It does seem likely that ICANN won't kill off all existing registrations, but this is supposition, not an answer. If we look only at what they've done historically to ccTLDs the most likely outcome is that new registrations become locked and ICANN attempts to phase the .io TLD out.
They may break that trend now given how much they've already polluted the TLD space, but they may not, and I think your comment is a bit too optimistic. People with .io domains should absolutely be paying close attention here.
Edit: gnfargbl found the actual written policy [0].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain#...
There was also a .um for US minor outlying islands, removed in 2008.
It's absolutely possible that someone will asking for an exceptional reservation for IO at ISO and it can be kept alive forever.
I agree it's possible, I disagree with OP that it's a foregone conclusion.
At this point if I were the owner of a .io domain I would treat that as the unlikely best case scenario and start looking at what domain I'd fall back to if ICANN sticks to their rules.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2
Breaking with ISO 3166-1 comes with the risk that a new ISO-standardized country cannot claim its TLD.
So in order to reclaim the TLD as generic, startups dont just have to persuade ICANN, they have to make the case to ISO that IO is a significant enough code that it should be an "exceptional reservation" like UK, UN, EU, and SU.
At one point, it was intended that moving the UK's internet resources to .gb would be the final stage of the transition from the internal JANET system.
By the time I first heard about that in the early 90s, that had already gained legendary "that'll never happen" status - and, sure enough, the transition was declared complete when the last UK.AC.SITE <-> ac.uk mail gateways were retired circa 1996.
Apparently "United" and "Kingdom" aren't valid for ISO, so they went with ignoring part of the name completely.
Jump a hundred years forwards to a hypothetical future where the USA is fragmenting, Iowa becomes a country, IA and IW are already assigned to some other countries that have sprung up, and ISO is somehow still relevant. When Iowa says “we want IO”, what do you say? “Sorry, we used that code a hundred years ago for a tiny island in the middle of nowhere, how do you feel about YA, it sounds a little like Iowa, right?”
(Admittedly if the USA fragmented, each state into a country, you’d have far worse problems than Iowa. Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana… eight Ms, and already M_ is down to only three available, MB, MI and MJ. M is a popular letter to start names with.)
There are already a few country codes assigned where I can’t see where the second letter came from, e.g. AW, AX, BJ, BQ, CW, GW, SX, PW. A definite habit of giving a W or X if they can’t come up with anything better.
A few country codes have already been reassigned once (having formerly been either assigned or reserved indefinitely, then deleted): AI, BQ, GE, LT, ME, RU, SK.
Accepting registrations for a domain is pretty useless when those domains aren't going to resolve to anything.
This was a known and willfully ignored business risk for these places.
Doesn't seem like a random wheeler dealer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kane_(entrepreneur)
> from 2010 to 2017 was one of seven people entrusted with a credit card-like key to restart portions of the World Wide Web or internet which are secured with DNSSEC,
He also claimed he paid these countries... somehow... and yet the UK government said he didn't. A shady wheeler-dealer with exceptionally good connections to the people that ran DNS before IANA/ICANN existed.
https://fortune.com/2020/08/31/crypto-fraud-io-domain-chagos...
> The terms of the agreement remain secret, but in 2014 Kane told me that a portion of the .io proceeds went to the British government, to be deposited into an account for the administration of the Chagos Islands. Responding to a subsequent parliamentary question that year from Lord Avebury, a liberal civil rights advocate, the government said that it had no such plans, because it received no revenues from ICB.
> Kane did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article. The U.K.’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office declined to comment on the Chagossians’ claim to the domain extension and again denied that the British government receives any .io proceeds.
Now it seems likely I will only have to worry about the hedge funds!
Alternatively ICANN might (should imo) transfer the TLD registrar to Mauritius.
It's a novelty TLD, and anyone who used it expecting stability should have looked for a different flag of convenience.
I'm surprised this wouldn't be the default behavior for existing owners? Kinda making me re-think buying an IO domain for my personal stuff. Are gTLDs the safest option?
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/12/24071036/queer-af-mastodo...
Of course, in the end, it'll probably end up with no end-user impact because someone (the existing operator or a new one) will negotiate a deal ($$$) with Mauritius that will provide continuity of operations and (hopefully) be more beneficial to the people of Chagos.
Tl;dr: "someone will likely run .io until ICANN turns it off, which it probably will, but we don't know who that is right now".
To be honest, if .io is not handed back to the Chagossian, it would be better to shut it down and turn the page on a pretty shameful page of internet history.
An analogy: a bunch of indigenous people are kicked off their island, and coffee is grown there by the people who evicted them. You buy the coffee, and the people who have the rightful claim to the land don't receive any of the profits.
To add insult to injury, the coffee is named after the island it's grown on, and that's mostly why it's popular - because it's a really good name for coffee (maybe it's called Java Island).
That's basically what the .io domain is.
Many territories have TLDs even if they're just a region of another country, like .tf and .re in the Indian Ocean which are on France. So there's no reason .io could not just continue without change (other than NIC ownership) now that it's part of Mauritius.
He's since sold it on and now a hedge fund owns it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.io
Officially, the British Indian Ocean Territories will cease to exist, therefore so would the ISO 2-letter country code. However, ccTLDs have outlasted countries before, notably ".su" for the no longer existing USSR. I suspect that IANA would prioritise not breaking millions of domain names over trying to police ccTLDs.
Google's view on the matter is that .io is already effectively a gTLD rather than a ccTLD, like with .nu, .to, .tv, as most of the registrants run websites with a global audience or at least an audience other than the island nations whose ccTLDs they are.