https://domainincite.com/30406-five-times-icann-deleted-a-cctld-and-what-it-means-for-io [domaininci] * About * Advertise * [rss] RSS Feed * [tw] Twitter Feed [Enter Search Query ] [domainer-a] Latest news of the domain name industry Recent Posts * Unstoppable tops four million names * Amazon readying fashion and book gTLDs * Five times ICANN deleted a ccTLD, and what it means for .io * Future of .io domains uncertain as UK hands over Chagos islands * .ai now has over half a million names * UK and Israel cut ICANN funding * Twitter now up-to-date on linkification * Moment of truth as .music domains finally go on sale * ICANN fixes embarrassing "What is a Domain Name?" mistake * Another ccTLD opens up its second level * Reporter gains first access to .io island for decades * .io sells $40 million of domains after massive uptick * After five years, "useless" TLD has two web sites * Verisign agrees to .com takedown rules * New .com contract could see ALL domain prices go up * Investing in .ad domains may be risky * Plurals ban policy handed to ICANN board * Three .now domains sell at premium EAP prices * ICANN confirms new gTLD application fee * New gTLD application fee rises by thousands after collision call * Former .co registry defeated in $350 million contract fix case * Is this the first Next Round new gTLD contention battle? * ICANN names its Supreme Court judges * Who uses Sunrise nowadays? You might be surprised * ICANN gunning for Tencent over abuse claims * All the one-character .sk domains to be auctioned * Straggler gTLD signs first ICANN contract for years * GoDaddy likely to win relaxed .xxx deal * Tonkin promoted to CEO at auDA * ICANN hires new Ombuds from WIPO * Big twist as ICANN bans new gTLD auctions * ICANN to "strengthen" harassment rules as it picks another homophobic meeting host * .my global relaunch starts slowly despite cheapo prices * Hackers break .mobi after Whois domain expires * The new gTLD next, next and next round * Squarespace gets sweetened $7.2 billion takeover offer * ICANN hit by DDoS attack * Russia calls for ICANN to split from US * China loses over half a million domains * ICANN to be director light for months * FBI seizes Russian fake news domains * Chinese registrars back in trouble after porn UDRP suspension * Sataki quits ICANN board * Microsoft switches two gTLDs from GoDaddy to Nominet * ICANN homes in on new gTLD application fee * Four more dot-brands switch back-ends * Uzbekistan gets its first ICANN registrar * Almost 100,000 .tr domains registered in one day * ICA finally comments on .com pricing talks * Unstoppable reveals gTLD bid doomed to fail * RDRS usage stabilizing? * "Frat boy culture" ICANN faces more sexual harassment claims * Unstoppable gets ICANN accreditation * AI and games among July's interesting dot-brand domains * ICANN U-turns on appeals loophole after community revolt * ICANN to terminate five new gTLDs * US could change .com pricing terms * Two out, two in as NomCom picks new ICANN directors * .cv domains now on sale worldwide * It's official, .internal is blocked forever * Amazon to launch two new gTLDs this month * Revealed: who's really running Epik * ICANN swaps out Asia VP * No .uk price hikes despite tumbling sales * Domain world growth despite .com slide * Verisign predicts more gloom as registrars shun .com growth * Republicans quiz NTIA on Verisign .com renewal * Smaller, more intense ICANN meetings with no free cocktails? * Private auctions to be banned in next new gTLD round * .au prices going up * Nominet names director hopefuls * Crowdstrike screw-up took down ICANN's email * We grassed up .TOP, says free abuse outfit * ICANN to earmark $10 million for new gTLD subsidies * TV network rebrands on single-letter domain * First registry gets breach notice over new abuse rules * Americans and ICANNers avoid Kigali in droves * RDRS stats improve a little in June * Unstoppable Domains goes down after domain hijack * Four more gTLDs in emergency measures * New gTLDs and ccTLDs drive domain universe growth * Eight interesting recent dot-brand registrations * .me premium sales down * Pride fails to reverse gay domains decline * Unstoppable announces another new gTLD bid * Blockchain naming firm gets ICANN accreditation * ICANN takes over gTLD after Whois failures * Verisign: would-be .com contract killers are "wrong" * Five gTLDs at risk as registry goes AWOL * Groups make flawed case that .com is a cartel * RDRS usage hits all-time low * A dot-brand so unloved they killed it twice * PorkBun hits two million domain milestone * Crawford returns to industry to head up Com Laude * ICANN financial data dump a damp squib? * Unstoppable plotting manga-themed gTLDs * Governments call for