Why: so your site can’t be taken down by the USA.

At least one .org website that I know of has been shut down because the USA pressured the US organisation that controls the .org domain into doing so.

They could repeat this at will for quite a number of sites.

An immediate step to prevent this possibility, if you run a website, is to register a domain that is controled outside the US.

I have not found one article that just lists them all, and who controls them, but most TLDs have their own wikipedia article, e.g. .org (US controled), .eu (not US controled, yay) etc.

Ultimately ICANN controls all of this, and that’s a US orga too, and Trump could bully them into doing shit, too. But the people who know about these things don’t seem to think that’s a likely threat right now. Also ICANN seems to defer a lot of tasks to exactly these TLD orgas. After all the internet still is (somewhat) decentralized.

Context

https://web.archive.org/web/20260829204913/https://www.inventati.org/campaign/press

Further reading

https://blog.apnic.net/2023/01/13/who-controls-the-internet/
https://netmeister.org/blog/tlds.html

List of all most TLDs created with this script.

  • Richard@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    Of course, ultimately all of DNS is controled by ICANN, a US orga. Trump could effectively shut down the whole internet, we’d have to revert to numerical IPs. A scary thought.

    I understand the sentiment but that is not effectively possible. It is not ICANN that de facto controls domain name resolution, it is the name servers that are spread around the world. A supranational organisation such as the European Union, or countries like Russia and China, can have their DNS servers continue to resolve domain names to the correct IP addresses regardless of what decisions ICANN or other TLD ownership entities make.

    • A_norny_mousse@piefed.zipOPEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      that is not effectively possible

      It would be impractical, yes.

      it is the name servers that are spread around the world

      But the nameservers get their lists from elsewhere - i.e. PIR in this case - and while it’s technically possible to amend these lists, they don’t typically do so. The few that do, just add a few tlds, but don’t edit existing entries in the lists they get.

      But I agree that is something the rest of the world will need to look into rather sooner than later.

    • Tom@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      21 hours ago

      who’s to say these supranational organizations won’t impose their own requirements? let alone stand for a free and open internet?

      who’s to say they will propagate to (self-purported) external entities at all?

      that is not effectively possible.

      Consider a catastrophic breakdown of the root system caused by a geopolitical incident. I think you will find that as the situation changes so too will the postures and standpoints of these supranational organizations and therefore the digital landscape, and that which you have previously held effectively impossible can very rapidly become not just a possibility but a likelihood.