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The dark side of .io

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Re: The dark side of .io

#21

Post by CHY872 »

jessaustin wrote: post #4

The British High Court ruled in 2000 that they could do so, but the government ordered the ruling overturned... Haha I can think of a few leaders of other nations who might enjoy this power. Of course I have sympathy for refugees of all sorts. However, although the Chagossians were definitely screwed out of their home, it doesn't follow that they have been screwed out of ".io" money. It is an accident of history that…

> Haha I can think of a few leaders of other nations who might enjoy this power.

In Britain we essentially go by the philosophy that parliament represents the people, and parliament is the highest authority in the country. If the government doesn't like a decision made by a court, the idea is that the law can be changed.

Re: The dark side of .io

#22

Post by tarminian »

russellbeattie wrote: post #18

Sooo... what? This is easily the third or fourth time this has been linked to in Hacker News. What relevance does it have to anything? Everyone who uses .io domains are horrible, insensitive people? Those who use .me domains should be forever ashamed of the various human rights violations of the Montenegrin government in 1995? Anyone who uses bit.ly is basically insulting the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing? Et…

First time I've seen it. I think it has a lot of relevance, we all need to think more about the things we purchase. That chocolate bar you just ate was probably produced using slave labor, those new cool shoes, made with sweat shop labor by young girls. To just brush off articles like this is insensitive.

Re: The dark side of .io

#23

Post by hackuser »

kijin wrote: post #17

Okay, this is going to be controversial, but I have no problem whatsoever with moving people around like this, as long as: 1) the displaced people are adequately compensated for their loss, and 2) they are given freedom to move to a place where they can enjoy human rights and make an adequate living. The right to occupy some specific geographic coordinates is not a human right. This applies at every scale from a sing…

I think these are valuable points; thanks. But I disagree for a few reasons:

1) Eminent domain seems valid if it's exercised by the victims' legitimate government, which they elect and over which they have a say, and under which they have rights and the ability to legally protect themselves. My impression[1] is that none of that applies to the Chagossians. The UK appears[1] to have taken advantage of their helplessness. For example, imagine if the UK took your land (assuming you are not in the UK) and you had no appeal.

> none of us have any right to claim any piece of real estate as our own. The law, of course, grants certain people certain rights with respect to land. But morally, it's all arbitrary.

2) That is one point of view but it's a radical one. Our society places great moral store in property rights; many leading philosophers think it is the foundation of all other rights and of democracy. Certainly few react well to someone else taking away their home; people fight wars over that.

3) One aspect of human rights is that it's up to Chagossians to decide what they want and what is good for them. It's not up to you or anyone else to dictate that something is or is not in their interests.

4) I suspect it is much harder for what I'm guessing[1] are members of a small, isolated community that has only existed on an island to move than for the wordly high-tech entrepreneurs reading this thread. Where should they move? Sri Lanka? Delhi? Kenya? An apartment in the Mission? Another island where the locals already control it and the newcomers may not be welcome? Where the fish and everything else are different?

[1] I say "my impression' and 'it appears' because I don't know the facts well enough to be sure.

Re: The dark side of .io

#24

Post by smt88 »

jessaustin wrote: post #12
13 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have thousands of top level domains and it's utterly ridiculous. People with trademarks have an obligation to protect their mark or risk losing it. Depending how you read that, it can involve buying hundreds of different variations on your brand name under different top levels. Some of them even appear to be trying to capitalize on brand protection behavior; companies will feel compelled to purchase .gripe…

IANAL, and I'm not responsible for poor legal advice that I haven't even given. The elimination of stupid corporate lawyer bullshit like this would be but one of the benefits of a non-scarce TLD regime. If keeping a trademark required spending many billions of dollars every year, either firms would make do without trademark, or the law would recognize that "apple.gripe" doesn't mean anything about Apple Computer's tr…

Trademarks are useful. They let you know that you're buying from the person you intend to buy from.

Imagine a world without trademarks. The US would be flooded with iPhone knockoffs, and all of them would be identical to iPhones. They'd have god-knows-what inside them, but they'd bear the Apple logo.

Or, imagine you want to pay your American Express bill. Unfortunately, someone has bought AmericanExpress.card, and you get confused. You end up inputting your AmEx login info into a phishing site and give a hacker your personal data.

In a world without trademarks, Apple and American Express wouldn't have the legal authority to pursue people that are imitating them.

