What happens to TLDs when their country stops existing? (2022)

当一个国家不复存在时，其顶级域名（TLD）会发生什么？（2022）

EDIT Sun May 15 10:38:34 PM PDT 2022: Hello Hacker News! I’ve made some corrections to this post after Keith Winstein pointed out a small historical inaccuracy. Turns out, ICANN did not exist until it was created by the Clinton admin on September 18, 1998, at which point IANA was merged into ICANN. So, most of the 90’s decisions around TLD’s were made by Jon Postel and Joyce K. Reynolds at the USC Information Sciences Institute, which ran IANA. I have changed this article to reflect this. 编辑于 2022 年 5 月 15 日周日太平洋夏令时间晚上 10:38:34：你好，Hacker News！在 Keith Winstein 指出了一处小的历史不准确之处后，我对本文进行了一些更正。事实证明，ICANN 直到 1998 年 9 月 18 日才由克林顿政府创建，当时 IANA 被合并入 ICANN。因此，90 年代关于顶级域名（TLD）的大多数决策都是由南加州大学信息科学研究所（USC Information Sciences Institute）的 Jon Postel 和 Joyce K. Reynolds 做出的，该研究所当时负责运营 IANA。我已经修改了本文以反映这一点。

Additionally, many have pointed out that there are other examples where a country has disappeared, such as with Netherlands Antilles. I will admit that I probably spent 2 hours at most on researching and writing this article, so I didn’t get to look at every ccTLD. There are lots of other ccTLDs that are not actually countries, but exist anyways (such as .cc, .cx being islands but also territories of Australia). 此外，许多人指出还有其他国家消失的例子，例如荷属安的列斯群岛。我承认我花在研究和撰写这篇文章上的时间最多只有 2 小时，所以我没能查看每一个国家代码顶级域名（ccTLD）。还有许多其他的 ccTLD 实际上并不是国家，但依然存在（例如 .cc 和 .cx，它们既是岛屿，也是澳大利亚的领土）。

jasonjei pointed out that .hk is in an interesting political situation. I did some quick digging and it seems that .hk was established in 1990, and it is managed by the HKIRC, which is “the only organization endorsed by the Hong Kong Government to undertake the administration of ‘hk’ domain names,” according to Wikipedia. Despite what the 五 毛 s say, the Hong Kong Government is completely at the mercy of the Chinese government, so if China wanted to get rid of .hk right now, all it would take is telling their puppets to do it, and within the next decade, .hk will be gone. jasonjei 指出 .hk 处于一种有趣的政治局势中。我做了一些快速调查，似乎 .hk 成立于 1990 年，由 HKIRC 管理。据维基百科称，它是“唯一获得香港政府认可负责管理‘hk’域名名称的组织”。尽管“五毛”们怎么说，香港政府完全受制于中国政府，所以如果中国现在想废除 .hk，只需要告诉他们的傀儡去执行，十年之内 .hk 就会消失。

However, in 2010, another ccTLD was launched, .香港 (Hong Kong in English and .xn—j6w193g in punycode). At first, it might seem that if they’re going to add more domains, they’re probably in favor of keeping .hk. However, to put this in historical context, Hong Kong was transfered in 1997, and during the 2000s, the PRC did attempt to tighten its grip, although relatively unsuccessfully compared to what has happened recently. So, this ccTLD was created in a Hong Kong that had much more autonomy. Basically, I have no idea, go ask someone who actually knows about east Asian geopolitics. 然而，2010 年又推出了另一个 ccTLD：.香港（英文为 Hong Kong，punycode 为 .xn—j6w193g）。起初，这看起来如果他们要增加更多域名，可能倾向于保留 .hk。但从历史背景来看，香港于 1997 年移交，在 2000 年代，中华人民共和国确实试图加强控制，尽管与最近发生的事情相比，相对不太成功。因此，这个 ccTLD 是在一个拥有更多自治权的香港时期创建的。总之，我不知道，去问问那些真正了解东亚地缘政治的人吧。

When I was deciding on what TLD to get for my QR tattoo, one of my first thoughts was to just use a subdomain of aay.tw. Makes sense; it’s short, and I don’t have to pay any extra money. However, someone at a Homebrew Website Club meeting brought up a good point – can I trust that .tw will be around for the next few decades? After all, .tw is Taiwan’s domain, and if you know anything about contemporary geopolitics, there’s a lot of variables involved here. So, I ended up being safe and just picking out a new .org because those will only go away when ICANN goes away. 当我在决定为我的二维码纹身选择什么 TLD 时，我最初的想法之一是直接使用 aay.tw 的子域名。这很有道理；它很短，而且我不需要支付任何额外费用。然而，在一次 Homebrew Website Club 会议上，有人提出了一个很好的观点——我能相信 .tw 在未来几十年里还会存在吗？毕竟，.tw 是台湾的域名，如果你了解当代地缘政治，就会知道这里涉及很多变量。因此，我最终为了保险起见，选择了一个新的 .org 域名，因为只有当 ICANN 不复存在时，它们才会消失。

