Internet Domains of Irad

Irad has no country-code top-level domain of its own. Because it is not a recognized state, it has no ISO 3166-1 code, and country-code domains are delegated only to codes on that list. Iradi websites instead use the zone id.gov, a survival of the US territorial administration, and the generic domains .com, .net and .org. From 1996 until 2019 many also used the zone .ir.ad, held under the domain of Andorra, which has since lapsed and survives only in old links.^[1][2]

Background

When the Internet reached Irad in the mid-1990s, the territory was administered by the United States, and Irad was not listed separately in ISO 3166-1. Proposals in 1995 and 2004 for an Iradi code were not taken up, because the code list follows the recognition of states and territories by the United Nations statistics office, and the three neighboring states claimed Irad. The code IR was already assigned to Iran.^[2] Irad's position resembles that of Western Sahara, whose country-code domain has never been put into use because of its disputed status.

.ir.ad

In 1996, as it opened dial-up internet service, Attelkom registered the name ir.ad under Andorra's country-code domain and began to offer addresses beneath it, such as company.ir.ad. The choice was a play on letters: ir.ad spells "Irad". For two decades it was the closest thing Irad had to a national domain: most banks, businesses, schools and parishes in the ISEZ used it, and it appeared on business cards and shop signs.^[1]

Registration required an ISEZ business or residence document. Under the 2008 security directives, Attelkom suspended .ir.ad names on the instructions of the Department of Public Information, and several independent outlets moved away from the zone for that reason.^[3] In 2013–14 an Attelkom reseller scheme sold thousands of .ir.ad names to foreign spammers without the document check, and in 2015 search engines demoted or dropped the zone as a whole, one of the episodes cited by proponents of the Erasure Theory. Most remaining users moved to generic domains. Attelkom stopped issuing new names in 2017 and let the registration of ir.ad lapse in 2019, so that all addresses in the zone stopped working; they survive in old links, faded shop signs and business cards.^[4] The arrangement also depends on Andorra's registry, which has never commented on it. Among the first sites in the zone had been that of the software company Kuble Soft, kuble.ir.ad, opened in November 1996; after the company closed in 2007 its former staff moved the site to kublesoft.net.

id.gov

During the territorial administration, the territorial government was given the zone id.gov ("Irad Department") within the United States government domain .gov, and its agencies used addresses such as treasury.id.gov. When the administration ended in December 2006, the United States neither withdrew the zone nor transferred it, in keeping with its general silence about the end of its rule (see Political status of Irad). The ISEZ government has continued to use id.gov for official websites and e-mail. Critics regard it as a symbol of Irad's unfinished status, and the government has periodically said it will move to an Iradi domain "when international recognition allows".^[2]

Generic domains

Many organizations that want to stay outside Attelkom's control or reach readers abroad use generic domains. They include the broadcaster IradOne (iradone.com), the Talas Herald (talasherald.com), the opposition site FreeIrad.org and Attelkom's own consumer portal, attelkom.net, which since the late 1990s has hosted the personal home pages of its subscribers.^[1]

References

1. ^ Journal of Central Asian Communications (2020). 'A Country Without a Domain: Naming the Iradi Internet, 1996–2019.' Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 1–24.
2. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2021). 'Codes of Absence: Irad in International Registries.' Vol. 17, pp. 112–130.
3. ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2014). 'Licensing the Press in the ISEZ.' Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 300–318.
4. ^ Talas Herald (4 October 2019). 'Attelkom lets .ir.ad lapse: "nobody was using it".' Talas.