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The dark side of .io

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Re: The dark side of .io

#2

Post by jim_dnaley »

Good article - the control of the infrastructure of the internet is a large problem today. For historical context, I suggest looking into Paul Garrin's project Name.Space - it highlights the often-invisible control of TLDs and DNSs by companies close to their respective governments (often granted sole control over their market). Although Name.Space was more pertinent while Network Solutions still held a monopoly over domain registration, it seems like the same kind of problem continues today.

About Name.Space: http://namespace.us/about.php

A good interview of Paul Garrin can be found here: http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9805/msg0005...

Re: The dark side of .io

#3

Post by hansjorg »

Interestingly, the UK cabinet and parliament had no official hand in the actual decision to expel.

When the US requested the forced expulsion of the Chagossians, the Queen could act unilaterally since she is still the direct ruler of the British Indian Ocean Territory.

Re: The dark side of .io

#4

Post by jessaustin »

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 TLDs are relatively scarce, that national governments may extract economic rents from TLDs, that some ccTLDs have no corresponding national government, and that the UK happens to own ".io". Nothing any Chagossian ever did entitles her or her descendants to this money.

In a better world than ours, there would be billions of TLDs, and the value of any one of them would be negligible.

Re: The dark side of .io

#5

Post by lsiebert »

Ugh... So the British Colonial Chief, in 1966, wrote “Unfortunately along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure and who are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius.”

And from the Wikileaks cable:

'He asserted that establishing a marine park would, in effect, put paid to resettlement claims of the archipelago's former residents. Responding to Polcouns' observation that the advocates of Chagossian resettlement continue to vigorously press their case, Roberts opined that the UK's "environmental lobby is far more powerful than the Chagossians' advocates." '

That's just ugly and wrong.

Re: The dark side of .io

#6

Post by chrisfosterelli »

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 geopolitcal context.

Re: The dark side of .io

#7

Post by 13 »

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…

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 for example to stop it hosting negative content about them.

    $ whois apple.gripe

    Registrant Organization: Apple Inc.
    Registrant Email: domains@apple.com
See?

Re: The dark side of .io

#8

Post by jlangenauer »

hansjorg wrote: post #3

Interestingly, the UK cabinet and parliament had no official hand in the actual decision to expel. When the US requested the forced expulsion of the Chagossians, the Queen could act unilaterally since she is still the direct ruler of the British Indian Ocean Territory.

I would be extremely shocked if this was actually the case. Do you have any source for this claim?

Re: The dark side of .io

#9

Post by jordanpg »

It is surreal reading this. The geographic connections between ccTLDs and their associated 2-letter pairs with their English connotations are completely arbitrary. ICANN could have just as easily decided to issue all 26*26 two-letter TLDs according to some other scheme.
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