EDIT Sun May 15 10:38:34 PM PDT 2022:\nHello Hacker News! I’ve made\nsome corrections to this post after\nKeith Winstein pointed out a small\nhistorical inaccuracy. Turns out, ICANN did not exist until\nit was created by the Clinton admin on September 18, 1998,\nat which point IANA was merged into ICANN. So, most of the 90’s decisions around\nTLD’s were made by Jon Postel and Joyce K. Reynolds at the USC Information\nSciences Institute, which ran IANA. I have changed this article to reflect this.
\nAdditionally, many have pointed out that there are other examples where a\ncountry has disappeared, such as with Netherlands Antilles. I will admit that I\nprobably spent 2 hours at most on researching and writing this article, so I\ndidn’t get to look at every ccTLD. There are lots of other ccTLDs that are not\nactually countries, but exist anyways (such as .cc, .cx being islands but also\nterritories of Australia).
\njasonjei pointed out that .hk is in an interesting political situation. I did\nsome quick digging and it seems that .hk was established in 1990, and it is\nmanaged by the HKIRC, which is\n“the only organization endorsed by the Hong Kong Government to undertake the\nadministration of ‘hk’ domain names,”\naccording to Wikipedia. Despite what the 五\n毛 s say, the Hong Kong Government is completely at the mercy of the Chinese\ngovernment, so if China wanted to get rid of .hk right now, all it would take\nis telling their puppets to do it, and within the next decade, .hk will be\ngone.
However, in 2010, another ccTLD was launched, .香港 (Hong Kong in English and\n[.xn--j6w193g](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode)in punycode). At first,\nit might seem that if they’re going to add more domains, they’re probably in\nfavor of keeping .hk. However, to put this in historical context, Hong Kong\nwas transfered in 1997, and during the 2000s,\nthe PRC did attempt to tighten its grip,\nalthough relatively unsuccessfully compared to what has happened recently. So,\nthis ccTLD was created in a Hong Kong that had much more autonomy. Basically, I\nhave no idea, go ask someone who actually knows about east Asian geopolitics.
When I was deciding on what TLD to get for my QR tattoo,\none of my first thoughts was to just use a subdomain of aay.tw. Makes sense;\nit’s short, and I don’t have to pay any extra money.
However, someone at a\nHomebrew Website Club meeting\nbrought up a good point – can I trust that .tw will be around for the next\nfew decades? After all, .tw is Taiwan’s domain, and if you know anything about\ncontemporary geopolitics, there’s a lot of variables involved here. So, I ended\nup being safe and just picking out a new .org because those will only go away\nwhen ICANN goes away.
Still, this is an interesting thing to think about. Suppose China ends up\ninvading and successfully annexing Taiwan; what would happen to the\n2.7 million registered domains under[.tw](https://domainnamestat.com/statistics/tld/tw-TLD_ID-1285)?\nOr, suppose Russia, for some reason, ends up annexing Ukraine (I really think\nthis is nearly impossible, but hey, it’s just a thought experiment). What will\nhappen to the\nnearly 700 thousand domains under[.ua](https://domaintyper.com/domain-names/top-level-domains/ccTLD/ua-domain)?
In general, if a country stops existing, what happens to its TLD?
\nNote that this section is mostly sourced from Wikipedia articles so take what\nyou will of that.
\nBack in 1989, the Eastern Bloc countries were assigned .su (Soviet Union),\n.pl (Poland), .cs (Czechoslovakia), .yu (Yugoslavia) and .dd (East\nGermany). domain. 15 months later, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and it\nseems that IANA had to deal with the fallout of that.1
This situation is not the same as the one with Taiwan or Ukraine; the Soviet\nUnion did not collapse because it was invaded, but because of internal political\nfailures that are out of scope for this article. It is still an example of a\nstate ceasing to exist, so there might be some historical precedent there.
\n.plAlthough the Polish People’s Republic ended, its successor, the Republic of\nPoland, continued existing afterwards. In other words, there was a different\nstate, but it was still the same country. Thus, it inherited .pl.