Re: The dark side of .io

#25

Post by CHY872 »

hackuser wrote: post #20
jessaustin wrote: post #4

The British High Court ruled in 2000 that they could do so, but the government ordered the ruling overturned... Haha I can think of a few leaders of other nations who might enjoy this power. Of course I have sympathy for refugees of all sorts. However, although the Chagossians were definitely screwed out of their home, it doesn't follow that they have been screwed out of ".io" money. It is an accident of history that…

> although the Chagossians were definitely screwed out of their home, it doesn't follow that they have been screwed out of ".io" money. Two thoughts: 1) What if the resource from the Chagossians' island was oil and not a domain name; would that be different? Wouldn't your same argument about rents apply? 2) Maybe rents in general are an accident of history, as you say, but why should the UK benefit from this accident…

This sort of thing leads to finicky rulings everywhere, though. For example, if I build an airport, I probably will have to compulsorily purchase a bunch of land from people and demolish their homes. I must purchase the land at the market price (at least according to UK law) so that they are left in the same financial position after the purchase.

Now say that 50 years later, its realised that there's a whole load of diamonds under the airport (not known to anyone). Clearly, we would not compensate the original owners.

The only difference here is that the people who owned the land were not compensated for it. Those people are now mostly dead or nearly dead.

Re: The dark side of .io

#26

Post by philsnow »

kijin wrote: post #17

Okay, this is going to be controversial, but I have no problem whatsoever with moving people around like this, as long as: 1) the displaced people are adequately compensated for their loss, and 2) they are given freedom to move to a place where they can enjoy human rights and make an adequate living. The right to occupy some specific geographic coordinates is not a human right. This applies at every scale from a sing…

> the displaced people are adequately compensated for their loss

How can you measure (in order to attempt to "adequately compensate" displaced people) the inability to live in one's ancestral homeland? Imagine if we were all shipped to a somewhat earth-like moon somewhere, under "eminent domain".

Re: The dark side of .io

#27

Post by stefantalpalaru »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #6

While the actual story is a terrible human rights violation, I don't see how this is related to .IO domains in the least. I think most people that purchase/visit an .IO domain have little idea what geological place is tied to it. It sounds like the money goes to the British government to use as they see fit, and I doubt many people would have a problem with that in the first place if it wasn't in this unfortunate geo…

See no evil, hear no evil?

Re: The dark side of .io

#28

Post by cbd1984 »

tarminian wrote: post #22
russellbeattie wrote: post #18

Sooo... what? This is easily the third or fourth time this has been linked to in Hacker News. What relevance does it have to anything? Everyone who uses .io domains are horrible, insensitive people? Those who use .me domains should be forever ashamed of the various human rights violations of the Montenegrin government in 1995? Anyone who uses bit.ly is basically insulting the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing? Et…

First time I've seen it. I think it has a lot of relevance, we all need to think more about the things we purchase. That chocolate bar you just ate was probably produced using slave labor, those new cool shoes, made with sweat shop labor by young girls. To just brush off articles like this is insensitive.

If everyone's guilty, it means nobody is. If everyone has something they did, didn't do, or didn't stop which implicates them in being a horrible human being, all it becomes is an endless cycle of "well, you did that" "oh, and you didn't do that" which completely distracts from any honest effort to fix the underlying problems.

Re: The dark side of .io

#30

Post by mrfrisby »

This thread is a depressingly self-serving reflection of this community. Few of you seem to have bothered to do anything but skim the article and come to a snap judgement based on what seems to be your idealised notion of how TLDs should be managed.

For the sake of my own sanity, lets just be clear here:

1. An island chain was forcibly depopulated in order for the largest land mass to be leased to the United States as a strategically important military base away from outside observers which has since been used as a staging post for the renditions of people to illegal prisons on US sovereign territory.

2. The former inhabitants of the Island are prevented from returning thanks to a tricky piece of political gamesmanship which classfieid the island chain as a marine park unable to sustain human population, whilst at the same time permitting the construction and continuous growth of one of the United States largest overseas military bases.

3. The Chagossians - now living in slums in Mauritius - or even worse - Kent, have limited access to education, die younger than they ought to, and are prevented from prospering in exile thanks to their ill treatment at the hands of the Mauritian government, the same government paid to help Britain pave the way for the above heinous acts.

4. The natural resources of the islands, the land, the sea, the soil, the strategically important geographic position, the TLD, the international dialling code, the airspace - all of this was stolen when the people were forcibly removed. You may discuss the merits of TLD sovereignty somewhere else, this is not the issue at hand here. If Britain can sell and profit from .uk domain names, the Chagossians deserve that same right as equals.

This is not about a TLD, it is about the abhorrent treatment of a small nation at the hands of a large one. It is the grossest example of the same kind of tawdry crap which colonial powers of past and present have gotten away with for centuries. Your ignorance and self-serving positions are staggering, disappointing, and completely unsurprising.

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