4 ms·

In a few days my domain `foodba.by` is expiring after I stopped transferring funds to Belarus after the role the country took during the Russian invasion of Ukr

by stigi 3y ago

In a few days my domain `foodba.by` is expiring after I stopped transferring funds to Belarus after the role the country took during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Glad that side project never took of :-)

drexlspivey 3y ago
[flagged]
- urbandw311er 3y ago
  Not surprised you’re being downvoted — it comes across as pretty immature to sneer at individuals taking a stance against something they don’t believe in. Shame on you.
  - drexlspivey 3y ago
    How does not paying a registrar (a private company) hurt the government in any way?
    - sofixa 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott For a successful example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_Movement
      - hnbad 3y ago
        It's really more like going vegan. Individual actions are not a boycott. Boycotts require organization across a broad enough group of individuals that they can achieve a critical mass. Calling this a boycott reminds me of the young leftists who pop up on social media announcing a "general strike" with zero preparation. That doesn't mean it's wrong or silly. If you don't feel comfortable giving money to an entity no matter how large, it's your prerogative to stop doing so. But you shouldn't mistake that isolated action by one individual for political activism.
    - noirscape 3y ago
      Well for one because ccTLDs aren't divorced from their governments - that's the entire point of a ccTLD. The way it usually goes is that the country's government (or occupying force; the actual ccTLD designations follows an ISO list and a long set of complicated resolutions for contested countries, which means that if a country is successfully occupied, the occupier gets the ccTLD. Similarly, country changes also result in the "new" country getting the ccTLD right. This has happened with .su for example, which is controlled by Russia.) has the right from ICANN to use the TLD as they see fit. Theoretically, the ICANNs usual rules apply to domain names however they just get forwarded to the technical admin who can just discard all of the rules with often little consequence. Usually what this results in is the domain getting either ran by a state level technical administrator (you'd be surprised how often this happens) or it gets licensed out to a different technical administrator. The technical administrator then either handles domain registrations themselves or further permits licensing registrations to other registrars (you usually don't buy from the technical administrator directly if they do this). For Belarus, they licensed it out to Reliable Software, a local Belarussian company. This usually means that Reliable Software has to pay the Belarussian a fee to keep operating the registrar, otherwise it'd be put up for sale. That means that the Belarussian government gets direct kickbacks from people purchasing domain names. (For other countries, this can be quite the reliable source of income as well, although .by isn't heavily used.)

by stigi 3y ago

drexlspivey 3y ago

[flagged]

urbandw311er 3y ago
Not surprised you’re being downvoted — it comes across as pretty immature to sneer at individuals taking a stance against something they don’t believe in. Shame on you.
- drexlspivey 3y ago
  How does not paying a registrar (a private company) hurt the government in any way?
  - sofixa 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott For a successful example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_Movement
    - hnbad 3y ago
      It's really more like going vegan. Individual actions are not a boycott. Boycotts require organization across a broad enough group of individuals that they can achieve a critical mass. Calling this a boycott reminds me of the young leftists who pop up on social media announcing a "general strike" with zero preparation. That doesn't mean it's wrong or silly. If you don't feel comfortable giving money to an entity no matter how large, it's your prerogative to stop doing so. But you shouldn't mistake that isolated action by one individual for political activism.
  - noirscape 3y ago
    Well for one because ccTLDs aren't divorced from their governments - that's the entire point of a ccTLD. The way it usually goes is that the country's government (or occupying force; the actual ccTLD designations follows an ISO list and a long set of complicated resolutions for contested countries, which means that if a country is successfully occupied, the occupier gets the ccTLD. Similarly, country changes also result in the "new" country getting the ccTLD right. This has happened with .su for example, which is controlled by Russia.) has the right from ICANN to use the TLD as they see fit. Theoretically, the ICANNs usual rules apply to domain names however they just get forwarded to the technical admin who can just discard all of the rules with often little consequence. Usually what this results in is the domain getting either ran by a state level technical administrator (you'd be surprised how often this happens) or it gets licensed out to a different technical administrator. The technical administrator then either handles domain registrations themselves or further permits licensing registrations to other registrars (you usually don't buy from the technical administrator directly if they do this). For Belarus, they licensed it out to Reliable Software, a local Belarussian company. This usually means that Reliable Software has to pay the Belarussian a fee to keep operating the registrar, otherwise it'd be put up for sale. That means that the Belarussian government gets direct kickbacks from people purchasing domain names. (For other countries, this can be quite the reliable source of income as well, although .by isn't heavily used.)