.io domains may disappear: the ups and downs of domain names changed by geopolitics

Original author: Gareth Edwards

Original translation: TechFlow

Introduction

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

Not only in the cryptocurrency world, .io domain names are also often favored by emerging technology companies; from github.io to many innovative start-ups, .io seems to have become a trend symbol in the technology world.

The British government recently announced that it would transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius, a seemingly distant diplomatic decision that could lead to the disappearance of .io domains.

This article will take you deep into this incident, revealing the little-known connection between the digital world and real politics, and its possible profound impact on the technology industry.

The original text is as follows:

Gareth Edwards, who usually chronicles the forgotten history of Silicon Valley in his column, “Crazy People.”

When the British government announced last week that it was transferring sovereignty of an island in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius, Gareth immediately recognized the digital implications: the end of the .io domain extension.

In this article, he explores how geopolitical shifts are unexpectedly disrupting the digital world. His exploration of historical precedents—like the collapse of the Soviet Union—provides valuable context for tech founders, users, and observers. Read this article to learn about the unexpected intersection of international relations and internet infrastructure.

On October 3, the British government announced that it would relinquish sovereignty over a group of tiny tropical atolls in the Indian Ocean called the Chagos Islands. The islands will be handed over to the neighboring island nation of Mauritius, about 1,100 miles off the southeast coast of Africa.

This story didn’t make tech news, but maybe it should have.

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

Whether it’s Github.io, gaming site itch.io, or Google I/O (arguably a trend that started in 2008), .io has always been a fixture in the tech lexicon. Its popularity can sometimes be explained by the fact that it stands for “input/output,” or any data that a system receives and processes.

But what people often fail to acknowledge is that it’s more than just a playful domain. It’s a country code top-level domain (CCCID) associated with a country, which means it involves politics that extend far beyond the digital world.

The United Kingdom and the United States have operated a major military base on the Chagos Archipelago (formally known as the British Indian Ocean Territory) since 1968, but neighboring Mauritius has long disputed British sovereignty. The Mauritian government has long argued that Britain illegally retained control when Mauritius gained independence. The dispute, which lasted more than 50 years, has finally been resolved. In return for a 99-year lease for the military base, the islands will become part of Mauritius.

Once the treaty is signed, the British Indian Ocean Territory will cease to exist. Various international bodies will update their records. In particular, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will remove the country code IO from its specifications. The Internet Domain Name Authority (IANA), which creates and delegates top-level domains, uses this specification to determine which top-level country domains should exist. Once IO is deleted, IANA will reject any new .io domain name registrations. It will also automatically begin the process of deactivating existing ones. (There is no official count of the number of existing .io domain names.

Officially, .io and countless websites will disappear. At a time when some domains can be worth millions of dollars, it’s a sobering reminder that forces beyond the internet still shape our digital lives.

When domain names outlive countries

Its extremely rare to remove an entire country or territory from a world map, so one might ask why the process of removing a domain name is so clearly documented.

The answer is simple: history.

There are two organizations responsible for domains and Internet addresses. IANA decides what should and shouldnt become top-level domains, such as .com, .org, .uk or .nz. The organization originated at the University of Southern California, but wasnt formally established until 1994, when it won a contract in the United States. As the Internet grew, it became clear that a more formal setup was needed. By 1998, IANA became part of a new organization: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Based in the United States, ICANN was given broader responsibilities, overseeing the operational stability of the Internet and ensuring that international interests were represented.

The two organizations may seem to play mundane 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 delegated it to the Soviet Union. Less than a year later, the Soviet Union collapsed. At the time, no one thought about what would happen to the .su domain - the Internet as we know it was still many years away from developing. As a result, the .su domain was handed over to Russia to operate alongside Russias own domain (.ru). The Russian government agreed that it would eventually be shut down, but there were no clear rules surrounding its governance or when that should happen.

But ambiguity is the worst thing that can happen to a top-level domain. Unwittingly, this decision created an environment that made .su a digital Wild West. Today, it is a mostly unpoliced top-level domain, a home for deniable Russian dark operations, and a place for supremacist content and cybercrime.

A few years later, in 1992, IANA learned a similar painful lesson at the end of the Balkan Wars, when Yugoslavia broke up into several smaller countries. In the aftermath, Serbia and Montenegro tried to adopt the name Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Slovenia and Croatia objected, claiming that this meant that Serbia and Montenegro were the legal successors of Yugoslavia. The two countries protested to the United Nations.

Throughout the early 90s, the international issue of the names of Serbia and Montenegro raged, and IANA was still unsure who should control .yu, the top-level domain for Yugoslavia. Email access and the Internet were now integral to research and international discussion, and IANA’s ambiguity led to an extraordinary academic espionage operation.

According to journalist Kaloyan Kolev, Slovenian academics traveled to Serbia in late 1992. Their destination was the University of Belgrade in the countrys capital. Upon arrival, they broke into the university and stole all the hosting software and the domain records for the top-level domain .yu, everything they needed to seize control. For the next two years, the .yu domain was informally operated by ARNES (Slovenian Academic and Research Network), which repeatedly denied its involvement in the initial heist.

ARNES rejected all requests for new domains from Serbian institutions, severely limiting the countrys ability to participate in the growing Internet community. The situation became so chaotic that in 1994, IANA founding manager Jon Postel personally stepped in and overturned the IANA regulations, forcing ownership of the .yu domain back to the University of Belgrade.

In 2006, Montenegro declared independence from Serbia. With the digital revolution firmly underway, IANA was determined not to let chaos reignite. It created two new top-level domains: .rs for Serbia and .me for Montenegro. Both releases required that .yu would be officially terminated. That didnt happen until 2010, but IANA finally got its way. In the aftermath, the organization established a new, stricter set of rules and timelines for top-level domain expiration that exist today.

These rules will soon apply to .io domains. They are firm, they are clear. Ideally in three to five years, once the country code ceases to exist, the domain name must also cease to exist. Just like a tenant is told that their landlord is selling the house and they must move, every person and company using a .io domain name will be told the same thing.

The persistence of real-world history

.io is popular among startups, especially those involved in cryptography, which often subscribe to one of the original principles of the internet: the independence that cyberspace confers on its users.

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

IANA could probably fudge its own rules to allow .io to continue to exist. Money talks, and a lot of money is tied up in .io domains. However, Soviet and Yugoslav history still looms large, and IANA may feel that playing fast and loose with top-level domains will only come back to haunt it.

Whatever happens, the warning to future technology founders is clear: be careful when choosing your top-level domain. Physical history is never as separate from our digital future as we think.