Future of .io domains uncertain as UK hands over Chagos islands

The future of the .io ccTLD is up in the air today with the announcement that the UK is to hand over the British Indian Ocean Territory, also known as the Chagos Archipelago, to Mauritius.

The two governments announced today that they will sign a treaty agreeing “that Mauritius is sovereign over the Chagos Archipelago”. It’s being called the end of British colonialism in Africa.

Under the broad-ranging 99-year deal, native Chagossians, forcibly exiled since the late 1960s, will be free to return to the islands, apart from Diego Garcia, which is home to a strategically important UK-US military base.

There’s no talk yet of the future the ccTLD, of course — the governments have bigger fish to fry — but the change of sovereignty could have interesting implications for the .io registry and its registrants.

The positive spin is that owning a .io domain could now be seen as a less dubious ethical choice.

For almost a decade, largely unsuccessful boycotts of .io have been organized by tech bros upset with the treatment of the Chagossians. Now that they’re getting their land back, the queasiness of supporting “digital colonialism” might go away.

The bad news is that a change of sovereignty could ultimately lead to a change of registry, or the ccTLD disappearing entirely.

ICANN takes its lead from the International Standards Organization, specifically the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 list, when it comes to deciding whether a ccTLD deserves to exist and what two-letter code it gets.

If BIOT ceases to exist and is removed from the ISO list, as seems likely, there’s a strong case to be made that .io should cease to exist too.

Whether ICANN would actually remove .io from the DNS root is another matter, of course. While it has removed ccTLDs before when the associated country disappears, it has done so in a measured, managed fashion.

The Org also seems quite happy for .su to stay in the root, thirty-odd years after the Soviet Union fell apart.

But what of redelegation? There’s already a campaign to get .io redelegated to the Chagossians, and now that the UK is relinquishing its control of BIOT to Mauritius, the redelegation claim could be strengthened by the weight of a national government.

However, while .io is assigned to BIOT, the UK government says it has no formal relationship with the registry, so a change of ownership of the territory doesn’t necessarily mean the ccTLD changes owners.

The registry is run by a private UK company, Internet Computer Bureau, which nowadays is basically a shell owned by an Irish company that is in turn owned by US-based Identity Digital and its parent Beignet.

And ICANN typically doesn’t redelegate ccTLDs without the consent of the losing registry, which in many cases is Just Some Guy who spotted a business opportunity in the 1990s.

Niue, the Pacific island nation, has been fighting fruitlessly for control of .nu for two decades, for example, but the extant registry doesn’t want to hand it over so ICANN has not acted.

As I reported earlier this week, .io had turnover of almost $40 million last year, so it seems unlikely that Identity Digital would follow the UK’s lead and just hand it over.

While the registry does not disclose its registration numbers, the revenue suggests it’s possible over a million .io domains have been registered.

7 Comments Tagged: iana, ICANN, identity digital, internet computer bureau, io, redelegation

.ai now has over half a million names

Anguilla’s .ai ccTLD added 54,372 domain names in the last quarter, according to the registry’s web site.

The total today is 533,068 domains, compared to 478,696 on July 1, according to an update posted this afternoon. The .ai domains under management number was 306,861 about a year ago.

.ai now has about as many registered domains as Finland’s .fi or Identity Digital’s .live.

The impressive growth is of course due to the string matching the abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence.

1 Comment Tagged: ai

UK and Israel cut ICANN funding

The ccTLD registries for UK and Israel cut their funding to ICANN by the largest amounts in the Org’s last financial year, according to the latest numbers.

ICANN received mostly voluntary ccTLD contributions totaling $2,135,937 in its fiscal 2024, which ended June 30, according to its report, which was published (pdf) a couple weeks ago. That’s down $80,302 from the $2,216,240 it received in FY23.

The biggest single reason for the decline is that Nominet, the .uk registry, slashed its contribution from its usual $225,000 tribute by $75,000 to $150,000 in FY24.

