Tuvalu Sinking

The island nation of Tuvalu is gurgling, going under, leaving nothing but its valuable .tv domain name behind. The question is: Does a nation exist when the ground on which it stands disappears? What happens when we start sinking?

“Help! I’m sinking!”

That’s the classic cry in an action-adventure movie when someone, usually the villain, steps into a bog — quicksand — and slowly disappears under the thick, brown, gooey slop.

Gurgle. Glop. And then the person is gone.

Something like that may be happening to Tuvalu. It’s a tiny island nation in the South Pacific — actually a string of islands. Not that you should be expected to know that. Only that record-breaking-Jeopardy-genius-guy would have known about Tuvalu until it became public knowledge that the little-known nation is sinking into the deep blue sea.

Now you would think that slowly dipping under water would be bad enough, but for some business sharks it gets worse. The nation of Tuvalu, above or below the water, is entitled to its Internet domain name, and the URL ends in dot tv. That fact has those people who troll the waters of the Internet looking for new domain names gnashing their teeth, especially...