.suThe Union of Soviet Sovialist Republics collapsed, and its constituent republics\nbroken off of it (i.e. Ukraine, the Baltic States) got their own domains. IANA\nintroduced .ru in 1994 to phase out .su, but the Russian government nad\ninternet users wanted to keep it, so IANA, and eventually ICANN, let it happen.\nThis repeated several times up until the present day, where
It seems that ICANN wants to terminate it, IANA states that it’s being phased\nout, but Russia still wants to keep it, and there’s still 100,000 domains\nregistered with it, so it seems to be in a gray area. Apparently, because of\nthis grayness and lax and outdated terms of use, it’s host to lots of cool sites\nsuch as white supremacist site Daily Stormer (to escape deplatforming on\nliterally everywhere else), cybercrime activities, the pro-Putin youth movement\nNashi up until 2019, the Dontesk People’s Republic, and more.
\n.dd.dd was only ever used internally by some East German universities, so it was\njust terminated. East and West Germany reunited only a year after .dd was\nintroduced, and West Germany already had .de, so they just used that.
.yuWhen the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia dissolved, some of its\nconstituent states broke off and got their own TLDs, like Slovenia and Croatia.\nHowever, Serbia and Montenegro came together to form the Federal Republic of\nYugoslavia, and they kept the .yu domain. But then, they named themselves\nSerbia and Montenegro in 2003, and they finally dissolved in 2006 and each got\ntheir own TLDs. .yu ended up being put on a transition period before being\nterminated in 2010. All of the .yu sites were simply wiped out.
.csCzechoslovakia was split in 1993, and .cs was deleted in 1995. There were\n2,300 hosts on .cs before its termination.
In Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq, they changed their government, but control over\ntheir respective TLDs (.af, .ly, .iq) were always given to the new\ngovernment.
On an interesting side note, although Iraq’s TLD was introduced in 1997, it was\nin limbo for a few years because the delegated manager was imprisoned in Texas\nfor a while, until ICANN redelegated it in 2005.
\nTLD\nCountry’s fate\nTLD’s fate
\n.pl\nTransfer of power\nAlive
.su\nBroken up/Transfer of power for Russia\nAlive, but kinda in limbo
.dd\nUnified with/into West Germany\nDead
.cs\nBroken up\nDead
.yu\nBroken up\nDead
.af\nTransfer of power\nAlive
.ly\nTransfer of power\nAlive
.iq\nTransfer of power\nAlive
This list is full of countries breaking up or changing governments, but no\nannexations. I guess you could sorta view East Germany as being annexed into\nWest Germany, but at the same time, almost no one used .dd so there was also\nthat going for it. There isn’t too much historical precedent to look at.
ICANN does have\na publicly-available list of its ccTLD agreements that it has made with all countries with ccTLDs.\nThis includes\nTaiwan’s\nand\nUkraine’s.
\nBased on my (admittedly cursory) scan of the Taiwan one, there’s a lot of\nmention about “the territory of the Governmental Authority,” which implies that\nif the Governmental Authority no longer has territory, things might become\nsomewhat hairy.
\nAt this point, I’m too lazy to look deeper into the ICANN agreements. Too much\nlegalese. I guess if there’s a takeaway from this research, it’s that a ccTLD\ncould stop existing after the country stops existing.
\nFrom my understanding of the political situation, China has been repeatedly\naffirming that the country of Taiwan is not a country, but is actually a rogue\nprovince and fully part of China. Therefore, if China were to take over Taiwan,\nthen getting rid of the .tw domain would be one of the many symbolic ways it\nwould strip Taiwan of its status as a sovereign nation, not to mention all the\nother material ways they would do so. It would probably not be immediate,\nbecause in the past, the process of removing domains has involved transition\nperiods.
\nAdditionally, the situation with the special warcrime operation in Ukraine has\nprogressed since I first published this post. It has become extremely obvious\nthat Russia doesn’t have the power to annex Ukraine, no matter how hard they\ntry. However, if they had annexed Ukraine, then taking into account their\nframing of Ukraine as “”“rightful Russian territory,””” they would probably get\nrid of .ua too.