this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
294 points (89.9% liked)

Technology

59708 readers
5428 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s
[email protected]
[email protected]
L4s
enu
294
Queer.af mastodon domain has been seized by the Taliban (mastodon.world)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by i_have_no_enemies to c/technology
83 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

~~We (via the ICANN, see below) actually have the power to do that. The .af TLD only works because the root DNS servers delegate the .af TLD to the Afghan nameservers. As soon as we stop doing that, they are powerless.~~

~~And as a bonus, the ICANN could set the nameservers to OpenNIC's, setting a precedent for a more public ownership of the Internet. But somehow I highly doubt they would ever do that...~~

Edit: I did what I documented here to do, and here is the (automated) answer from the ICANN:

Dear [name],

Thank you for contacting ICANN Contractual Compliance.

Your complaint involved a domain name registered under a country code top-level domain.

Please note that ICANN has no contractual authority to address complaints involving country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), such as .us, .eu, .ac, or domain names registered under a ccTLD (e.g. example.us, example.eu, example.ac). ICANN does not accredit registrars or set policy for ccTLDs and has no contractual authority to take compliance action against ccTLD operators. For inquiries and issues involving ccTLDs, you may wish to contact the relevant ccTLD manager using the contact details at https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db. This page will also help you determine which top-level domains (TLDs) are country codes (outside of ICANN’s scope) and which ones are generic (within ICANN’s scope).

Please note that responses to closed cases are not monitored. Therefore, if you require future assistance or have any questions regarding this case that is being closed, please email [email protected]. if you have a new complaint, please submit it at http://www.icann.org/resources/compliance/complaints.

ICANN is requesting your feedback on this closed complaint. Please complete this optional survey here. 

Sincerely,

ICANN Contractual Compliance

Of course, the contact details at https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/af.html are the Afghan ministry contact information, so this is a no go.

And the IANA being managed by the ICANN, aside from electing to use alternative DNS servers, there isn't much we can do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

ICANN is going to become a UN agency before they kick out states as stakeholders. Their status, though, is not derived from that but by silent agreement from the ISPs handing out servers following ICANN's root servers as default, they'd have to fuck up quite badly for that institutional inertia to change, and any replacement on that level is absolutely bound to respect ccTLDs as control over their own ccTLD is a national security issue for all states, and push come to shove they'd legislate that domestic ISPs have to hand out servers that respect at least their own ccTLD.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Plenty of letter combinations to choose from especially now that there's vanity domains. If this was the early 2000s e.g. lemmy.world would simply be lemmy.net.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

ICANN is going to become a UN agency before they kick out states as stakeholders.

You seem to be absolutely right. The conduct of the Afghan registry goes square against the ICANN base registry agreement, yet they won't do squat against ccTLDs, as evidenced per the email I received (see my edit).

Thank you for your comment.