gTLDs are regulated by ICANN. As much as an organization can achieve to be a global multistakeholder group, at least the intention is to be global.

ICANN have a mostly hand-off approach to ccTDLs. The intention is that each country decide on their own regulations and management when it comes to their country code specific domains.

.nl is a very special case, and it is true that the Dutch government was not involved. .nl was the first country code TLD created outside of the US, when the domain system still was part of ARPANET and operated by the United States Department of Defense. .nl was then transferred to a foundation 10 years later, and that's where ownership now resides.

ccTLDs are somewhat of a mess. Many are created in universities, then transferred to a company or foundation. Others were sold to companies from the start. In some cases, government have sold their ccTLD to other countries.

.se for example was created in a Swedish university, and then later the government took possession of it (or the university gave it to them, can't really say). Now there are laws that explicitly defines how it should be used and governed, which then a non-profit foundation manage the implementation.

> gTLDs just subject you to an additional layer of incompetence, namely from the company running it.

ccTLDs also have to be run by some organization, which is often a private company. Maybe the country's oversight over this organization is better than ICANN's oversight over gTLD operators. Maybe it's not. Historically, the worst technical incidents have occurred at ccTLDs.

Presumably the idea is that fabricating a legal offense to shut down a ccTLD would be easier than it would be for regular TLDs.

I don't know if that's actually the case, I've heard some shady sites are using .su(Soviet Union) to avoid judicial actions.

It's the specific country being referenced, I think.

.us is more special, e.g. the owner should be a US entity, and must be public (Private Domain functionality is disabled for .us).

You can bet it wouldn't be actually discontinued, but you can bet when/if the UK gives away the island to Mauritius or whatever, they'll lease the rights to the highest bidder, and those people will be free to extort everyone with a valuable .io domain.

It's going to be interesting to see what they do. One of the core arguments when claiming the domain industry enjoys a competitive market is that switching costs are bearable and that switching TLDs is an option if registries increase prices too much.

So ICANN has a non-trivial choice to make. Either they maintain the position that switching costs are bearable and let .io disappear, or they admit that TLD switching is impossible and save .io, which will make it hard to argue the threat of (registrants) TLD switching keeps the industry competitive.

I don't think that's a real risk

This news to me, thanks for sharing.

same here with .ch! I trust Switzerland’s stability way more than I’d trust any business or country. I’m not actually sure if there’s any ccTLD more trustworthy. (yes I know that the TLD is ‘managed’ by a private company but still)

IIRC CIRA who is the delegated ccTLD manager of .ca is not a government entity (this is quite common in the ccTLD space actually, a lot of ccTLD are being managed by foundations or non-profits).

> .com itself is under jurisdiction of USA and operated by Verisign

Barely. The NTIA gave up all their leverage over .com in 2018. The only thing the US can do at this point is let the cooperative agreement auto-renew to limit price increases.

I wouldn't be surprised if the US withdrew from the agreement altogether at this point. Then .com would fall under the joint control of ICANN and Verisign.

> Literally every single TLD is administered by a government.

False. I’m not sure what you’re trying to assert, but governments don’t necessarily need to control/admin gTLDs, and as far as ccTLDs go, they’re under jurisdiction of the corresponding nation, usually, but they’re going to be “administered” by a tech company that holds a contract.

Anyway, “.com” does indeed answer to U.S. jurisdiction, despite being technically a gTLD, but registrations are not restricted to US-based entities. The main things that keep “.com” associated with the USA include the history/legacy of this quintessential “original” domain, as well as a general support from major countries that provide a “second-level” commercial domain, such as “.co.uk”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com

What about .name?