Under ICANN guidelines (pdf) for ccTLDs, registries with over five million domains under management should contribute the maximum $225,000 a year. While .uk has been in decline for a while, it still has well over 10 million DUM.

But Nominet was the only ccTLD still paying the $225,000. All the other ccTLDs with over five million domains were already paying substantially less.

The Netherlands reduced its contribution from $225,000 to $180,000 in FY23. Germany has not given ICANN more than $130,000 a year in the last five years. China always pays $45,000. Brazil pays $100,000.

Nick Wenban-Smith, Nominet’s general counsel told us: “Our relationship with ICANN has not changed. We are a long-standing supporter of the organisation in many ways, lending our resources to policy work and other community efforts alongside our annual financial contribution.”

Israel is the second big funding-cutter in the latest report. It had been giving the recommended $15,000 for its 250,000+ domains, but reduced that to just $5,000 in FY24, despite its DUM being up slightly over the period.

Registries from nine territories that contributed $1,000 or less every year from FY20 to FY23 did not contribute at all in FY24. These include Nigeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Malawi, Guernsey, Jersey, Saint Lucia, Tokelau, and the US Virgin Islands.

The lack of any money from Tokelau’s .tk is expected given the death of the registry. Jersey and Guernsey are perhaps more surprising, given the registries are run by a former ICANN director.

A handful of other ccTLDs from small territories that have only sporadically given in the past did not contribute in FY24.

Fourteen registries contributed more in FY24 than they did in FY23, but the difference amounted to just $13,000 extra cash in ICANN’s coffers. South Africa, Slovenia, Vietnam, Tanzania, and Mongolia all paid $1,000 or more over FY23.

Russia, which stopped providing funding in FY23 despite its almost six million DUM, also did not give any money in FY24.

2 Comments Tagged: .il, .uk, budget, cctlds, contribution, ICANN, isoc-il, nominet

Twitter now up-to-date on linkification

Twitter appears to have dragged itself into the 2020s with the linkification function of its service, after years of complaints.

On the web version of its service at least, Twitter now correctly makes domains in all the newest TLDs into clickable links automatically, with no http:// prefix required.

This means users are able to share clickable domains in .spa, .kids and .music, the three gTLDs delegated after Twitter’s previous delegation cut-off point of around April 2020.

It’s not clear to me when the change was made, or whether the fix also applies to the Twitter app on Android or iOS devices.

It’s equally not clear whether the change is due to Twitter’s own engineering, or whether a third-party library somewhere in its software stack was updated independently.

Regardless, it’s good news for the registries and registrants concerned, particularly DotMusic, whose .music gTLD goes on sale today.

Twitter came in for criticism from an ICANN engineer earlier this year for ignoring outreach efforts on Universal Acceptance, the program that aims to get all TLDs functioning properly across all software platforms.

Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, is understood to have been far more responsive, following complaints last year from the .tube registry operator.

Comment Tagged: .kids, .music, .spa, ICANN, new gTLDs, twitter, universal acceptance

Moment of truth as .music domains finally go on sale

After a wait of over 15 years, startup registry DotMusic is bringing .music domains to general availability today.

A week-long Early Access Period is due to start this afternoon, with prices initially measured in the thousands of dollars, before regular GA with standard pricing — around $60 retail — kicks off October 8.

Participating registrar 101domain has published an EAP price list and timetable, showing prices starting at $11,999 today, dropping to $6,299, $1,999, $799, $199, $169, and $139 over the following six days. The prices drop at 1600 UTC each day.

While .music is certainly among the strongest strings to emerge from the new gTLD program to date, there are substantial, self-imposed barriers to broad adoption.

.music is a rare example of a “Community” gTLD, with additional restrictions — built into its ICANN registry contract — on who can register names and what kind of content they can publish.

DotMusic’s published policies say that registrants must verify their identities and connection to the music industry and obtain a special code called a Music ID within 90 days of registration.

