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Re:Mali Government takes back .ml domain, brings down one of... by dylan604 on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:14PM (#36818182)
i wonder how small the number of people that actually understand what ccTLD means in the first place, let alone how geopolitical turmoil could negatively impact their cute little domain name.
Re:Mali Government takes back .ml domain, brings down one of... by tough on Friday July 21, 2023 @03:17PM (#36818238)
lmao as a holder of a .me domain hope montenegro is fine
Re:Mali Government takes back .ml domain, brings down one of... by JimBlackwood on Saturday July 22, 2023 @05:42AM (#36824846)
I don’t understand and have been going through the comments in hope for an explanation.
Re:Mali Government takes back .ml domain, brings down one of... by vel0city on Saturday July 22, 2023 @12:53PM (#36827754)
Every country that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) recognizes gets a two letter country-code top level domain (ccTLD). These are all two letter domains, as country codes are two letters. Some of these are kind of boring (.us or .ru or .pl) but some of these can be interesting (.tv for the nation of Tuvalu, .io for the British Indian Ocean Territories, .in for India). Sometimes countries will lease the management rights for a ccTLD to a private company to manage for a while, as most governments are either incompetent at managing these things or have more important things to care about.

Theoretically each country can change the rules of their country code at any time. These rules can be rather arbitrary and can technically happen whenever. As an example of a rule, the .us domain is only available to US entities.

Also, if the country ceases to be, there's a chance the ccTLD will go away, because that country doesn't exist. Hence the fear with .io, as the Indian Ocean Territories as a political unit may not last very long or .tv as the islands wash away and disappear with rising sea levels.

As others have mentioned, IANA isn't always fast at removing old ccTLDs. The .su domain for the Soviet Union still exists.

Re:Mali Government takes back .ml domain, brings down one of... by Ekaros on Saturday July 22, 2023 @05:59AM (#36824911)
Most recent example I think was .eu and UK leaving European Union... And that was orderly process. ccTLDs are entirely fine if you live or your business operates in the country in question. Outside that it is entirely up to them to do what they want.