Ask HN: What would happened if an operator of a gTLD went out of business?

26 points by tinyProton 11y ago ↗ HN

With all these new gTLDs everywhere, I am wondering what would happened if I bought a domain and the operator of the gTLD behind it went out of business. Will the entire gTLD and all the second-level domains registered under it disappear? If this is what is going to happened, then I guess these new gTLDs are not reliable for any serious project. I am interested in reading your opinion about this.

6 comments

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arcdigital 11y ago ↗

ICANN would take control and find a new operator. There is a pretty long and tedious process involved with operating a gTLD, including proving that you have the appropriate finances and resources to support the domain.

wmf 11y ago ↗

In addition, ICANN requires registries (the companies that run TLDs) to escrow their data so that it won't be lost in case they go out of business. http://icannwiki.com/Data_Escrow

ohashi 11y ago ↗

Also the underlying software managing the registry is often outsourced to companies like NeuStar. I imagine if that is the case, they could keep operating it without issue until a new caretaker is found/organized/whatever.

[deleted] 11y ago ↗

(comment deleted)

mariuolo 11y ago ↗

I suggest you to read the story of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RegisterFly .

That was only a registrar, not the central gTLD registry, so I imagine it would be worse.

guillon 11y ago ↗

No, they would not disappear, there is a specific procedure in the ICANN new gTLD applicant guidebook for this issue. No change for the end user but is is possible that transfers or special zone file operations would not work during a certain period of time. This has not happened yet so...difficult to answer.