Iraq TLD In Legal Limbo

tcd004 writes "FP Magazine is reporting that despite the fact that Iraq has been a sovereign nation for some 15 months its top-level Internet domain, .iq, has been in a legal limbo. Until now, ICANN has refused to hand over control of the TLD due to the nation's instability." From the article: "But one Baghdad political insider says that the imbroglio is likely to end 'imminently'--possibly by the time this magazine hits newsstands--with ICANN handing over .iq to the new government. It's unclear why ICANN may reverse its earlier decision, whether it be from mounting political pressure or a different position on the legitimacy of the new Iraqi regime. The organization refused repeated requests for comment. But officials affiliated with the Iraqi government indicate they expect the domain's return soon."

Comments

Sovereign nation?

[earthlingpink]

Iraq has been a "sovereign nation" for considerably longer than 15 months.

Re:Sovereign nation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Iraq has been a "sovereign nation" for considerably longer than 15 months.

That fact that this was put in "Politics" should tell you all you need to know about the spin on this. This is Slashdot afterall, where "Bush = Monkey" gets 5+ insightful EVERY time.

Re:Sovereign nation?

[anaesthetica]

In a technical legalistic sense, it always was a sovereign nation, it just depended on who held the sovereignty. Saddam did, and then the U.S. military did, and then they handed over sovereignty to the Iraqi government, and the U.S. military remains there at the request of the Iraqi government. That's the de jure explanation, while we all know that the de facto explanation is that the U.S. military still calls a lot of the shots.

Re:Sovereign nation?

[agurkan]

Ask yourself this question. Could the "government" of Iraq function as it does now, e.g., holding those meetings for the new constitution requirements if there were not any US troops there? Then ask the similar question for Japan, Turkey, Germany etc. It is the function of the troops, not merely their presence which defines sovereignity. But I can also accept the argument that the presence of foreign troops hurt the sovereignity of a nation to some degree in any case.

Re:Sovereign nation?

[neomac]

Or Korea?
Or Saudi Arabia?
Or Germany?
Or Louisiana?

The presence of US troops does not constitute an "occupation," whereas the democratic election of a government is reasonable justification for declaring Iraq a "sovereign nation."

Re:Sovereign nation?

[w3woody]

By that metric, both Germany and Japan are still occupied nations, as both still house troops from the United States that were originally sent there during World War II.

Hell, Japan's Constitution, which the United States had a significant hand in rewriting, prohibits Japan from raising an army--effectively renouncing it's sovereign right to self defense and turning that right over to the United States. So one could effectively argue that Japan will never not be an occupied power so long as Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution is in effect.

So by your metric, Japan is not now, nor will ever be, a sovereign nation.

As to Germany, we have some 64,000 combat personnel stationed there, including 50,000 army units--not counting support folks--which is roughly half of the number of troops stationed in Iraq. To put it another way, our post World War II occupation force in Germany now stands at roughly half of our post Iraq War occupation force--which is a considerable occupation force given that Germany has now been "occupied" by your metric for roughly 60 years. (Source: DefenseLink)

Should ICANN confiscate the .jp and .de TLDs given that Germany and Japan have been occupied (and not sovereign) nations for around 60 years?

Re:Sovereign nation?

[DirePickle]

Bush = Monkey

Instabillity My ass

[scenestar]

ICANN is using Iraq's political mess as an excuse.

We all know they just want to sell the tld to the highest bidder so it could be used by organizations such as mensa.

Re:The most sought after Iraqi domains...

[Zocalo]

Given the current situation in Iraq I think it's actually more likely to be "fanat.iq"...

WTF?

[SatanicPuppy]

How can a country be too unstable to use a TLD? Is the TLD going to run amok, strap some viruses around itself and nuke some other unsuspecting nearby TLD like .kw or .ae?

Sounds idiotic to me. Or, more likely, like some country doesn't want Iraquis to be able to express their opinions attached to the official domain of the country.

Re:WTF?

[Dr. Evil]

Okay, you're sitting in your office one day, and you see on CNN that Iraq's government has collapsed.

