A tiny island nation just launched major effort to win back control of its ccTLD
businessinsider.com.au
businessinsider.com.au
> In 1997 IANA, without the approval of the Niuean Government, delegated the ccTLD for Niue to a businessman, William Semich, who lives in the United States. The advisor to the Government at that time was an ex-peace corp volunteer named Richard Saint Clair. Mr Saint Clair told the Government that the name meant nothing, that it was of no value or significance, and there was nothing that could be done. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Saint Clair then left his post as advisor and joined with Mr Semich in his organization – IUSN. The Government of Niue has been working every since to regain its ccTLD.
http://domainincite.com/4357-niue-the-myth-of-the-wifi-natio...
There were also a lawsuit by the same lawyer in 2018, maybe this is part of the same process.
http://domainincite.com/23705-exclusive-tiny-island-sues-to-...
I've always been hesitant of using other countries' TLDs like .nu, .tv, .ly, since I don't know what will happen with them in three years or where the money goes.
On that note, .co and .io are so widely used now, I can't even imagine what would happen if their governance changed...
There’s no need for the subtle condescension here - “cool internet kids”.
Main island and site of the USAF base is Diego Garcia, sometimes used to refer to the BIOT as a whole.
There's a lot of drama behind this one too. As I understand it, it was started by the University of PR by a professor. Things started moving and a company, Gauss Research Laboratory, Inc, was established. He moved everything to it and they're the ones operating this now.
It's $1,000 dollars to register a .PR domain and $1,000 a year to renew the domain.
No one barely uses it in PR. If you want to register a domain in PR, you add pr to the domain and register a .com, example `examplepr.com`.
The whole thing has been in courts and being fought over for years.
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I'm adding here a link to a blog in spanish from the ex CIO of the island about it and shows how things happened with links to web.archive.org, https://giangonz.com/cio-essays/pagarias-100-por-una-lata-de...
This is the google translated link, https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
Subsequent settlers were surprised to find vegetation on the chunk of coral rising from the sea, calling the place Niue, which in the local language means, "Look, there's a coconut."
Ignoring that it's supposed to be against the rules, moaning about the title and article is really dull and often seems to correlate with people not actually clicking through at all.
It'd be like the heading "Prominent lawyer is now in hospital after contracting a disease" is less informative than "Rudy Giuliani, lawyer to President Trump, is in hospital after contracting Covid-19".
If in 100 years time, we had an article like "Prominent Lawyer was ill during the pandemic of 2020, [insert anecdote here]", it would be the same kind of article as this one.
IOW, I don't think headlines aim or should aim for information density, but rather focusing on the points that makes the story newsworthy to the target audience. Aiming for information density causes distraction from the point of the story and consequently maybe disinterest the specific potential readers the author is aiming for.
Saying "a tiny island nation" rather than specifying the nation is also better because it focuses on the fact that its problem is probably due to being a tiny island nation, i.e. a nation that is largely unknown and ignored. Putting it like that might invoke sympathy. Saying "Niue" instead might cause the target audience to think the news is not really relevant to them since they don't know "Niue".
Yeah it's obvious the headline was written the way it was to generate a page view. IMO the addition of the "spoilers" don't detract that there's a poor tiny nation suffering. If they didn't know Niue, they would know after the headline that it's a small island country, and look at that, without needing to read the article (but oh no, what about their ad view!).
I specifically said to focus on the points of interest of the target audience, just the people that would be interested in the story. Doing otherwise wouldn't make for a good summary, which is what a title ultimately is.
As an aside,
> So you wrote 3 paragraphs...
that type of language is really dismissive and rude. I wish you wouldn't use it.
(Broken the URL on purpose, don't go there. It's a risky site likely filled with malware.)
Somebody paid some money to the local domain authority for that to happen.
I believe the country's authority ended that; now a holder must be a Cameroonian entity to get a domain.
They were assigned a TLD, and fed wrong advice by an advisor who breached his trust duty, then did a swinging door from government to industry
> The advisor to the Government at that time was an ex-peace corp volunteer named Richard Saint Clair. Mr Saint Clair told the Government that the name meant nothing, that it was of no value or significance, and there was nothing that could be done. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Saint Clair then left his post as advisor and joined with Mr Semich in his organization – IUSN
> The use of neo-colonialism is just expansive use of a term for marketing reasons.
No, it's more like palladium ore being discovered on your property, and you signing it away in exchange of free internet for life.
It's called swindling
Not just the web. This is how Africa was raped of its resources. Tribes being convinced to part with hundreds of thousands of hectares of "useless" land that they had no idea had mineral wealth under it.
Who to say the letters NU should belong to this small country and not to other people with equal emotional attachment to these letters?
Why not create a a new .niue TLD?
We should strive for neutral (as possible) and general-purpose technology.
Political relationships and problems should be dealed with using political means, not by making technology cater to specific types of human/political relationships (e.g. nationality).
Imagine if IP packets had "country of origin" and "country of destination" headers. Stupid, right? Well, the same principle applies for TLDs.
I'm not denying that there's some intrinsic political arbitrarity in assigning numbers/names to people and companies (and accepting the use of those numbers/names) but adding countries into the mix makes the problem much worse.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-10/tiny-nation-of-niue-w... says "The IUSN took control of .nu in 2003, as part of a deal where its affiliates promised the tiny island of 1,600 people free wireless internet in exchange for managing the domain". Is that article mistaken too? Also, the parent article says "part of the profit he gained from controlling the .nu top-level domain was used to get the remote island connected to the internet, and his IUS-N Foundation said it continues to make significant contributions to maintain the island’s internet and telecommunication needs".
> there is no deal to unilateral Revoke
Yes there is. The parent article says "While Niue signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Semich around that time, it quickly backtracked" and "But Niue tore up the original deal".
> transferring money from populous countries to sparsely populated countries.
If small countries have something large countries want then what is wrong with transferring money.
Anyway I'm no longer sure I hold the opinion that kicked this thread off, but I want to include that quote to clear up the facts.