Newly registered domains will be on Registry Server Hold Status until this code is obtained, meaning they won’t be included in the .music zone file and won’t resolve on the internet.

Failure to obtain the Music ID within 90 days means DotMusic can delete or suspend the domain with no refunds. After a registrant has a .music ID, it can be reused to activate subsequent registrations.

A sister company of DotMusic called ID.music will be responsible for verifying the identity of registrants and their “nexus” to the music industry. It announced last week it’s partnered with a company called Shufti to verify IDs.

DotMusic is building additional services around the Music ID. A Music Hub is expected to feature services designed to help artists connect with and cultivate their fan base.

The launch so far appears to be a bit messy, with not much hype and some confusion about certain details, which is worrying given how long .music has been under development.

Domains being promoted for Music Hub services supposedly available at launch, such as search.music and channels.music, do not appear in the latest .music zone file and do not resolve.

It’s also not entirely clear what the official registry web site is. IANA lists nic.music, but music.us and get.music have also been used and registry.music appears to be the most up-to-date.

CentralNic is also being touted as .music’s back-end registry services provider both on the registry’s registrar-onboarding web site and by some participating registrars, but I’m pretty certain DotMusic switched to Tucows a few months ago.

gTLDs with onerous registration restrictions historically have not fared particularly well in the market, where registrars are not keen on products that cause shopping cart friction or risk spawning support calls.

DotMusic seems to done itself a favor by making registrant verification a post-registration hoop to jump through, moving most of the complexity to the registry.

.music had 213 domains in its zone file yesterday but, due to the restrictions, it’s going to be difficult to use this metric to judge the success of the launch in future.

Comment Tagged: .music, dotmusic, new gTLDs

ICANN fixes embarrassing “What is a Domain Name?” mistake

Good news, everyone! ICANN knows what a domain name is!

The Org has quietly corrected a slide deck, designed as a high-level introduction to the new gTLD program’s Next Round, that seemed to mislabel the components of a domain name.

When it was first published in early September, the offending slide looked like this:

When I saw it, for a few moments I was genuinely worried I’d had another stroke or, worse, been wrong for a quarter century. Surely ICANN, the organization that oversees the global DNS, knew more about this stuff than I do?

Rather than call an ambulance immediately, I tweeted a screengrab on Twitter to get the reassurance of the four people still on that platform that I had not lost my mind.

Now, in the same ICANN deck (pdf), apparently updated September 19, the slide looks like this:

The deck is part of a “Champions Toolkit”, a bunch of freebie marketing materials made available for people who want to market the Next Round, particularly in under-served regions, on ICANN’s behalf.

5 Comments Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, next round

Another ccTLD opens up its second level

Kuwait has become the latest country to make second-level domain registrations possible directly under its national ccTLD.

The registry, government regulator the Communication and Information Technology Regulatory Authority (CITRA), said last week that it’s launching direct 2LD regs under .kw with an initial six-month sunrise period that has already started.

CITRA said in a press release that this first launch phase allows “government entities, registered trademark owners, and holders of third-level domains (.com.kw/.net.kw/.org.kw)” to register names.

The current three-level structure has six subdivisions, also including .ind.kw for individuals, .gov.kw for governmental entities, and .edu.kw for educational institutions. Local presence restrictions appear to apply to all.

While much of CITRA’s web site is available in English, its 2LD policies appear to be only published so far in Arabic, in PDFs that resist machine translation.

Domains in .kw currently cost about KWD15 (about $50) a year. Kuwait does not have an Arabic version of the ccTLD, but Arabic script is supported at the second and third levels.

Comment Tagged: .kw, citra, second-level

Reporter gains first access to .io island for decades

A BBC journalist is believed to have become the first reporter to visit Diego Garcia, the main island of the contested British Indian Ocean Territory that owns the .io domain, in decades.