new gTLD auctions ban * ICANN names new CEO, and it isn't Costerton * ICANN: We will NOT police content * More sticker shock as new gTLD fees could top $300,000 * ICANN slashes staff and domain prices could rise * Secret new gTLD application revealed * WhatsApp now linkifying new gTLDs, but... * Outrage over ICANN's new gTLD fees * Barrett gets second term on ICANN board * DotMusic delays gTLD launch again * .tm prices to skyrocket next week * Bitcoin gTLD gets launch dates * First metaverse gTLD is announced * Alibaba off the naughty step * ICANN to kill auction fund bylaws change * The people have spoken on RDRS and they said "Meh" * ICANN restarts work on controversial Whois privacy rules * GNSO mulls lawyering up over auction fund dispute * Jury still out on ICANN's content policing powers * It now takes TWO WEEKS to get a Whois record with RDRS * Travel expenses push ICANN into the red again * ICANN preparing for ONE HUNDRED registry back-ends * DNS Abuse Institute changes name * A new way to game the new gTLD program * .home, .mail and .corp could get unbanned * Unstoppable to apply for Women in Tech gTLD * Bob Parsons publishes autobiography * GoDaddy getting a free pass from porn jail? * Correction: Sinha's seat is safe Five times ICANN deleted a ccTLD, and what it means for .io Kevin Murphy, October 4, 2024, 18:07:52 (UTC), Domain Registries With the future of .io coming into question this week, with the news that the UK will return sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius, I thought it would be a good time to see how ICANN has treated disappearing countries and territories in the past. As far as I can tell, ccTLDs have been removed from the DNS root on only five occasions since ICANN came into existence in 1998. While the circumstances differ, in all but one case the trigger for the deletion was a change to the International Standards Organization's ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 list, which ICANN uses to decide who gets a ccTLD and what ccTLD they get. .yu -- Yugoslavia The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia broke up in 1992 due to a bloody civil war, but it wasn't until 2010 that ICANN finally removed .yu from the root. Splinter nations Slovenia, Croatia, North Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina were all assigned their own new country codes -- .si, .hr, .mk and .ba -- in the 1990s, but the now independent and separate states of Serbia and Montenegro, initially known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, carried on using .yu. When the country renamed itself the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, the ISO list was updated to assign it the new code .cs, but the corresponding ccTLD was never actually delegated before the country broke up again in 2006, getting the ccTLDs .rs and .me the following year. RNIDS, the .rs registry, carried on running .yu for a few years while it transitioned registrants to the new ccTLD. The process was not entirely painless, and ICANN had to keep .yu live longer than planned, before eventually deleting it April 1, 2010. .tp -- Portuguese Timor The country we now know as East Timor or Timor Leste started the 21st century as Portuguese Timor, under Indonesian occupation. Its ccTLD was .tp. After the country gained its independence in 2002, it renamed itself Timor Leste and the ISO assigned it the new code TL, deleting TP from its list. IANA delegated .tl to the local government in 2005 and encouraged .tp registrants to migrate, but it took a full decade before it followed through and removed .tp from the root, in February 2015. .zr -- Zaire The first ccTLD to get deleted by IANA under ICANN's watch was .zr, which was no longer needed after Zaire changed its name to Democratic Republic of the Congo, receiving the code CD from ISO, in 1997. The pre-ICANN IANA delegated .cd to the newly named country in 1997 and the registry operator set about moving .zr names to .cd. By 2001, that process was completed and .zr was deleted from the root. .an -- Netherlands Antilles The Netherlands Antilles was a collection of former Dutch colonies in the Caribbean, until the territory split, with its component islands receiving new statuses under Dutch law, in 2010. The ccTLD was .an. Curacao got .cw, Sint Maarten (Dutch part) got the sexy-sounding .sx, and Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba got to share .bq. ISO removed AN from its list. The transition was a bit more complicated than usual, as .an registrants had to transfer to a new ccTLD based on what island they were on, but the local authorities managed it and within five years .an went poof. .um -- United States Minor Outlying Islands This one's unique