17th November 2022
Here is (what may be) an amusing question – what should be done, if anything, with the .gb domain?
According to the United Kingdom government, there is no need for the .gb domain, given the pervasiveness of the .uk domain.
And so it seems it can be just got rid of.
But.
Getting rid of .gb may presume or preempt the outcome of possible constitutional changes in the next few years.
In the event there is Irish unification – which is possible in the next few years – then we would no longer be the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
And so we may then need .gb.
Though we could perhaps then be the United Kingdom of Great Britain, full stop.
And so still be .uk.
At least in our own minds.
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But if there is Scottish independence, then presumably we will no longer even be Great Britain – and thereby not .gb.
Maybe, without Scotland or Northern Ireland, England and Wales will try to persist in calling themselves either the United Kingdom or Great Britain.
You know, just like those pop bands from the 1970s and 1980s that tour the nostalgia circuit but with only one or two of their original members.
*
Perhaps, if Scotland and Northern Ireland do leave the union, England and Wales could adopt the domain .ew ?
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Or perhaps not.
*
Given it seems that it would not cost anything to get rid of it, and that it appears nobody else could take it, there may be no practical risk in letting .gb go.
But this will be one of many questions about our self-identity if and when Northern Ireland and Scotland (and less probably Wales) leave the union.
And just as the history of these islands to 1922 can be told as a move from separate nations to one union with ever grander names, the history of these islands from now may be told as a sequences of less expansive domains for the London-based government:
.uk > .gb > .ew > .eng > .lon ?
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The rump United Kingdom should be known as the Former United Kingdom Territories.
.fukt
. uk > .gb > .ew > .eng > .lon > .wes(tminster)?
May I humbly suggest .fkd?
Not a domain issue, but relevant to what constitutional change might mean. FCA Gabriel system for reg returns refuses UK but allows GB.
I remember many jokes around the time of the Scottish independence referendum which referred to the country taking the name “Former United Kingdom”
Perhaps Gibraltar might be interested?
Gibraltar has .gi.
These aren’t [supposed] to be handed out willy-nilly but are supposed to match ISO3166-2; the fact UK has .uk is an accident of history.
Fun fact, .su for Soviet Union still exists and operates…
I think the UK should adopt the .fu domain name. That is .fu for f*cked up not for f*ck you which seems to be the message they put out to everyone, including their own citizens.
Gabon might prefer .gb over its existing .ga. It might lessen confusion between Gabon and Georgia (.ge) and even Germany.
More seriously, the departure of either Scotland or Northern Ireland might create the opportunity for the rest of us to tidy up the right name for what remains, at least temporarily. Indeed it’s our confusion over names that causes offence and is part of the emotional case for separation. See Norman Davies’s “The Isles.”
This is something I’ve actually pondered (possibly more than it warranted). My company has a .co.uk domain name, but maybe I should shift to .com just in case .uk goes away?
Realistically, I think you’re correct that the UK would stay as a concept. There might be a historical justification for it, e.g. thinking back to the “4 kingdoms of England”. (Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex, and East Anglia, according to Wikipedia’s “Heptarchy” page.)
In a wider sense, I think that a lot of the problems surrounding “Brexit” started with the name. I.e. it’s a portmanteau for “Britain exit”, but the referendum was about the UK exiting from the EU. This might explain why the Northern Ireland protocol was given insufficient attention, while some of the proponents of the Leave campaign were emphasising the narrative that “we live on an island”.
In a similar way, I could describe myself as English or British, but there’s no word for “UK-ish”. So, in terms of self-identity, I think that losing the UK would have a minimal impact for lots of people.
Maybe “Great” will be dropped from the name, in favour of “Britain”, with a corresponding “.brit” domain?
There is a serious point about where people think they live, and it is certainly true that more Brexitters gave little or no thought to the bit of the UK that has a land border with another country. One of them even suggested that the border was like the one between Camden and Westminster – he went on to become PM. And of course, the people in the bit of the UK with a land border go on about being British, when they definitely aren’t in the Britain bit of the UK.
If we end up with just England and Wales, I would suggest EC as the domain name.
Or could be, “Big Brittany”.
Grande Bretagne was of course, brought in by the Normands.
I thought it was James VI.
Let’s face it, our current national identity has made little sense since 1922 as it implies Northern Ireland was a Kingdom that could be united with the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Using that logic, we could continue to use “United Kingdom”, and therefore the .uk identifier, if any two or more nations remain part of what’s left after the current four nation union disintegrates.
It only becomes a problem if England is left isolated from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Perhaps we should quietly reserve .en just in case?
