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The Dark side of .io TLD

thedarksideof.io

184 pointsxdmnl79 comments

The archipelago was first settled in the 19th century, only about 1500 people were displaced, yes the British government mistreated these people by not properly compensating them because the US and NATO needed a military base in the region.

However there are urban restructuring projects every day in western countries that displace more people without proper compensation than this incident.

And while i understand that some people might feel they've been stripped of their homeland, but considering that the Islands were populated for the 1st time in modern history less than 200 years ago and remained populated for a period of only about a 100 years it's not exactly the strongest backing for a claim to a nation.

> However there are urban restructuring projects every day in western countries that displace more people without proper compensation

Such as? Most western legal systems require compensation in such cases… at least in theory.

I think the key is in who gets to define what is "proper" compensation.

There's no number high enough- at the end of the day people will just cry out "amagad but our homes!" and claim that that's priceless and forever want money and sympathy from everyone. A line must be drawn somewhere.

As long as the line is more on the side of the majority feeling it fair as opposed to a certain minority feeling it advantageous, then I'm fine with that.

If the price were enough, they would sell it. While I understand that this logic is not helpful when we try to develop the nation's infrastructure, we must not forget that we're imposing the desires of a more important mass of people at the depends of a tiny number of victims.

Plus there's the fact that in at least some US cases, the displacement is to allow space for a large business which will provide more tax revenue than the displaced could.

I do not believe that anything can compensate for loss of one's home. I do not know what's going on in the Occident but here in Istanbul on every flipping square metre they build a glass tower where they stuff people, and everyday neighbourhoods are killed and the city is resembling more and more those stock videos of Chinese urban areas. This cannot be compensated anyhow, regardless of where-ever it happens.

/rant

Would $1 billion in cash per household compensate? I believe for most people, the answer is "Yes, of course!" Is $1 enough? Of course not.

To me, that means the "right price" is somewhere in that bounded range and makes eminent domain conflicts amenable to financial analysis.

A possible example is the people living in ~500 houses in Camden (London). The houses are to be demolished to make way for a new railway, and they're not happy with the level of compensation offered.

If you go for London then you can look at all the council houses restructuring projects that pretty much kick all the non-(extremely)wealthy residents out of London by offering them well below real market value for their properties and then developing the council estates into luxury apartment projects.

This even happens with private properties that are bought under compulsory purchase for "regeneration". Owners are offered the value of the property as it stands, not the value of the land (which is much higher considering the development oppurtunities).

No! you can't compare these two scenarios. When urban population is resettled, first, it's also really unfair and shouldn't happen. Second, they're not nearly as dependent on the land as the Chaigos islanders. Third the resettlement is most often to a similar environment.

Also, the argument about the late first population is silly. You wouldn't do this to any person. These are people, who's lifes have been ruined, and you can't do that to anybody. No matter if they are indigenous, 2nd generation immigrants, descendants of slave trade, or what ever. You don't do this to any people.

I'm very uncomfortable with this line of argument:

> However there are urban restructuring projects every day in western countries that displace more people without proper compensation than this incident.

I suspect it's factually untrue, but I'm more concerned with the moral implication that if we can find a wrong Y that is worse than wrong X, we shouldn't care about X.

There is a legitimate version of the argument, one where we triage resource usage. But our ability to recognize and acknowledge wrongs is not a limited resource. Indeed, this style of argument expends far more energy in denying the recognition of wrongs that it would take to say, "Why yes, that is wrong."

> but I'm more concerned with the moral implication that if we can find a wrong Y that is worse than wrong X, we shouldn't care about X.

Definitely not "shouldn't care". But you should ask yourself "if there's a ton of materially similar things I'm ok with, why should I feel outraged about this one in particular?"

Sometimes the answer is that you shouldn't feel outraged at all, other times the answer will be that you should be outraged at all similar things. It's only rarely that the outrage should be focused on the one particular incident.

Utilitarian arguments lead you strange places. You can end up eating children or burning hobos for fuel. Be very careful.

All arguments can lean you strange places. They're inconsequential if they don't.

Luckily, the modern pragmatist is also socially aware.

You seem to be judging the worth of an argument by the "strangeness" of its implications. That's a curious standard.