Still, this is an interesting thing to think about. Suppose China ends up invading and successfully annexing Taiwan; what would happen to the 2.7 million registered domains under .tw? Or, suppose Russia, for some reason, ends up annexing Ukraine (I really think this is nearly impossible, but hey, it’s just a thought experiment). What will happen to the nearly 700 thousand domains under .ua? In general, if a country stops existing, what happens to its TLD? 尽管如此，这仍然是一个值得思考的有趣问题。假设中国最终入侵并成功吞并了台湾，那么在 .tw 下注册的 270 万个域名会发生什么？或者，假设俄罗斯出于某种原因最终吞并了乌克兰（我真的认为这几乎是不可能的，但嘿，这只是一个思想实验）。在 .ua 下的近 70 万个域名会发生什么？总的来说，如果一个国家不复存在，它的 TLD 会发生什么？

Historical precedent

历史先例

Note that this section is mostly sourced from Wikipedia articles so take what you will of that. 请注意，本节主要来源于维基百科文章，所以请自行判断其内容。

The collapse of the Soviet Union

苏联解体

Back in 1989, the Eastern Bloc countries were assigned .su (Soviet Union), .pl (Poland), .cs (Czechoslovakia), .yu (Yugoslavia) and .dd (East Germany). domain. 15 months later, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and it seems that IANA had to deal with the fallout of that. This situation is not the same as the one with Taiwan or Ukraine; the Soviet Union did not collapse because it was invaded, but because of internal political failures that are out of scope for this article. It is still an example of a state ceasing to exist, so there might be some historical precedent there. 早在 1989 年，东欧集团国家被分配了 .su（苏联）、.pl（波兰）、.cs（捷克斯洛伐克）、.yu（南斯拉夫）和 .dd（东德）域名。15 个月后的 1991 年，苏联解体，看起来 IANA 不得不处理由此产生的后果。这种情况与台湾或乌克兰的情况不同；苏联的解体并非因为被入侵，而是因为内部政治失败，这超出了本文的讨论范围。但这仍然是一个国家不复存在的例子，因此可能存在一些历史先例。

.pl

Although the Polish People’s Republic ended, its successor, the Republic of Poland, continued existing afterwards. In other words, there was a different state, but it was still the same country. Thus, it inherited .pl. 虽然波兰人民共和国结束了，但其继任者波兰共和国随后继续存在。换句话说，虽然国家政体变了，但它仍然是同一个国家。因此，它继承了 .pl。

.su

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed, and its constituent republics broken off of it (i.e. Ukraine, the Baltic States) got their own domains. IANA introduced .ru in 1994 to phase out .su, but the Russian government and internet users wanted to keep it, so IANA, and eventually ICANN, let it happen. This repeated several times up until the present day, where It seems that ICANN wants to terminate it, IANA states that it’s being phased out, but Russia still wants to keep it, and there’s still 100,000 domains registered with it, so it seems to be in a gray area. Apparently, because of this grayness and lax and outdated terms of use, it’s host to lots of cool sites such as white supremacist site Daily Stormer (to escape deplatforming on literally everywhere else), cybercrime activities, the pro-Putin youth movement Nashi up until 2019, the Donetsk People’s Republic, and more. 苏维埃社会主义共和国联盟解体，其组成共和国脱离出来（如乌克兰、波罗的海国家）并获得了自己的域名。IANA 在 1994 年引入了 .ru 以逐步淘汰 .su，但俄罗斯政府和互联网用户希望保留它，因此 IANA 以及最终的 ICANN 同意了。这种情况一直重复到今天，目前看来 ICANN 想要终止它，IANA 声称它正在被逐步淘汰，但俄罗斯仍想保留它，并且仍有 10 万个域名注册在它下面，所以它似乎处于一个灰色地带。显然，由于这种灰色地带以及宽松且过时的使用条款，它托管了许多“酷”网站，例如白人至上主义网站 Daily Stormer（为了逃避在其他所有地方被封杀）、网络犯罪活动、直到 2019 年的亲普京青年运动“纳什”（Nashi）、顿涅茨克人民共和国等等。

.dd

.dd was only ever used internally by some East German universities, so it was just terminated. East and West Germany reunited only a year after .dd was introduced, and West Germany already had .de, so they just used that. .dd 仅在东德的一些大学内部使用，因此它直接被终止了。.dd 引入仅一年后，东西德就统一了，而西德已经有了 .de，所以他们直接使用了那个。

.yu

When the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia dissolved, some of its constituent states broke off and got their own TLDs, like Slovenia and Croatia. However, Serbia and Montenegro came together to form the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and they kept the .yu domain. But then, they named themselves Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, and they finally dissolved in 2006 and each got their own TLDs. .yu ended up being put on a transition period before being terminated in 2010. All of the .yu sites were simply wiped out. 当南斯拉夫社会主义联邦共和国解体时，其一些组成国脱离并获得了自己的 TLD，如斯洛文尼亚和克罗地亚。然而，塞尔维亚和黑山联合组成了南斯拉夫联盟共和国，并保留了 .yu 域名。但后来，他们在 2003 年更名为塞尔维亚和黑山，并最终在 2006 年解体，各自获得了自己的 TLD。.yu 最终在 2010 年被终止前经历了一个过渡期。所有的 .yu 网站都被直接抹去了。

.cs

Czechoslovakia was split in 1993, and .cs was deleted in 1995. There were 2,300 hosts on .cs before its termination. 捷克斯洛伐克于 1993 年分裂，.cs 于 1995 年被删除。在终止之前，.cs 上有 2300 个主机。

Other change of governments

其他政府更迭

In Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq, they changed their government, but control over their respective TLDs (.af, .ly, .iq) were always… 在阿富汗、利比亚和伊拉克，他们更换了政府，但对各自 TLD（.af, .ly, .iq）的控制权始终……