I reckon only domain name worth having is the .com domain—anything else is a bit arriviste. So am ambivalent about the .gb domain. Could give it to Gibraltar, would be better than their .gi domain. Scotland has the .scot domain but they tend to be rather pernickety about who gets one and what it’s used for.
On uk, I’m reminded of Tim Healy, the Irish M.P., saying in a speech in the House after the Parnell split, “There are but two united parties in this House, and I am one of them”.
As is pointed out above, the .gb code is a ccTLD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain
and comes from ISO 3166. As a result you will find this
code used elsewhere, such as the GB prefix of the IBAN
number of your UK bank account. Letting go of control of
this domain just sounds like a way to make life easier
for fraudsters trying to steal your money.
“See, our domain matches your IBAN number, so you can
trust us.”
The question invoked by Chesterton’s fence isn’t just
“What does this do?” but also “What does this affect or
is it related to?”
Does the government have enough money left in the
coffers to run this idea past some security experts?
.ruk as in ‘remains of uk’ is still up for grabs..
I have two alternative approaches.
The first for those who enjoy using completely irrelevant arguments to justify an indefensible positions. We retain .uk and deny any aspirations for reunification, independence or devolution on the grounds that changing the .uk domain is a matter of over-riding principle.
The second , which might appeal to the more xenophobic audience (the ERG for example) is to to adopt .ee immediately ( . ee representing English Empire ) on the grounds that the other 3 countries are, at best, hangers on and are in reality colonies.
I think the current holder of .ee (Estonia) might object…
Not to be confused with The People’s Republic of Yorkshire’s tld .eee
That surely would be E. Ba. Gum.
.ebg
.hpn? or .lan?
If we start to look at ‘top level domain’ (TLD) names, there are some curiosities:
There are so-called ‘GeoTLDs’ in use for Scotland and Wales, .scot and .cymru (as well as .wales), but no .england or .eng.
(Though digging deeper .scot turns out to be a ‘Generic/Community TLD’ rather than a ‘true’ GeoTLD.)
It appears that anyone who identifies as or ‘feels’ Scottish or Welsh can apply to have a website using one of these.
The .ie TLD is slightly different. This is the Irish TLD, and these are available to register only by an individual, company or organisation with a connection to the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland – or someone who can demonstrate trade or commercial activity within the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland.
There is currently no TLD for Northern Ireland.
Very early on the academics who ran the Domain Name System realised that it was taking off and that politics was going to be a nightmare, so they cleaved to ISO-3166 as a standard they could rely on to give out “country code” Top Level Domains (ccTLDs). There were oddities – specially reserved codes for some self governing territories e.g. Channel Islands, Isle of Man – which had separate country codes despite falling under the UK Government for international representation, passports etc. On the whole though, a ccTLD would only be awarded where ISO-3166 recognised the code. There were also generic TLDs (gTLD) such as .com, .org which were originally not for a specific country. ICANN then expanded the list of gTLDs in a large and sometimes haphazard way. So if it’s two letters (.ie, .uk), it’s a ccTLD and tied to an ISO code, the local registry (and local government). If it’s 3 or more (e.g. .scot, .wales), it’s a gTLD and the rules are those submitted to ICANN on its creation (more or less). Northern Ireland doesn’t have an ISO code – so no ccTLD – and very different politics of national feeling than are present in Wales/Scotland so less incentive for anyone to seek a gTLD.
Well, for no particularly good reason, last year we abandoned the century-old “GB” code on vehicle registration stickers for “UK”. (Ukraine is “UA” of course). Perhaps Northern Ireland felt left out?
The gov.uk blog says: “There is a risk that if handed back [.gb] another country might try to claim it for themselves. We judge this risk to be extremely low.”
Why voluntarily take that risk – even if it is a low one? What is the problem with keeping the .gb domain, even if it is not used?
Is there a plan to change the Olympic country code too – “Team UK”?
Could ew take us back to EU?
.ev -entually
Perhaps people on both sides of the Irish border will wish to unite the whole of Ireland with GB.
Perhaps the people of England would like to become the fifth province of Ireland?
Would that entitle us to free trade with the rest of the EU? Certainly worth thinking about…
That could be it! Let’s get it on the side of a bus. I’m sure this is the kind of collegiate thinking that DAG tries to prompt on here.