I think we would all agree that persuasiveness is an axis upon which to judge arguments. "Strangeness" is far out there on the persuasive axis.

Maybe so far out there that Richard Dawkins and Neil Degrasse Tyson are arguing in the other room... but its on the axis somewhere.

Disclaimer: read the note at the end.
> But our ability to recognize and acknowledge wrongs is not a limited resource.
I just happen to be re-reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow at the moment, so this is very fresh on my mind. In fact, this does seem to be a limited resource, and the bias that overwhelming the resource creates is called the availability bias. Essentially, in cases where the media covers matters of lesser significance while ignoring matters of greater significance predictably leads people to weight the more heavily covered issue more highly despite its relative unimportance.
I don't know about the specific claim by the gp, but in general, I think it's socially useful to point out situations where a less covered related issue is not getting the appropriate amount of attention relative to a particular sensationalized issue in question.

Note: I'm interpreting 'recognize and acknowledge wrongs' as our ability to concert attention and restorative actions toward addressing issues, because this is where the rubber meets the road in addressing wrongs. So I'm responding more to a projection of wpietri's comment that I think is a bit more toward the consequential rather than a strict reading of her/his comment. This is clearly responding to a somewhat different argument than the one wpietri is making, so it shouldn't be construed as an argument against her/his statement so much as an argument inspired by her/his statement.

Thanks for the clarity. By saying "recognize and acknowledge wrongs" I am specifically excluding action, so yes, you're talking about something else.

And is there any reason to think that the British Government would be giving these people the proceeds of the British Indian Oceans TLD?

If they had their land and own government called Chagos, it seems unlikely they'd have .io.

Justifying one injustice with another?

That was pretty weak arguments against the case of the Chagossians people. I had to try really hard not to downvote because I disagree with your position.

It doesn't matter if western countries mistreat their people sometimes, that doesn't justify mistreating the Chagossians or anyone else for that matter.

Even if you think 200 years isn't a strong claim to a nation, that doesn't change the fact those people lived there and were forceably removed from the islands.

I'm also curious, what is your cut-off point for a "strong" claim to a nation? 250 years? 500 years? 1 AD?

You're a nation if you have a military. These folks clearly failed that test.

Not sure if you're being facetious but Iceland, Costa Rica and Mauritius all fail that test and are commonly accepted as nations.

By that line of reasoning, I should be legally allowed to invade my unarmed neighbor's house, kick him out and claim it for myself.

Your unarmed neighbor's house happens to be on the land of an existing nation, so you would have to deal with their military before claiming rights to said house.

Refer to xtrumanx's comment above.

The one about Iceland, Costa Rica and Mauritius? Certainly those countries have allies who would come to their aid if their land was being invaded by foreigners. I'm not claiming that every nation has their own military, just that they must be prepared to defend their interests in one way or another.

The question of "legally" invading someone's house is odd anyway, because legality implies some authority having deemed it appropriate. In the case of a neighbor's house, it is the government of the country containing the house. I can't think of an entity that establishes the "legal" way of creating/invading a country.

Its exists, and has something to do with who 'recognizes' a country's claim to exist. There's a cool case in Australia where a guy with a large ranch wrote a letter to the territorial governor, styling himself as the leader of his fictitious nation. The governor responded in kind, maybe tongue in cheek, but using the same title. That meant, as Queen's representative, that the Queen had recognized him. Now he has a post office, currency, stamps etc, and Australia has to deal with him on that basis.

I was trying to make an analogy. JoeAltmaier's comment implies that it's justifiable for a nation to invade another and kick them out if the latter does not have a military, because it's not really a nation (by his definition). So my analogy meant that by that line of reasoning an unarmed neighbor has no "household" and it should be no problem if someone armed invades it and kicks the family out.

Of course this is all messed up. There's no reason a nation shouldn't be considered a nation just because it doesn't have a military.

Well, historically its all that's mattered. And if we're going to change the definitions of well-understood things, then lets just get rid of nations altogether. Make them all states of a world union or something. Because as long as they're independent and self-managing, then some of them will prey on others of them, and military will continue to be the final arbiter.

I would say more than 1500 people forcibly relocated to the Island in the first place to work in the plantation and stayed there for hardly a century.

