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Will Donald Trump be .io’s white knight?

Kevin Murphy, November 14, 2024, 13:05:03 (UTC), Domain Policy

US President-Elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration is reportedly looking into torpedoing a deal between the UK and Mauritius that raises serious questions about the future of the .io ccTLD.

According to The Independent, Trump wants to veto the deal that would see the UK cede sovereignty over most of the Chagos islands, currently known as the British Indian Ocean Territory, and is seeking legal advice from the Pentagon.

The largest of the islands, Diego Garcia, is home to a secretive US-UK military base used to support US actions in the Middle East. Native Chagossians were forcibly removed from the territory to allow its construction in the early 1970s.

The proposed UK-Mauritius treaty would allow the base to continue to exist for at least 99 years, but critics of the deal reportedly worry that Mauritius taking over the rest of BIOT would encourage Chinese espionage.

Since the treaty was announced, questions have been raised about the .io ccTLD, which is assigned to BIOT and commercialized globally by Identity Digital via a UK shell company.

ICANN confirmed in writing today that if the International Standards Organization removes IO from its list of territories, “a five-year time window will commence during which time usage of the domain will need to be phased out”.

But there are other considerations that have received fewer column inches. Head of the IANA function, which looks after the root zone, Kim Davies added:

Country-code top-level domains are operated for the benefit of the country or territory they represent. Managers of these domains must maintain an operational nexus with that country to ensure they have appropriate local accountability mechanisms for how the domain name is operated. Should this jurisdictional change take effect, changes may be required to ensure proper accountability to the new country.

In other words, there’s a scenario in which .io disappears and a scenario in which Identity Digital and Mauritius have to come to some kind of arrangement. Both would cost the registry money, but the latter seems like it would be less costly for registrants.

But if a new Trump administration decides to ignore international law and somehow persuades the UK to withdraw from the deal, the status quo for .io could persist.

The UK-Mauritius treaty has not yet been ratified. It’s expected to be debated by the UK parliament, where the new Labour government certainly has the votes to get it passed, early next year.

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Comments (1)

  1. Jovenet Consulting says:
    November 14, 2024 at 1:41 pm

    I wonder how long it is going to take for a .TRUMP ?

    Reply

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