.io domain names may disappear, the history of domain names affected by geopolitics.

Original Author: Gareth Edwards

Original compilation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Introduction

If you observe carefully, you will find that many projects in the crypto world have website domain names with the .io suffix.

Not only the crypto world, .io domains are also often favored by emerging tech companies; from github.io to many innovative startups, .io seems to have become a symbol of the tech industry.

The British government recently announced that it would transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, and this seemingly distant diplomatic decision could lead to the disappearance of .io domain names.

This article will take you deep into this event, revealing the little-known connection between the digital world and real-world politics, and its potential far-reaching impact on the technology industry.

The original content is as follows:

Gareth Edwards, who often records the forgotten history of Silicon Valley in his column ‘Crazy People’.

When the British government announced last week that it would transfer sovereignty of an island in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius, Gareth immediately realized its digital significance: the end of the .io domain extension.

In this article, he explores how geopolitical shifts unexpectedly disrupt the digital world. His exploration of historical precedents - such as the collapse of the Soviet Union - provides valuable context for technology founders, users, and observers. Read this article to discover the unexpected intersection of international relations and internet infrastructure.

On October 3rd, the British government announced that it would relinquish sovereignty over a tropical atoll in the Indian Ocean called the Chagos Islands. These islands will be transferred to the neighboring island nation of Mauritius, approximately 1,100 miles off the southeast coast of Africa.

This story didn’t become a tech news, but maybe it should.

The decision to transfer these islands to a new owner will result in the loss of one of the top-level domains preferred by the technology and gaming industries: .io.

Whether it’s Github.io, game website itch.io, or Google I/O (which can be said to be a trend since 2008), .io has always been a frequent visitor in the tech dictionary. Its popularity can sometimes be explained as an abbreviation for ‘input/output’ or any data that a system receives and processes.

However, what people often fail to recognize is that it is not just a playful domain. It is a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) that is associated with the country, which means that the political implications involved go far beyond the digital realm.

Since 1968, the UK and the US have operated a major military base on the Chagos Islands (officially known as the British Indian Ocean Territory), but neighboring Mauritius has long disputed British sovereignty. The Mauritian government has consistently maintained that the UK illegally retained control when Mauritius gained independence. This dispute has been ongoing for over 50 years and has finally been resolved. As a result of the return of the 99-year lease on the military base, these islands will become part of Mauritius.

Once the treaty is signed, the British Indian Ocean Territory will cease to exist. International organizations will update their records accordingly. In particular, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will remove the country code ‘IO’ from its specifications. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) will create and delegate top-level domains, using this specification to determine which top-level country/region domains should exist. Once IO is removed, IANA will refuse any new .io domain registrations. It will also automatically initiate the process of deactivating existing ones. (There is currently no official statistics on the number of existing .io domains.)

Officially, .io and countless websites will disappear. In today’s world, where some domain names can reach a value of millions of dollars, this is a shocking reminder that forces beyond the internet still affect our digital lives.

When domain names outlive countries

It is very rare to remove a whole country or territory from the world map, so some may wonder why the process of deleting domain names has such clear records.

The answer is simple: history.

There are two organizations responsible for domains and Internet Address. IANA decides what should and should not be a top-level domain, such as .com, .org, .uk, or .nz. The organization originated at the University of Southern California, but it wasn’t formally established until 1994 when it won a contract from the United States. With the development of the Internet, it became apparent that a more formal arrangement was needed. By 1998, IANA became part of a new organization: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is headquartered in the United States and is entrusted with broader responsibilities to oversee the stability of the Internet and ensure international interests are represented.

These two organizations may seem to play ordinary roles. But they find themselves making some of the toughest decisions on the global Internet.

On September 19, 1990, IANA created the top-level domain .su and authorized it to the Soviet Union. Less than a year later, the Soviet Union dissolved. At that time, no one thought about what would happen to the .su domain name - the internet as we know it today would take many years to develop. Therefore, the .su domain name was transferred to Russia and operated together with Russia’s own domain (.ru). The Russian government agreed that it would eventually be closed, but there were no clear rules around its governance or when it should happen.

However, for top-level domains, ambiguity is the worst thing. Unknowingly, this decision created an environment that made .su a digital wild west. Today, it is a top-level domain with hardly any police, a home to deniable Russian dark operations, a place of supremacist content and cybercrime.

Years later, in 1992, IANA learned a similar painful lesson after the end of the Yugoslav Wars, when Yugoslavia split into several smaller countries. Afterward, Serbia and Montenegro attempted to adopt the name ‘Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’. Slovenia and Croatia objected, claiming that this implied Serbia and Montenegro were the legitimate successors of Yugoslavia. The two countries lodged a protest with the United Nations.

In the early 1990s, the international issue of the name of Serbia and Montenegro was in turmoil, and IANA was still unsure who should control .yu, the top-level domain of Yugoslavia. Email access and the Internet are now indispensable for research and international discussions, and the ambiguity of IANA has led to an unusual academic espionage.

According to journalist Kaloyan Kolev, Slovenian scholars went to Serbia by the end of 1992. Their destination was the University of Belgrade, the capital of the country. Upon arrival, they broke into the university and stole all the custodial software and domain name records of the top-level domain .yu, which was everything they needed to take control. In the following two years, the .yu domain was informally operated by ARNES (Academic and Research Network of Slovenia), which repeatedly denied its involvement in the initial robbery.

ARNES rejected all requests from Serbian institutions for the new domain name, severely limiting the country’s ability to participate in the constantly rising online community. The situation became so chaotic that in 1994, Jon Postel, the founding manager of IANA, personally intervened and overturned IANA regulations, forcibly transferring ownership of the .yu domain name back to the University of Belgrade.

In 2006, Montenegro declared independence from Serbia. With the steady progress of the digital revolution, IANA was determined not to let chaos reign again. It created two new top-level domains: .rs for Serbia and .me for Montenegro. Both versions of the issuance required the formal termination of .yu. This did not happen until 2010, but IANA finally got its wish. After going through all this, the organization established a new and stricter set of rules and timelines for the expiration of existing top-level domains today.

These rules will soon apply to the .io domain. They are firm and they are clear. Ideally, within three to five years, once the country code no longer exists, the domain must also cease to exist. Just like tenants being told that their landlord is selling the house and they must move out, every individual and company using the .io domain will be told the same thing.

The Persistence of Real-World History

.io is very popular among startups, especially those companies involving encryption. These enterprises often adhere to a fundamental principle of the Internet — that cyberspace gives users a sense of independence.

However, the long tail of real-world history may force them to make significant changes.

IANA may fabricate its own rules to allow .io to continue to exist. Money talks, and a lot of money is tied to .io domain names. However, the history of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia still looms large, and IANA may feel that the rapid and loose handling of top-level domains will only come back to haunt it.

Whatever happens, the warning to future technology founders is clear: be careful when choosing top-level domain names. The history of the real world has never been as separate from our digital future as we imagine it to be.