While there are plenty of arguments on what actually defines a nation from both historic cultural perspectives this one is a far stretch for any acceptable "litmus" test for a nation, even if it's simple because they never had the political legitimacy to being a nation state, not to mention ever had the capabilities of forming one.

Where they've mistreated? yes, do they deserve a compensation? yes, are they a nation? well not really if we are frank about it.

How old is the USA again? When was (say) Utah settled by Americans? Can we have that?

like all things in realpolitik, you can certainly try!

For us the argument is fairly simple. Resettlement of the Islands by Chagossians is possible, even maintaining the military base, and there is still will amongst the Chagossian people to do so.

Certainly internal forced replacement still happens and often has terrible consequences for people but internationally the Chagos situation is pretty unique, and what is especially unique is that something can be done about it.

(Link to a now slightly outdated page on our website on Return 2015 campaign)

http://www.chagossupport.org.uk/return-in-2015

>They lost all rights to their homeland, now including the valuable .io TLD.

You don't want to know what happened in the United States... Or everywhere, to that matter.

"...and for being cheap."

Admittedly, I am ignorant to many of the TLDs available today... But having primarily dealt with .com and .net TDLs previously (and their <$20USD price tag), is there something else at play when considering the cost/value ratio of an .io domain? Something that would make sense to refer to it as 'being cheap', despite it's costing 100%+ more than a 'traditional' TLD?

I get that 'io' is two letters rather than three and so it's "cool"... And that an io domain has potential for "domain hacks" (I assume they are talking about a neat looking URL, where the 'io' has significance in the brand and URL)... But is 'cheap' accurate?

Just curious - honest question... When I read 'cheap' as one of the primary bullet points (of the few cited bullet points) for the io TLD, I thought "There must be a lot that I don't know about io TLDs - let's ask".

Thanks!

while a .io domain is more expensive than a .com domain, you have to take into consideration that all the good .com domains are already taken (and you have to buy them from third parties for more money), while you still can get some good .io domains

Sure, but there's still some good .io domains available exactly because they aren't cheap (right?).

I pay <40 USD / year for taco.io, I have no idea of how much million dollars (which obviously I can't afford) would taco.com be worth.

Off-topic - that game is impossible.

Mind sharing your registrar?

Sure, https://www.gandi.net/

Some background via gigaom:

The dark side of .io: How the U.K. is making web domain profits from a shady Cold War land deal https://gigaom.com/2014/06/30/the-dark-side-of-io-how-the-u-...

UK government denies receiving .io domain profits https://gigaom.com/2014/07/11/uk-government-denies-receiving...

Not to ignore the bigger issue, but the site implies .io would belong to the Chagossian people today if this hadn't happened. But the IO country code is derived from "British Indian Ocean Territory". Is it likely that the Chagos Archipelago would have this ISO 3166 code if the deportation hadn't occurred?

Well, it would still be in the Indian Ocean, for a start.

However, if you look at the list of .cX TLDs, all possible obvious results are already taken by (alguably) bigger states: Switzerland, Canada, Congo, Colombia and .. well .cs is complicated.

That still leaves room for solutions like .ic (Islands of Chagos), in a similar vein to .im for the Isle of Man, and you could have cool domain hacks like fanf.ic or grabthem.ic.

Or, since Diego Garcia is the largest island, .dg, and cash out from D&G.

Paypal donate link to a gmail address makes me a little nervous. Is http://www.chagossupport.org.uk/ a legitimate and well-run charity? Where specifically does the money go?

Not registered in the UK:

http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfC...

It isn't a charity as far as I can tell (or at least does not have UK charitable status): the only registered charity with Chagos in the name is the Chagos Conservation Trust[1].

This means that UK Chagos Support Association does not have to follow charity law (i.e. be open about their work among other things), have a purpose considered as "charitable" [2], be run my trustees that don't personally benefit and/or be run independently. However, they could still be doing these things but be unable to register as a charity due wanting to do things that are prohibited as a charity e.g. "benefiting interests of a narrow closed group" or "campaigning for a change of government" among others [3]

(Of course it is open to debate whether many actual charities properly fulfil the stated requirements)

[1] http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfC...

[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/what-makes-a-char...