in that it was deleted apparently simply because the registry operator couldn't be bothered with it any more. The United States Minor Outlying Islands are pretty much unpopulated, but strategically well-located, islands belonging to the US. There's eight in the Pacific and one in the Caribbean. Its ccTLD was operated by the University of Southern California until 2006, when somebody at ICANN noticed it appeared to be broken. When it approached USC for an explanation, it was told "they were no longer interested in managing the .UM domain". It had no registered domains, so there was no need for a transition plan and IANA deleted it from the root the following year. The islands and their code are still on the ISO list and are still eligible for their ccTLD. Presumably it's only the fact that the US government has asserted its authority over .um that has prevented an opportunist Just Some Guy registry from snapping it up to market .um domains as the leading destination for indecisive people or something. What does this mean for .io? ICANN's policy on ccTLDs is pretty straightforward -- your territory has to be on the ISO 3166 list and the ccTLD has to match the code ISO gives you. If your code drops off the list, you have five years, extensible to 10, to conduct an orderly transition before the TLD is retired. Much like Portuguese Timor changing its name to Timor Leste to shuck off its enforced colonial branding, it seems inconceivable that the Chagos Archipelago will continue to be known as the British Indian Ocean Territory. The key questions for .io registrants are: will the renamed BIOT keep the IO assignment on the ISO list, and will the archipelago continue to qualify as a distinct territory eligible for ccTLD status? If BIOT simply becomes part of Mauritius, no longer recognized by the UN as a distinct territory, .io gains an existential threat. It would drop off ISO's list and ICANN could issue it a retirement notice. If BIOT remains a distinct territory and remains eligible for a ccTLD, the possibilities become a whole lot more interesting. If Mauritius decides to change the territory's name, there's no problem. But if it asks ISO for a corresponding change of two-letter code to better reflect its new name, .io's future is in doubt. If the name is changed to something like "Chagos" and Mauritius wants a "C" code, only CB, CE and CJ are still available. Theoretically, the government of Mauritius could unilaterally force an undesirable string change on Identity Digital, the American company that runs the .io registry, forcing a years-long migration to the newly chosen ccTLD. I can't imagine many of .io's hundreds of thousands of registrants, particularly those using .io as a domain hack or to hitch themselves to a cool tech-startup bandwagon, being happy with a forced migration to, say, .cj. The power to decoolify an entire TLD would be a compelling weapon in a redelegation fight. I'm deep into speculative territory here, but I can't help but feel that Identity Digital is going to have to give Mauritius some money at some point. Another possibility is that the registry, one of ICANN's biggest funders, could lobby ICANN to change its policies and somehow grandfather .io in as a stateless ccTLD. The fact that ICANN hasn't acted to remove .su from the root, thirty years after the Soviet Union collapsed, could be seen as precedent. The answers to .io's future might be found in the proposed UK-Mauritius treaty, but that has yet to be published. As it has to be ratified by the UK Parliament we can expect it to enter the public domain before long. Related Tweet Tagged: .an, .tp, .um, .yu, .zr, biot, chagos, iana, ICANN, identity digital, io, redelegation, retirement Comments (4) 1. [e6b] Jan Horak says: October 5, 2024 at 5:28 am Will be renamed from British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritian Indian Ocean Territory and it will keep .io domain Reply 2. [c9f] Petruska says: October 5, 2024 at 10:49 am Slovenia = .si !!! Reply + [178] Kevin Murphy says: October 5, 2024 at 8:38 pm Thanks. .sv is of course El Salvador. Reply 3. [fdc] Christopher Ambler says: October 8, 2024 at 6:15 pm Decoolify? That's a fine new term; perhaps my new band name Reply Add Your Comment Click here to cancel reply. [ ] Name (required) [ ] Mail (will not be published) (required) [ ] Web site (optional) [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Submit Comment [domaindays] Recent Comments * Christopher Ambler: Decoolify? That's a fine new term; perhaps my new band name :-) * Tommy: All useless extensions. It's like the same bucket of shi- of people hang out together. They keep pum * Calvin: How many are resolvable on say, a standard android web browser? Or any standard web browser. Or e * TJP: Two quotes in this article tell me Epik and this new clown CEO are not to be trusted. 