If England becomes a separate state in the ISO sense, it will be given a _two_ character country code, which will become its ccTLD. That is almost certain to be .en (not currently assigned, and already used for language codes to mean English). So the sequence would be
.uk -> .gb -> .ew -> .en
Keep .gb for those smallish Scottish, English and Welsh companies for whom it’s no longer worthwhile to try to sell their goods in Northern Ireland. They’ve seen their single market shrink from continental size to smaller than the United Kingdom
Going back in time it would have been
.bem (British Empire) -> .uk -> .gb -> .ew -> .en
is .we taken? That does have a nice ring about it…
What possible upside is there to ‘getting rid’ of .gb? I suspect that there would be all sorts of unanticipated problems. It feels like meddling for meddling’s sake (on brand for this Government, of course, so it will probably happen).
On a practical level, there are millions of records (such as email addresses in computer address books, links on websites) that point to “.uk”. If we did want to change away from that, we would have to retain and route all “.uk” mail/ websites for many years to avoid a great deal of returned email/ broken links.
Of course, if the previous UK legal entities split into different legal entities for the four nations (which presumably they would have to), there might be an argument on which entity the .uk pointed to…
Next up +44….
I wonder if anyone has talked to Nominet about it, the organisation that runs the .UK ccTLD and others. It seems like an opportunity to stir up a bit of debate rather than a serious proposal.
We saw some of this when they dumped GB plates for cars. They suddenly found it wasn’t entirely their call, so we now have UK, GBJ, GBM, GBZ and GBG plates for British cars.
A British Isles domain might be worth having, separate from .fukt
Handing back the .GB code is the sort of idea that seems risk free until, 20 years later, you want it back., only to find that a political crisis in Slovakia has led to the creation of several new statelets and the code now belongs to Greater Bratislava.
I’ll take the .gb thank you very much.
Registration for any brewer of Good Beer is welcome to apply for a name that wants it as a suffix.
~Andrew~
LOL. But so very true.
As others have said, these ccTLDs come from the ISO-3166-1 alpha 2 standard. The UK academic community were some of the first on to the internet and Jon Postel who ran what became the IANA function asked a professor at UCL to hand out GB registrations, a role that later fell to Willie Black in Oxford. Academics in NI complained about the use of GB so Dr Black asked for, and got, .uk as a special dispensation (the rules weren’t so firm then). UK would have been an obvious ISO code for Ukraine, but was was exceptionally reserved by the UK. Other exceptional reservations include (which is used as .eu in the DNS). The old TLD, .gb, remained in the IANA root zone in the Domain Name System (and listed personally to Dr Black long after .uk went to NominetUK) but removing it from the DNS root probably makes no difference now: GB remains allocated to the UK in ISO-3166-1 alpha 2 lists and can’t be given to anyone else. The only point would be that a new issuance of it might tempt ICANN to try to enforce some of their rules/policies that .uk/NominetUK as incumbents can decline to follow.
Those academics were absolutely the first; they created the Joint Academic Network (JANET), daughter of ARPANET, and mother to INTERNET.
Sorry, seem to have got a bit biblical there. Off to turn some wine into water….
Another curiosity is whether the timing of this question/proposal from a part of the Cabinet Office tells us anything about the current administration’s attitude towards culture wars.
Has the question actually been raised by government internet experts for years, but Ministers and their special advisers could not decide whether or how it would play to their advantage, and therefore kept returning it ‘to the back burner’?
How about The United Kingdoms of Great Britain? (The plural is not a typo.) I believe James VI of Scotland used that term to refer to his realm after he had succeeded Elizabeth I to the throne of England.
And if it was correct then, why wouldn’t it be correct now? Therefore a .uk suffix would still be appropriate.
The argument for it then would have been that there were, in fact, two kingdoms. (The argument against it would have been that they were not, in fact, united; they were separate kingdoms, who just happened to have the same person as king.)
Now, obviously, there’s only one kingdom, so you couldn’t really get away with calling it the “United Kingdoms” of anything.
Were Scotland to become independent, they would no longer be united. But, of course, they might not both be kingdoms.
Because, prior to the Act of Union, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were _separate_ kingdoms (just as the UK and Canada are today). After the Act of Union, there was a single kingdom covering both England and Scotland. (For these purposes, Wales was conquered by, and absorbed into, England.)
You could argue that the United Kingdom today is really two kingdoms, a principality and a province
Or a remote outpost of the Empire (Formally known as British)?
James VI & I certainly wanted to use the title “King of Great Britain” as part of a broader drive towards unifying the two kingdoms into one but encountered a lot of English resistance to the term and so it was not used everywhere which can cause confusion. (He wasn’t the first monarch to use an umbrella title for separate thrones in personal union – the “King of Spain” title was in use long before the separate kingdoms were formally unified.) I’m not sure exactly what collective long title, if any, he used for the two realms. “King of Great Britain” hung around in various places over the next few decades but I think the Scottish proclamation of Charles II in 1649 was the last significant use before actual Union.