Alice Cuddy was given access to the island after a court battle as part of the Beeb’s coverage of litigation against the UK government, which administers BIOT, and spent five days there.

Her coverage does not mention the contested .io ccTLD at all, but it does provide a fascinating account of her time on the island, the largest of the Chagos Archipelago, which is used almost exclusively as a US military base.

The article describes what sounds like a tropical island paradise populated almost exclusively by squaddies and giant crabs, but administered by Kim Jong Un.

Cuddy was escorted everywhere she went, had reporting restrictions imposed, and wasn’t allowed to visit certain places (including places as innocuous-sounding as a bowling alley).

The report delves into the history of the island, from the forcible deportation of its native population in the 1970s to its strategic use supporting US/UK military misadventures in the Middle East.

There’s also a fair bit of local color, with Cuddy noting that, despite the name, BIOT is in equal parts very much American. She notes the electrical outlets and currency are American, she dined on “tater tots”, and everybody drives on the wrong side of the road.

It’s well worth the read if you have a passing interest in the place .io technically represents.

As I reported earlier today, .io’s registry, part of Identity Digital, sold almost $40 million of domains last year.

Comment Tagged: biot, chagos, io

.io sells $40 million of domains after massive uptick

.io is now a $40-million-a-year domain, after a few years of impressive growth, judging by the registry’s latest financial reports.

UK-based Internet Computer Bureau, a subsidiary of Identity Digital, recently reported turnover of £29.6 million ($39.6 million) for 2023, up 13.9% on the £26.1 million it reported in 2022.

While that’s respectable growth, it pales compared to 2022 (which I don’t think was reported at the time), when turnover was up a whopping 59%.

Identity Digital does not reveal .io’s registration numbers, but with turnover of over $39 million and retail renewal prices bottoming out at around $39 a year, it seems quite possible that the TLD’s domains under management has reached seven digits.

When Afilias paid $70 million for ICB in 2017, it had turnover of $7 million and domains were reported at 270,000.

ICB’s gross margins are terrible — one can only assume its registry services deal with Identity Digital is rather generous to its parent — at 4.4%, with £28 million being paid out as cost of sales.

With another £3 million of unelaborated “administrative expenses”, ICB reported a 2023 net loss of £404,000 compared to a 2022 profit of £1.7 million. It paid £17,660 in UK tax, down from £277,703. It had just $69,000 cash on hand at the end of the year.

While ICB also runs .ac (Ascension Island) and .sh (Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha), it’s only .io that has seen broad uptake among the global domain-registering public. Tech firms like it because I/O means “input/output”.

.io is the ccTLD for the contested British Indian Ocean Territory, also known as the Chagos Archipelago, which is administered from the UK and used almost exclusively to house a strategically important US military base.

Comment Tagged: afilias, biot, chagos, financials, icb, identity digital, io

After five years, “useless” TLD has two web sites

An IDN ccTLD criticized as “useless” by locals when it was approved five years ago has fewer domains today than it did at launch, and a portfolio of web sites even a Simpson could count on one hand (twice).

The Greek-script .ευ (.xn--qxa6a) is one of two internationalized domain name versions of the European Union’s .eu, operated by EURid. It was approved by ICANN in September 2019 and went live two months later.

Today, it has just 2,561 domains under management, about 200 fewer than it did at the end of 2019, just a month after launch, according to stats on EURid’s web site.

A quick google on Google for .ευ domains returns results for only two indexed web sites, while googling on Bing returns four, of which two are undeveloped placeholders.

It’s not much of a result for a TLD that ICANN spent nine years twisting itself in knots to approve over the concerns of evaluators who thought it was visually too confusing to other two-letter strings.

Greek domainers criticized .ευ upon its approval, with Konstantinos Zournas calling it the “worst extension ever”, due largely to the fact that “EU” in Greek is εε, not ευ.

Comment Tagged: .eu, .xn--qxa6a, .ευ, eurid, ICANN, idns