Some guy calls you up and says "I'm important, please sign over control over the .iq domain to me"

What do you do?

Re:WTF?

[operagost]

Um, where have you been? The USA invaded in 2003. It is now 2005, and the Iraqi Provisional Government has been in authority for over a year. A national assembly was elected by the Iraqi people in January to draft a new constitution, which is close to being voted on.

Article wrong?

[thc69]

According to http://www.icann.org/minutes/minutes-28jul05.htm :

Resolved (05.70) that the proposed redelegation of the .IQ ccTLD to the National Communications and Media Commission (NCMC) of Iraq is approved.

Re:Perspective...

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

This is a tech news site. If you want the "Hard" news about the cleanup after Katrina or the problems in Iraq, news.google.com has a bunch of nice links. You can also go to the website of CNN, MSNBC, or the BBC for information on the less tech news out there.

51st State

[StarTideRising]

Perhaps they're waiting to see if the name gets changed in the next few months. It'd be embarrasing to release the TLD .iq if it should instead be iq.us

Re:Perspective...

[gowen]

This is a tech news site

For very small values of "News". It's really a Tech Trivia site.

Re:Perspective...

[Kierthos]

Right, because there are no other online news sources with anything on Katrina/NOLA or Iraq. Because cnn.com, headlinenews.com, msnbc.com, etc. just don't exist any more.

Because when I think about news stories that might have a significant non-geek factor, the first news site that pops to mind is slashdot.

Get a little perspective. I don't like the stories about any flavour of BSD, but I don't bitch about it when they post them on the front page.

Kierthos

.limbo

[Doc Ruby]

The entire country is in "legal limbo". One little invasion can ruin an entire legal system. And then leave a vacuum where the country should be, for years.

Just this week, the Iraq Constitution talks collapsed. That can delay legal niceties like domain names, and even smaller details like ending the civil war.

Re:.limbo

[TrappedByMyself]

One little invasion can ruin an entire legal system. And then leave a vacuum where the country should be, for years.
 
Yeah, things were much better when the legal system was the torture and execution of anyone who looked at the leadership funny.
 
Not making excuses for the war, but just want to be sure we don't use our political leanings to twist the truth.

Re:.limbo

[Doc Ruby]

Why are you still clinging to Saddam Hussein's now long-gone country? Iraq is America now, has been for years, and will be until we let it go. "Not as bad as Saddam" isn't good enough for me, why is it good enough for you? I note that, while we truly are "not as bad as Saddam", our occupation is, in fact, torturing and executing many people who have nothing to do with any opposition to the rebirth of that country. Or at least didn't, before we tortured and killed them and their families without justification.

I stated the simple facts: we invaded, we ruined a legal system (which did have nearly-irrelevant redeeming functions like maintaining their Internet presence), and have left a vacuum, rather than a country. Until this week, political leanings twisted the truth with visions of a constitution that would end the civil war. Now that the constitution has collapsed, those twists are just lies.

Let's leave "our political leanings" for when something debatable is under discussion. To quote Colin Powell: "if we break it, we own it". Iraq was severly dysfunctional before we invaded. But if you don't think our invasion has broken its remains, and continues to break it, you really have nothing to offer in excluding "political leanings" from debate.

Re:.limbo

[ScentCone]

These days it's just young American kids from the southern states, rather than Iraqis, torturing the innocent.

From the "north" are you? Not a chance that any National Guardsmen from north of the Mason-Dixon Line were ever jackasses, not trained enough for a particular task, of supervised by someone who turns out to be a PHB? I live in Maryland. people from the South think I'm from the North, and people from the North think I'm from the South. I get to see the asses on both sides, but it seems that I get to see a lot more condescension, patronizing, and ill-informed elitist psuedo-intellectualism from the North than the other way around.

I've had plenty of bones to pick with the Bible Belt, but I think sometimes the idiocy in that region is come by more honestly, if you will, than the hypocritical blatherings that I frequently hear from the North (specifically, the Northeast and Northwest). The Upper Midwest is not without its failings, but the people there seem to be a lot more level-headed, honest with themselves, and just more polite than the rest (not counting the South, where - despite what you seem to be suggesting - there are places you'll encounter more decency per capita than in many a New England suburb or Seattle coffee bar).