1. "When * Kevin Murphy: Thanks. .sv is of course El Salvador. * Petruska: Slovenia = .si !!! * Jan Horak: Will be renamed from British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritian Indian Ocean Territory and it will * David Conrad: True, although if IO gets transferred to Mauritius, I'd imagine there might be some changes in how . * Thomas Ment: Many countries have separate country codes and tlds for separate areas, UK, US, France, Netherlands, * Rubens Kuhl: Yeah, the ccTLD for Comoros, right ? * Kevin Murphy: I think that was just a name change rather than a change of sovereignty. * Mark Thorpe: Unfortunately .WS lives on! * Mark Thorpe: Let the drama begin! Keep Calm and Buy .Com * Braden Pollock: Western Samoa also disappeared when they became just Samoa but .ws lives on. * Rob Golding: CreatorSEO have a much better graphic for it at https://creatorseo.com/why-your-domain-name-is-impo * avri: > are perhaps more surprising, given the registries are run by a former ICANN director. Do yo * Reallybigidea.com: This is insane. I still don't accept this tld as io or co. Very high renewal fees. Ai is not good * Rubens Kuhl: And if .br deducts the USD 92k from the FY25 contribution due to the RSP program, it might only pay * Kevin Murphy: I prefer "web extension". * Matthias Pfeifer: You guys and ICANN are all wrong: This is obviously an "internet address". * Reallybigidea.com: Thanks Gosh they aren't calling it URL. Dear Google, Domains aren't URLs "Search or type URL" * Rubens Kuhl: My guess is exactly that. 20c for registrar fee and 30c for registry transaction fee is a likely out * Frank Michlick: The slide still doesn't really answer the question. It shows a hostname (www.icann.org) but doesn't * ICANN Insider: Will never pass. Soon to be rejected * Kevin Murphy: It's weird that NTIA hasn't said anything yet. Even weirder that Verisign hasn't said anything. * Krish: Isn't Verisign's pricing still dependent on meeting between DOC and Verisign ? * Kevin Murphy: Maybe they'll do both. * Andrew: Couldn't they just increase the 18 cent "tax" rather than the per domain fee? Or is it restricted ho * Web-designs.net: I was a big fun of new gs in 2016-2019 sold many. But.Now I want to say they are sucks . New gtld * Josh: May the best applicant win. ICANN will frown upon alt root providers trying to secure gTLDs no doubt * Rubens Kuhl: Even USD 225k does not encompass the same costs as 2012 round. When you add the 92k RSP fee, the app * Kevin Murphy: Thanks. II've corrected iit. * Owen: The separation of the two Mercks actually occurred when the US entered WWI (and not WWII). * Rubens Kuhl: Correction: .sas was a post-application JV formed to settle the contention. So this case wouldn't be * Kevin Murphy: I disagree on your first point. When there are 45,000 registered domains but only 7,000 in the zone * Helmuts: My bet would be that most are real domain registrations by x companies and webmasters. A very strong * Rubens Kuhl: JVs were and will be allowed pre-application as well, like what did .sas (JV between software compan * Kevin Murphy: In this case it seems the JV was formed years ago and the gTLD has not yet been delegated. * Elaine Pruis: JV's are only prohibited during the application evaluation process. ROs will be free to make busines * Steve GOBIN: Congratulations to Bruce! He had an excellent reputation as a board member of ICANN, whereas AUDA h * John Berryhill: With the ban on forming joint ventures, this sort of resolution of an intractable conflict will not * Kevin Murphy: Based on my incomplete research, I think .xxx makes more money from registrations than it does from * Helmuts: hmm.. this is an interesting thought.. yes, it would be interesting to see these numbers. * John Berryhill: I failed to note that if the idea is that one can switch to the "second choice" on the condition tha * John Berryhill: "The Board views the ability to submit an alternate string at the time of application as a path to * John Berryhill: "How difficult is it to choose friendly, tolerant and peaceful countries?" It is apparently becom * John Berryhill: It would still be interesting to know whether, on balance, .xxx generates more revenue from domain r * Matthias Pfeifer: Well, this wouldn't solve the problem which string a applicant prefer - this doesn't prevent the com * Jovenet Consulting: I find this is genius from the ICANN text : "Ability to submit alternate strings: Applicants should * Helmuts: ICANN meetings should not be organized in such countries. Period. How difficult is it to choose frie (c) 2010-2022 Domain Incite