[ih] .UK vs .GB

Sat Apr 14 02:08:11 PDT 2018

This topic can disappear in a rathole of enormous proportions quite 
quickly, but since as it refers directly to [ {GB|UK}, GG, JE, IM ]
structure of the DNS, you may enjoy some background, which given my own 
direct role in this over the last 22 years, I have a fairly wide 
overview of.

At the outset, to understand how we got to today's DNS structure in the 
British Islands, one needs to be able to clearly identify and 
distinguish between geo-political (Westfalian) terms such as USA, 
(Dominion of) Canada, &c ) from geographical one (e.g "America", "North 
America", etc).

It's also important to understand our shared history, and the history of 
those terms. ("Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat 
it - Santanya".)

There are Venn diagrams posted on regularly Quora which purport clarify 
this. Unfortunately, only some of them accurately represent the 
situation and nearly all add to the confusion and "fun".

That being said, here are some useful definitions:

If the following reams of fine defintions are too long for you, just 
skip ahead to number 6 -  "The GB ISO Code".

1. GREAT BRITAIN
================

(a) "Great Britain" was the name of a country that no longer exists.

"The Kingdom of Great Britain" consisted of all the land which later 
became incorporated into the United Kingdom, but did not include ANY 
PART of the Island of Ireland.  It existed only between 1707 - 1801.

Self-evidently, that is the country, from which the original 13 colonies 
won independence in 1776.  (This is probably why American news media, to 
this very day, continue to use the archaic name (as the subsequent 
constitutional cataclysms back in London have gone unnoticed).

(b) In addition, "Great Britain" was, and remains, a geographic terml it 
simply refers to the largest of the Islands in the British Isles, and is 
co-terminous with {England+Wales+Scotland}.

2. UNITED KINGDOM (v1)
======================

The first country by the name "UK" (for short) came into existence in 
1801. It lasted until 1922. So today's UK (which is the legal 
successor-state in international law), is less than 100 years old, and 
was only confirmed on its current borders in 1948-49.

The full formal legal title of that former country was
"United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland".

In 1920, Ireland was, for a very short time, administratively divided 
into "Northern Ireland" and "Southern Ireland", both of which remained 
integral parts of the UK but this did not last.

The whole of Ireland was then excised from the UK in 1921, forming a new 
Dominion under the British Crown which was called Saorstát Éireann (the 
Irish Free State).

As a Dominion, the Free State was in the same status as Canada and 
Australia were at the time, the King remaining as Head of State).

3. UNITED KINGDOM (v2)
======================

Within a month after the separation of Ireland from the UK, six Irish 
counties seceded from the Free State and rejoined the UK (7th December 
1921) by an address to the King.

This let to the formation of today's nation-state, the full formal legal 
title of which country is "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern 
Ireland"

4. BRITISH ISLES
================

This is in informal, purely geographic term, which includes England, 
Wales, Scotland, and  (all of) Ireland as well as Alderney, Guernsey, 
Jersey, Sark and the Isle of Man.  (It's not often used in Ireland where 
the term "these Islands" replaces it.)

5. GUERNSEY, ETC
================

There are five smaller, independent, self-governing jurisdictions in the 
British Isles that are not part of either the United Kingdom or the 
Republic of Ireland: Alderney, Guernsey, Jersey, Sark and the Isle of 
Man. Their legal and constitutional independence predates the existence 
of the UK or GB by many centuries (since 1204 in the case of the four 
Channel Islands, 1392 for the Isle of Man).

6. ISO code GB: 1970s-2006
=============================

WHen the ISO-3166-1 standard came into being in the 1970s, the UK was 
engaged in the early stages of a violent civil conflict in Ireland which 
was to last 30 ears and claim nearly 4000 lives, and which, at times 
extended to not only Northern Ireland and the Republic, but also parts 
of mainland Great Britain, Gibraltar and even to Germany and the 
Netherlands.

Also in this time frame, The Constitution of the Republic of Ireland at 
this time maintained an irredentist claim to Northern Ireland.

Consequently, matters of nomenclature were extremely sensitive.

