-written (e.g. the MAN group in Europe owns .man) was an embarrassing and dishonorable decision by ICANN. I'm all for having tons of weird, awesome gTLDs, and I'm even for brand-specific gTLDs like .google, but the cost these entities should incur by asking for one to be created is: Anyone can use it. 1. A…

This requiring it to be open to everybody is an odd wish, to me. It would seem to discourage something that I don't think is a harm to anyone else: Getting your brand as a TLD (.google being a great example). Google has a trademark on "Google," so no one else can make non-mischeivous use of .google anyway. If they had to let random internet critics and trolls register theworst.google and ihate.google they just wouldn…

Well it's tricky. I don't really have a problem with google owning the .google TLD, because that is a pretty unique name, and is unlikely to be useful for anything besides unrelated to Google. Similarly for .walmart or .microsoft. But .apple is a problem, because it is a common English word, and it isn't unreasonable for say an apple orchard, or an apple cider company to want a .apple domain. Similarly for other brand names like target, zoom, uber, plaid, etc. Even .amazon fits here since it is also the name of a river, a rain forest, and mythological group of women.

But where do you draw the line? How do you decide if a company should be allowed to get a gTLD for their brand? Clearly, having a trademark is not sufficient, as it is possible to get a trademark on a common word, and it is possible for multiple companies to trademark the same word as long as there isn't a risk of confusing them. Is it fair to let google and microsoft get such TLDs for their brands, but not apple and amazon?

Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?

#119

Post by kmoser »

hansjorg wrote: post #85

If you want a fun way to spend the rest of your afternoon, just prefix any of these with "nic." and enter in your web browser. Interestingly, for example, it seems that .ninja is ran by what appears to be actual ninjas.

Actual ninjas? How so? http://nic.ninja (not https!) redirects to https://www.identity.digital/

Re: How did .agakhan, .ismaili and .imamat get their own TLDs?

#120

Post by franciscop »

os2warpman wrote: post #106
franciscop wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a country for you? How do you define it? Is the land size that important?

A country must have a people. Who are the people of the Vatican? The only persons who live there are temporary government employees and not even all of them are citizens because that is optional. You cannot own property, vote for your government, start your own business, go to school, buy anything except what is stocked in the small canteen, or go to the hospital if you are a Vatican citizen and odds are pretty good…

As johnecheck points out, in a certain level of abstraction, the main way of defining a country is whether other countries consider you a country or not. Even when other countries do consider you a country, what the borders are exactly might not be clearly recognized.

Since countries are political divisions, I'd also argue that this is the main and most important definition.

BTW, even "continents" suffer from this where in the US, Europe and Asia they are defined differently.

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