If and when England and Wales stand alone we could perhaps be .GY (Greater Yorkshire).
Whatever happens, .uk and .gb need to be retained and maintenance of existing domains would be allowed. Whether new domains are allowed and whether there is a limit to maintenance of legacy domains should depend on the political situation and the practicalities involved at the time: some may need to be maintained indefinitely.
Why do you think they should be retsined? Breakup, not expansion, is far more likely, so retention of these domains seems redundant once break up happens. Certainly, there would be no rowing back towards integration.
For someone who has been .uk .com .es and .fr without any issues whatsoever it is sad and also worrying to see the level of debate here.
In November 2023 all Brits will have to apply for biometric Schengen visas to enter the Eu .
It is estimated 10/15% of Brits will be refused entry.
If you cannot amongst yourselves agree domain names what hope is there ?
The comments don’t quite get what’s happened since 1999 .GB is a country code top level domain (ccTLD). As some commenters have noted, all ccTLDs exist because they are first added to ISO 3166, the globally authoritative list of two-letter country codes used in many spheres. To retire a ccTLD from ICANN, the organisation that administers the global domain name system (and which I used to work for), it first must be retired from the ISO list.
Retiring names from ISO 3166 takes significant engagement over a couple of years at least, I would guess. It’s a rather opaque organisation, and expensive to participate in. Only then do you go to ICANN to ask for the ccTLD to be retired. I Nominent would have to apply, not the UK government, but could be wrong on that. Nominet is the .uk (i.e. secondary) ccTLD registry, though I don’t know for sure if it holds .gb. There is a significant public notification process for ICANN as ICANN is responsible for security and stability of the global domain name system. And THEN, you wait for 5 years so no one is taken by surprise.
Why all the process? because back in 2006/7, ICANN tried to retire the .SU ccTLD, in fairness, almost 20 years after the end of the Soviet Union. Followed its own rules, but massive diplomatic incident.
Hence, a laborious retirement process that’s designed to protect governments caught by a surprise ccTLD requirement they ask for.
`the UKG is probably being inappropriately chirpy and dismissive of what’s required when it says retiring .GB is “Administratively, it is quite simple. .. We would simply need to tell them that .gb is no longer needed, and it can thus be removed from the Internet.”
AFAIK it needs to remove the ISO 3166 allocation first, and only then start to inform everyone of its intents. I could be wrong – there may be an accelerated process for governments who to retire a ccTLD, as the new process process has just this year been finalised;
https://www.icann.org/en/board-activities-and-meetings/materials/approved-resolutions-regular-meeting-of-the-icann-board-22-09-2022-en#2.c
This process was just approved in September.
(sorry – long explanation of why it’s not so simple!)
Bottom line though, is that no sensible country gives up either an ISO3166 code or a ccTLD. They’re tricky and hard to get in the future. And if, say, NI or Scotland leave the UK, the GB designation may turn out to be badly needed.
Maria,
I would love it if you’d post your well-written answer on the original gov.uk blog: https://cddo.blog.gov.uk/2022/11/15/is-it-time-to-retire-the-gb-top-level-domain/
Whilst the discussion here about which ccTLD James VI would have chosen in 1706 is doubtless fun for those involved, this is actually an important internet governance issue and I wish people would appreciate the work which goes into maintaining the multi-stakeholder internet.
We are the DUK (Disunited Kingdom) already, so should go for .duk
.ew? Why not .we.?
Better still, .cll (Cymru a Lloegr), although .ce might be acceptable (Cymru a England).
UK = Untied Kingdom
United Kingdom of Great Britain is obviously GB plus NI. Take away NI and you are left with the Kingdom of Great Britain.
.kgb for short.
It’s got a certain ring to it.
Leaving the technicalities to one side, if N I, Scotland and Wales leave the Union, it’s not really much of a Union any more is it?
Yours,
A Pedant
If this is irksome, I apologise. It’s meant to approximate to wit.
The UK should not surrender .gb for as long as it holds at least one of a) total control of the island of Great Britain or b) the corresponding ISO 3166 designation.
I dare suggest that the government may have gotten slightly carried away in considering this decision, without appreciating the volume of consequence of surrendering ownership of an online domain. This particularly pertinent given ICANN is hard-to-control UN-style organisation that can’t be assumed to take expected steps in the future.
.gb is a national asset that one should probably not surrender without a meaningful benefit to the nation in return, in that context.
Brilliant! and hilarious. How about a .brum, too??