There may still be members of the ISO Committee who can provide 
first-hand information, and there may be internal British Government 
papers that can be disclosed under the 30 year rule, but it's not hard 
to see that the adoption of the arguably more accurate "UK" in the ISO 
standard would not have gone down too well with those parts of the 
community in Northern Ireland who identify as Irish-only.

The two-letter code 'GB' was chosen instead.

This must have seemed sensible, since GB, as has been noted, has been 
the international road traffic oval for the UK forever). And, unlike 
places like Alderney (GBA), Guernsey (GBG), Isle of Man (GBM) and 
Gibraltar (GBZ), the main GB oval had been used in Northern Ireland from 
the time when all of Ireland used (GB).

So the name was a better choice by ISO.

But the definition adopted by the Committee of the two letter code "GB" 
in the ISO standard was somewhat strange:

It was {the United Kingdom* + the Channel Islands + Isle of Man}.
(United Kingdom = Great Britain and N. Ireland)

Now, this was not a collection that often needed to be seen together as 
a single entity (arguably eight, post-Welsh devolution) different legal 
systems in that list, for a start).  For the purposes of legislation and 
statutory construction, however, the British Government had previously 
created (in the Interpretation Act 1948), a a not-well-known legal 
term-of-art for this exact set of jurisdictions: "the British Islands" 
(and which should not be confused with the purely geographic term 
"British Isles" - see (4), above.)

Unfortunately, in attempting to avoid problems in Ireland, this 
definition was later to produce unexpected consequences elsewhere, in 
the Internet and e-commerce.

7. The view from the smaller islands.

The choice of the two letter code "GB" in itself is relatively 
uncontroversial from the perspective of the Islands,

Becuase of the geographic closeness to the UK, the Channel Islands and 
the Isle of Man have always been treated differently to the UK's other 
possessions, and almost treated as part of the UK. This has been, to 
Islander, both convenient and irritating, probably in equal measure.

The Islands do not have their own international representation and, like 
the Free State, and Canada in the 1930s, are represented by the UK in 
matters for foreign affairs and defence.

But the Islands are NOT part of the UK and never have been.

So since the term GB it does not appear to import a gepolitical meanng 
(as UK does), it does not, in itself, appear to cause a problem.

But it was later to cause a serious problem, with the advent of 
e-commerce, and the use of drop-down country lists on web pages, causing 
20% VAT to be levied on most e-commerce purchases.

8. 1996

In the Summer of 1996 I engaged in correspondence with Jon Postel 
regarding the possibility TLDs for the Islands, having been referred to 
by what we would now call the ccTLD manager for .GB. (.GB was still 
connected to UCL/JANET, whilst .UK was being managed by a loosely 
defined set of ISPs and Academics called 'The Naming Committee' -- this 
almost immediately before Nominet UK was founded).

I still have the emails.

The reason for wanting TLDs was simple. The Islands are not part of the 
UK, so .UK was not eally appropriate (though some people did, and a few 
still do) use it, though oddly, I'd not started out by asking for TLDs, 
but had tried to see if we could have a sub-domain registry (remember 
when that seemed a thing?) such as .CI.GB.

IANA/Postel's view was he was tied by the ISO list, but accepted the 
argument that the Islands qualified in every other way (the CIA World 
Factbook was a key persuader here).

He was under a lot of pressure then from folks wanting all sorts of new 
TLDs, and did not want to open the floodgates. He said something like "I 
need a rule".

To cut a very long story short, he agreed to adopt the ISO list as used 
by the UPU, which since the Islands had their own international postal 
systems had requested ISO to reserve an additional four codes to define 
postal administrations.

Hence, GG, JE, IM and AC were added to the root at the end of August 1996.

9. ISO CODE "GB": 2006

Because, in particular, of the taxation problem, and problems of 
universal acceptance, GG, JE and IM were retrospectively added to the 
ISO standard in 2006.

And at the same time the old definition of GB was retired.

So ISO code GB means "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern 
Ireland".

But only since 2006.

On 04/14/2018 06:34 AM, Patrik Fältström wrote:
> Although I think there are some questions there, like if Wales is a separate "country" like Scotland. I thought Wales and England was sort of one entity.
> 