And that's just what has become public

Yeah, yeah. And police in New York all shoot immigrants 40 times (I saw it on TV once, so I'm sure we can extrapolate to the entire NYPD, and all of the citizens that live there, right?). And Howard Dean didn't appoint any African Americans to his administration, so Vermont residents are all racist, right? Get a grip.

Things haven't changed

You're right, of course. The US is busy, right now, looking for replacements for Saddam's two genius sons so that we'll still have someone to put political opponents through industrial shredders while their families watch, to torture the Iraqi national soccer team when they lose games, and a whole new crew of heavy equipment operators to dig mass graves for the ethnic cleansing of Kurdish villages that we're so busy carrying out.

Re:Huh???

[bedroll]

15 months? Isn't time for Slashdot to stop accepting submissions form idiots?

Would those be the ones who don't use preview and proofread their posts?

Politics and bureaucracy

[lheal]

There are doubtless folks at ICANN who hope that the new Iraq-CAN'T. Those folks would doubtless like to avoid legitimizing the Iraqi governement, with the only little power they have, awarding domains.

Also, recall the flap over the USA keeping control over the root servers? Not awarding the .iq TLD to Iraq is a little dig at George Bush. They know they have to do it eventually, unless the terrorists and factions manage to destabilize the new government.

Bureaucrats also hate to make a mistake.

They appear to have realized finally that they were for no good reason failing to perform their primary function.

What is a Sovereign nation?

[iambarry]

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_nation

Seems like Iraq is now, and has been for some time, a De jure sovereign nation.

However its not quite a de facto sovereign nation.

Note: I'm not commenting on the legitimacy of the merging of the three provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra to form modern Iraq by the British in 1918. That is a thread of its own, and not a subject I'm too familiar with.

--Barry

ICANN power trip?

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Since when is it ICANN's job to decide whether or not a sovereign government is "legitimate" or not? Is this just another ICANN power trip?

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! [1]

[Red Flayer]

[1] Well, all about speculation about something that will have already occured by the time you read it.

From the summary: "But one Baghdad political insider says that the imbroglio is likely to end 'imminently'--possibly by the time this magazine hits newsstands--with ICANN handing over .iq to the new government."

I have to commend the article writer, the submitter, and the editors for giving us 'news' that is obviously (obviously as in noted in the article summary) outdated. When an article tells you itself that it is outdated, that's a really, really big hint that some more research is in order before the article gets submitted and/or posted.

Of course, that's what the readers are for -- to do the research themselves and post comments with updated information.

This website has the text of a CNN article from last June explaining why .iq has not been made available to Iraq, and why reassignment has been problematic: http://forums.hostmysite.com/about228.html

Here's some news from 8/5 (over a month ago!) about the .iq reassignment: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/new s/editorial/12314495.htm

And here it is again: http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml ?articleID=167600327

A couple seconds with Google is all it took.

Please, submitters, you should be checking your submissions for accuracy and 'datedness'.

ICANN's FAQ explains away any Star Chamber ideas

[ianscot]

ICANN does have the chartered role of deciding which registrar in a given country gets to dole out the domains. In this case apparently back in 1997 they made a previous "delegation" for Iraq -- I don't see which element of Saddam's government had that authority. Now they're changing the registrar to the National Communications and Media Commission (NCMC) of Iraq.

It seems a little less Star Chamberish, given that we can review their minutes and look at the FAQ that explains their role.

(Don't blame them for SPAM or Web gambling, folks. They're just the cabal of international bankers and Star Chamber judges who decide who gets to map the IP addresses to the domains.)

Alternative TLD = .gwb

[Anonymous Coward]

ICANN has offered .gwb as an alternative domain for Iraqi sites.

Look for the following sites soon:

haliburton-iraq.gwb
myiraqioil.gwb
mideasttx.gwb
wmd.maps.google.gwb

And my personal favorite...
ifwarwasforoil.whydoesgascostmorethanbefore.gwb

Every time, ha?

[roman_mir]

Bush == Monkey