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The appropriate to license profitable on-line domains favoured by cryptocurrency companies has turn out to be the newest battlefield within the escalating dispute between Mauritius and the UK over possession of the Chagos Islands.
The 2 letter handle .io, which stands for Indian Ocean, is allotted by the Web Assigned Numbers Authority (Iana) to the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). It’s operated by a industrial agency nominally primarily based in Diego Garcia, the biggest of the Chagos islands and residential to a US navy base.
The .io time period is trendy amongst on-line sellers and digital financial system lovers as a result of the initials additionally stand for enter/output, the method of sending and receiving information.
Cryptocurrency companies and corporations promoting non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – created to show digital artwork into tradeable movies or photographs – often choose .io internet addresses for his or her buying and selling platforms. They’re consequently dearer.
Each the Mauritian authorities and exiled Chagossians – forcibly eliminated by the UK from their houses within the early Nineteen Seventies – are difficult British management over .io domains on the grounds that Britain now not has a reliable declare to the Chagos Islands.
The authorized steadiness in favour of Mauritian arguments for sovereignty shifted decisively after selections on the worldwide court docket of justice (ICJ), the UN normal meeting and the worldwide tribunal of the regulation of the ocean (Itlos) in 2019 and final 12 months.
Britain was discovered to have unlawfully separated the Chagos Islands from Mauritius earlier than granting independence in 1968. The UK is defying UN votes and court docket judgments demanding the return of the islands, stressing that the ICJ ruling was solely an “advisory opinion”.
Authorized recommendation drafted in New York for Mauritius – and seen by the Guardian – exhibits that the federal government in Port Louis is contemplating implement its on-line authority. It comes after after an expedition final month to boost its flag over the outer islands within the archipelago.
Mauritius’ strategic aims are to “finish the usage of .io area identify by the UK or any entity performing on its behalf and to safe for the federal government of Mauritius revenues generated by any additional use of the .io area identify”.
Iana lists the Web Laptop Bureau (ICB) Ltd as the corporate that allocates the nation code for .io domains. The agency additionally controls gross sales of .ac domains associated to a part of one other British abroad territory, the Ascension Islands.
The Iana web site information ICB’s handle as: c/o Positive (Diego Garcia) Restricted, Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territories, PSC 466 Field 59 FPO-AP 96595-0059, British Indian Ocean Territory.
The agency was offered in 2017, reportedly for $70m (£53m). It has been purchased once more since then. The earlier proprietor of ICB stated in 2014 that income from promoting .io domains are “distributed to the [British] authorities”.
Based on the Overseas, Commonwealth and Growth Workplace, nonetheless, neither BIOT nor the UK authorities profit from gross sales of .io domains. A spokesperson stated: “The UK has little question as to our sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory, which we’ve held repeatedly since 1814. Mauritius has by no means held sovereignty over the territory and the UK doesn’t recognise its declare.”
Jagdish Koonjul, the Mauritian ambassador to the UN, stated his authorities had contacted ICB by means of its Diego Garcia handle asking them to deal in future with the Mauritian authorities. “Now we have written to Positive [in Diego Garcia] however they’ve solely stated they’re it,” he stated.
In a separate initiative, attorneys for the Chagos Refugees Group have additionally lodged a grievance about British management of the .io area identify with the OECD (Organisation for Financial Cooperation and Growth).
The ICB and its guardian firm have been approached for remark.
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