If the country that owns IO ceases to exist then IANA will just make it an ICANN generic TLD. Such a widely used TLD won’t be allowed to disappear. The rules are all made up anyway.
Two letter TLDs are reserved for countries. No gTLDs use a two letter TLD.
I guess in theory you could make a new country called “Input Output”, get ISO3166 to be updated to specify “IO” as your country’s two letter abbreviation, then request the IO TLD from IANA.
Two letter TLDs are reserved for countries. No gTLDs use a two letter TLD.
According to the rules set by the org that controls the fate of IO. They can easily change the rules if they wanted. There is a vested interest in not losing IO, and nothing but their own rule to stop them. Who’s to tell them they can’t do whatever they want in this matter?
They could change the rules, but it took them many, many years to get to finalize the rules they’ve got today. IANA isn’t exactly a fast-moving organization.
Maybe they could make .io into a 3-character gTLD by adding a character to it. Moving all of the websites (except those actually relevant to the territory) over to a new gTLD in unison seems like it would reduce confusion for the people who use those sites. Knowing that acme.io is now acme.iox (or w/e) would make it easier on everyone.
That’s exactly what will happen.
Yep. This is such a weird fear monger topic.
If the country that owns IO ceases to exist then IANA will just make it an ICANN generic TLD. Such a widely used TLD won’t be allowed to disappear. The rules are all made up anyway.
Two letter TLDs are reserved for countries. No gTLDs use a two letter TLD.
I guess in theory you could make a new country called “Input Output”, get ISO3166 to be updated to specify “IO” as your country’s two letter abbreviation, then request the IO TLD from IANA.
According to the rules set by the org that controls the fate of IO. They can easily change the rules if they wanted. There is a vested interest in not losing IO, and nothing but their own rule to stop them. Who’s to tell them they can’t do whatever they want in this matter?
They could change the rules, but it took them many, many years to get to finalize the rules they’ve got today. IANA isn’t exactly a fast-moving organization.
Maybe they could make .io into a 3-character gTLD by adding a character to it. Moving all of the websites (except those actually relevant to the territory) over to a new gTLD in unison seems like it would reduce confusion for the people who use those sites. Knowing that acme.io is now acme.iox (or w/e) would make it easier on everyone.
That is not what will happen. 2 letter TLDs are reserved for ccTLDs.