Hey, guys... I just had this idea. If there are new countries Abkhazia and Ossetia, they will need a TLD (Top Level Domain). As USA doesn't recognize them as independent countries, will ICANN allocate the TLDs? What do you think? P.S. More gossip at Abkhazia - Ossetia TLD
ICANN is an independent, private non-profit corporation and as such is not governed by the policies of the US government. However there is a Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) which is comprised of several governmental officials and representatives on an international scale. I'd be more concerned about the stupidity behind creating more TLD's rather than the validity of them personally. The article you link to fails to mention the fact that GAC is a governmental body made up of several governments, not just one. Also, it fails to mention that ICANN is a private corp, not a US Governmental Body. The likelihood of the applications being denied based on the US's policy is hardly plausible in my estimation. BTW, are you really sure this is the appropriate category for this question? This is hardly of a political or religious nature. Its more about domains and or policy. Thanks!
Mia, thanks for pointing it out. I really feel this topic is more relevant to politics than to domains. I am aware that ICANN is a non-profit, non-government, etc. organization, but as we all know, everything in this world is connected with invisible strings And some situations has shown that in the domain world nothing is for certain. Let's mention .SU - Soviet Union doesn't exist but due to a very powerful lobby it is not dropped from IANA and it never will be. Thank you for this.
I don't think you have any strings to worry about given the make up of GAC. It's hardly biased. BTW, .SU does not exist because the Soviet Union predates ICANN by about 7 years. SSSR or USSR, the Soviet Union, was dissolved in 1991. As such, there is no need to assign a TLD country code to a country that does not exist any longer. Instead we use .RU for "Russia". Hope this clears that conspiracy up.
I think you are right on that. It does. It is alive and kicking. There is not, however, when .SU was assigned back in 1991 USSR was still alive. Now .SU is one of the oldest Eastern European domains. Not exactly true. Some do while others don't. You can freely register a .SU domain name for yourself, costs only $25. That's what I am referring to - it is possible to register a name under a TLD of a non-existent country. Fancy having a .SU? Go to https://www.nic.ru/en/ and register it legally, is is a government-based organisation, no fake. They are all active domains and supported by DNS completely. There are no signs of .SU being dropped. Around 77,000 .SU domains have been registered so far and the number is increasing.
Yeah, I should have been more specific when I stated that .SU predated ICANN by seven years. It was actually created in 1990, about a year prior to the Soviet Collapse. What I am trying to indicate is that .SU is not currently what I would call designated solely for the Soviet Union, since again, the Soviet Union itself no longer exists. .RU is the proper/preferred TLD for Russia. This is further exemplified by the fact that originally, that $25 .SU was around $125. The thinking was that people in Russia would pay the premium to have the old .SU TLD. That was not the case, hence the lower price we see today. I'd be willing to bet that a great many of the .SU's in use today are not even being used by people in either the Old Soviet Union, or current Russia. About the best use I could find for .SU would be something like jujit.su (Jujitsu).