[3] https://www.gov.uk/how-to-set-up-a-charity-cc21a#step-1-deci...

Thanks for the detailed answer. Even if the law doesn't require it, I'm pretty wary of donating to a cause that doesn't voluntarily open its books.

And I say that as a .IO owner who was ready to get out my credit card.

Hi all, my name's Stefan Donnelly and I am the Committee Chair of UK Chagos Support Association. Firstly, thanks for the donations for those who have chipped in!

To answer some of the questions raised about our group, we are not a registered charity. We did attempt to register but were told our aims were too overtly political to qualify as a charity. So yes we are a non-profit, entirely voluntary I should add, we have no paid staff and committee members get nothing for their work.

On where the money goes, its pretty evenly split between supporting Chagossian community projects (including training classes and Chagos Islands football team), supporting impoverished Chagossians in times of hardship and campaigning for Chagossian right to return.

Over the past year we have done a lot on the latter as the previous Government committed to 'resolving the issue,' though then did not do so. This is everything from paying for transport to protests and printing materials to promoted posts of Facebook.

For reasons of scale we haven't in the past arranged to be audited or published full accounts as it just wouldn't have been worth it for the small amount of money and limited donor base we had. As we look to fundraise more online, however, I appreciate it is reassuring to have that bit of extra detail and I think our next AGM will publish much more substantial reports on our income and spending, which we'll be happy to make public.

The point has been made before to me that the Gmail address looks at bit dodgy and transferring it over to the @chagossuport address (which we do actually hold) is certainly on the to-do list.

Hope that's answered some of the, very legitimate, concerns raised. If anyone has any further questions, on this or anything else about the campaign, feel free to ask

I don't know how it works in the UK, but they could be a non-profit that's not (yet) registered as a charity. The rules for being registered as a charity in Canada preclude political advocacy like this; I wouldn't be surprised if this is similar in the UK. There is a public registry of charities, but not of non-profits.

Deported at the request of the United States. A crucial bit of information left out on that fancy page there.

The site pointing out the dark side of .io is ironically on .io TLD.

Certainly on purpose, although probably a poorly thought out decision.

No, it's not ironic at all. It's not asking people to stop using .io. It's asking people using .io to support a fund that supposedly helps the cause of natives of the island.

Did you read the link?

Yup I've read.

By using .io TLD, they are submitting to the UK government on what should be theirs. It may be like rebels claiming a territorial independence but then still pay taxes to the government for that particular territory.

Most non-violent independentists in western countries pay taxes. Actually, even most violent independentists pay taxes as well so they can conduct their activities without attracting attention from the government.

Alexa ranked .io domains list from last month http://hack.ly/articles/the-most-popular-dot-io-domains-2015....

Thanks for sharing. This is a history I was completely unaware of.

"...its possiblities for domain hacks..."

Ok I'll admit it, I'm a little lost. What do they mean by this?

Companies will get .io domains to appeal to developers as it looks like I/O (in/out).

Ok cool, I knew that part...phew. I thought they were referring to something fundamental to the way the TLD worked etc. that they were fiddling with.

Or for using it with words ended with "io" (like scenar.io, portfol.io and such)

Does this work well? A friend did that for his company and it was a real pain to explain that the last two letters of a full word have a dot first. Ended up getting the .com.

I've got ci.al (so.ci.al, fa.ci.al, etc), I think, but trying to tell someone that over voice seems... problematic.

Usually startups using this kind of domain end up moving to .com once they get funded. I do data mining for a VC, and see this all the time.

Off topic, but I'm curious what kind of data mining the VC has you doing.

br.io, mercur.io etc.

I'll just buy the TLD ".rio", and have "b.rio" and "mercu.rio". I don't understand the big deal here.

For .rio, you need an address in Rio. Often, this is rather strongly enforced, see .ie and .cat for other examples.

Requirements for .cat are easily gamed. You need some "Catalan content" on your site, but this can be as little as a single page. Or see nyan.cat for a humorous implementation.

mildly clever + has something to do with computers = lets call it a hack

Haha, oh wow. This is actually real?

The irony of it...holy shit it's painful. And listed supporters all having .io.

If people can't see the near-masterful irony here, you're already lost.

Has someone bought up thedarksideof.ly yet????

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