See Ya .su

Sarkastro writes "Wired has this story on the pending death of the .su domain. Since the Soviet Union broke up a decade ago, all of the former members now have their own ccTLDs. Now, some people are ready to see .su be put to rest, including ICANN who is quite firm in their stance. Others within the former Soviet Union would like to see it stick around as a geopgraphical area domain. Currently, .su domains cost $15,000 (.ru cost less than $30), so there are only about 28,000 registered. It's especially interesting to watch how the Internet reacts to geographical boundaries that no longer exist. It's easy to add a ccTLD, but much much harder to remove one."

Comments

$15'000 for a domain?

[odt]

is that really $ or rubles?

Insane Price

[bellings]

Currently, .su domains cost $15,000 (.ru cost less than $30), so there are only about 28,000 registered.

That sentence is simply insane. $15,000 dollars per domain times 28,000 domains is nearly a half billion dollars. I simply can't imagine anyone buying even one of the oh-so-valuable .su domains for $15,000, much less any economy absorbing a half billion dollars worth of them.

What is the real story on the price? How much have most people really paid for their .su domains, and who got all the cash?

stable URLs?

[captaineo]

I thought URLs were supposed to be permanently stable! Shutting down a TLD does not exactly help this out...

I admit I've broken a couple minor links on my own sites, but I do try very very hard to keep old URLs working...

Re:Keeping .su as an area?

[Zeinfeld]

The whole system of TLDs is meaningless when an organization can get .com, a company can register .org and .net no longer has any connection with ISPs.

No, it just does not fit into the stupid boxes that the mindles beuraucrats try to fit them in.

The issue that people seem to be missing is backwards compatibility here. Turning off .su breaks stuff. Leaving .su on breaks nothing. So .su should not be turned off unless there is a really really good reason.

The fact that .su is no longer arround does not count. The country code is still assigned by ISO. The relevant RFC states that the assignment of the iso code is all that is relevant. Postel did that on purpose so that IANA did not need to get into stupid disputes on what was and what was not a state.

If ICANN goes this road there is a major risk of fracturing the root. Nobody much gives a hang about .su but if this move succeeds it will be used as a precedent to remove .pl which given that ICANN is far from isolated from the pro-Likud US Congress means that pragmatism is unlikely to prevail.

There are certain to be protests over any US move to throw .pl out of the root. It is exactly the type of thing that the EU are concerned about - the US using the root as an extension of its recent bugger-everyone-else foreign policy. After .pl expect .cu to be next on the list as a sop to the Miami keep-Elian-from-his dad vote.

In summary, ICANN if they had a political clue will not open up this can of worms. They will only create a precedent that can only be damaging in the long run and insert themselves directly into the international equivalent of the US abortion debate.

Re:Quit bashing DNS. It's your friend.

[Lars T.]

Speaking of .tv - what happens to that TLD should Tuvalu actually sinks into the ocean?