(What If?) ccTLD Delegation Question

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1

Call it Monday Boredom, if you will, but a funny DNS question just popped into my head: if I were to, say, win the lotto and buy my own Island (which, of course, would technically be its own country), would I be able to receive a ccTLD for said island nation? Kind of like .joejohnsonisland or .jji?

If so, would the DNS have to be actually contained inside of said island? I think not, as it was mentioned earlier that .iq was run from Texas, but it's always good to ask.

Joe Johnson
joe@sendjoeanemail.com

2

Joe Johnson:

Call it Monday Boredom, if you will, but a funny DNS question
just popped into my head: if I were to, say, win the lotto
and buy my own Island (which, of course, would technically be
its own country)

Premise false. Parsing of question terminated.

All islands you might buy are parts of existing countries (with existing
country codes)

A better plan might be to incite a country-dividing civil war somewhere, and
fund it sufficiently with your lottery winnings that a new independent
country is formed in the aftermath. You might not want to live there during
the process, though.

Matthew Kaufman
matthew@eeph.com

3

http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-establishment-procedures-19mar03.htm

4

Call it Monday Boredom, if you will, but a funny DNS question just popped into my head: if I were to, say, win the lotto and buy my own Island (which, of course, would technically be its own country), would I be able to receive a ccTLD for said island nation? Kind of like .joejohnsonisland or .jji?

Your recognition the UN could take a while.

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,1065,00.html

5

Call it Monday Boredom, if you will, but a funny DNS question just popped into my head: if I were to, say, win the lotto and buy my own Island (which, of course, would technically be its own country), would I be able to receive a ccTLD for said island nation? Kind of like .joejohnsonisland or .jji?

If your island had a two-letter code assigned to it in ISO-3166, then you could petition ICANN to become the ccTLD manager, and have the corresponding ccTLD delegated to your nameservers. I believe all previous redelegations are documented on www.icann.org, so there's plenty of prior art to review there before wielding your hyper-platinum amex card.

If the nameservers were already present within the borders of the island, and your acquisition had caused you coincidentally to also become Supreme Leader and Ultimate Dictator, presumably you could just dispatch some armed goons to secure the ccTLD infrastructure and avoid the ICANN-wrangling part.

If your island had no ISO-3166 code assigned, then you would first need to talk to the maintainers of ISO-3166 to get it added to the list. If your island was not a widely-recognised territory or country, this might involve petitions to the UN.

If so, would the DNS have to be actually contained inside of said island? I think not, as it was mentioned earlier that .iq was run from Texas, but it's always good to ask.

There are lots of entries in ISO-3166 where the country/region/island/economy and its master server are not colocated, geographically. Sometimes this is a practical consideration (e.g. AQ is not hosted in Antarctica, since that'd be an expensive and inconvenient place for it to live) and sometimes it's a historical artefact (e.g. a pre-ICANN delegation, or a benevolent stop-gap until a delegation could be moved in-country).

Many developing countries do not have their ccTLD infrastructure deployed within their borders, for want of local skills, infrastructure or (often) confidence in running such services themselves. The Internet Society and the Network Startup Resource Centre (amongst others) expend a lot of effort trying to remedy these issues -- a local registry for local services can often be a useful catalyst for Internet deployment.

Joe

6

So, basically, following the instructions at http://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-establishment-procedures-19mar03.htm, I need to be sure I legally acquire the island from a nation for the express purpose of running my own country (the sales agreement says I am no longer part of them). After I establish my national government (I held an impromptu straw-poll in the office, and we chose "Joetopia" as the name of my island nation), I need to petition the UN to be recognized as a nation and be listed in their report. After that, I automatically get a 2-letter nation code and can petition ICANN for a ccTLD of my 2-letter code. I can then choose to run .jt (or whatever my ccTLD ends up being) from any place I desire.

Well, thanks for all the help everyone. Hopefully it broke the day's monotony for some of you. Now I just need to sit back and wait for those lotto winnings to roll in (ha!).

Joe Johnson
joe@sendjoeanemail.com

P.S.: Don't worry, I'll be sure to have plenty of redundancy in my DNS (physically separate NS's, multiple DNS servers, power, etc.) and I won't brook no spammers. Not from my .jt ccTLD!

7

Given the ongoing flux in national boundaries and identities, this topic is highly appropriate and the contributors gave well spoken input.

Thank you.

Cutler

8

Joe Johnson wrote:

Call it Monday Boredom, if you will, but a funny DNS question just
popped into my head: if I were to, say, win the lotto and buy my own
Island (which, of course, would technically be its own country),

That's terribly hard to do:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealand&gt;

would I be able to receive a ccTLD for said island nation?

Since Sealand doesn't have a ccTLD yet:

<Root Zone Database;

I would expect the process to take quite a while (i.e. decades).

jc

9

I believe what you're actually referring to is the black american express centurion card.

10

In article <20051003221313.CE8B032C015@smtpauth01.csee.siteprotect.com>, Joe Johnson <nanog@sendjoeanemail.com> writes

So, basically, following the instructions at Qualifying top-level domain strings, I need to be sure I legally acquire the island from a nation for the express purpose of running my own country (the sales agreement says I am no longer part of them). After I establish my national government (I held an impromptu straw-poll in the office, and we chose "Joetopia" as the name of my island nation), I need to petition the UN to be recognized as a nation and be listed in their report. After that, I automatically get a 2-letter nation code and can petition ICANN for a ccTLD of my 2-letter code. I can then choose to run .jt (or whatever my ccTLD ends up being) from any place I desire.

You could also try asking the Isle of Man (.im) Guernsey (.gg) and Jersey (.je) how they managed to get a ccTLD without being an ISO country. I won't mention .eu, as that will probably start a furore.

11

You could also try asking the Isle of Man (.im) Guernsey

    > (.gg) and Jersey (.je) how they managed to get a ccTLD
    > without being an ISO country.

They got their domains under the old rules, by being a region that the
Universal Postal Union had allocated a region code to. These codes are
not ISO3166 country codes, but they are reserved within ISO3166.

This isn't possible under the current rules.

     -roy