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The Internet

NeuStar to Manage .US Registry 217

Posted by michael from the slashdot.us-is-a-little-too-literal dept.
flatt writes: "The US Government picked NeuStar, the managers of the upcoming .biz registry, to manage the .us registry today. NeuStar has made a press release and there's an AP article over at Excite about it. Finally a country code that I'll register in." This has been brewing for a long time, and has been criticized as a giveaway.
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NeuStar to Manage .US Registry More

NeuStar to Manage .US Registry

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  • Changes We Are Seeing (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Renraku ( 518261 )
    Money and business runs this country. Is it any coincidence that the company responsible for .biz is also responsible for .us? Is this a sign?
    • It's a sign that Network "Solutions" won't be fucking it up anymore. Which is to say, a good sign!

      "The business of America is business."
      --Calvin Coolidge, Thirtieth President, 1923-1929

      ... of course, right after his terms were up, the business of America was more along the lines of eating shoe lint and wallpapering the outhouse with stock certificates.
    • [replying to your .sig]
      I've used both kermit and x-modem. Personally I prefer Z-Modem since it can detect errors better [CRC32] and restart :-)

      And stop trying to be cool because you used a computer in the 1990's. I'm 19 years old and I grew up sysop'ing two BBSes myself. I certainly don't think I'm a hackerz elitez or something because I know how to launch renegade [under DesqView no less]....

      /rant

  • Excite article... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CmdrTroll ( 412504 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2001 @07:56PM (#2500333) Homepage
    The excite link was slashdotted but here is a summary of what it said:

    • The registry will go on-line on December 15th, 2001
    • Neustar will be partially subsidized by the US government, and will charge users $5/domain/year for .us domains
    • Neustar will be selling x.509 certificates (similar to what Verisign does) for .us domains for $75/domain/year. They have a deal with Thawte that allows them to use the Thawte certificates in most browsers today.
    • Pre-registration starts November 30th, 2001, at www.neustar.us

    -CT

    • Re:Excite article... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by 1010011010 ( 53039 )
      What about us folks that are already registrars for .US domains?

      It was understood in the past that delegations were to be free. How about now? I don't intend to charge for them in my "teeming metropolis" (cough), but what about others? What's the policy? Will I have my domain revoked? Will I be charged for it? Can I get myname.us?
      • Well, you could be in a situation like mine, where the registrar for my locality is completely un-responsive to any email sent about registering a domain. In my case, this will be an improvement, as I will actually be able to register a domain. I also seem to recall other localities that charge outrageous rates ($500/yr) for registration, effectively preventing anyone from registering.

        • Re:Excite article... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by scoove ( 71173 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2001 @10:13PM (#2500848)
          Exactly the case here. Verisign's rules specified that one could not use a community domain unless they were doing business in the community and were authorized.

          We met both conditions and yet the squatter (that wasn't even within 300 miles of here and wanted extortion rates) who was never authorized by the community was both registered and extended grandfather rights in violation of Verisign policy by Verisign. We became quickly aware that Verisign simply wanted to destroy .us since it wasn't able to make money off of it.

          What about complaints to Verisign? Try filing one... they take 6 weeks (no exaggeration) to respond, always with a form letter either with useless advice that doesn't apply, or statements of the obvious like "in order to register in this subdomain, please contact the subdomain administrator" - yea, call the squatters to complain about them squatting.

          I'm confident there are thousands of others like us that were willing to handle subdomain registration at no expense (same as running primary & secondary dns for folks), but because Verisign hozed it up, we'll have another landrush feeding a government-granted monopoly.

          It's little different than granting the railroads land to sell in Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, etc., except after they were inhabited...

          *scoove*

          p.s. If you're not happy with the situation, be sure to add Verisign to your "banned vendor" list and make the Internet a better place.
    • I remember that when i was going to do a tech site, I was going to register in the Italian gTLD(.it as in Information Technology =/), however, the Italian government restricted the domains to only companies with offices in the country. Do you know of any similiar restictions? Also, is there any evidence of this coming out so soon being related to the recent events and furthermore the mad rush of patriotism? ~Myuu

  • Cool (Score:2, Interesting)

    by _typo ( 122952 )
    Based in Washington DC, NeuStar operates the authoritative registry of all North American telephone numbers and administers the database, which all North American carriers rely upon to route billions of telephone calls daily.

    These guys are cool!

    What kind of hardware is this? Someone here know anything about these things?

    • oh geez... pray that NeuStar (such a proud dot-com name) isn't the spinoff of Bellcore and the ever-so-evil LERG database.

      lemme see... neustar.com [neustar.com], typical yucky canned art in ever-so-lucent style, nice ethnic balance in people-focused pictures, blurbs about the ceo-vision-speaking guy blathering on cnn, speaking at some suit summit, featured on businessnow, and a company profile [neustar.com] that'd win you a buzzword bingo challenge in 6 seconds flat (first paragraph keywords: rampant, globalization, ensuring, interoperability, networks, ubiquity, internet, packet... and so on. Print this site off and try it on your friends! Makes a great party game!)

      Aha... came from Lockheed Martin.

      Airplanes, TLD's, what's the difference? It's all marketing. Looks like these guys took a few pages from The Corporation's [thecorporation.com] website.

      *scoove*
      • And there's a aplit infinitive in para 3: "... solutions to fundamentally solve these challenges"
        should of course read: "solutions fundamentally to solve these challenges". Tut tut.

        In fact, in the current political climate it might be a good idea to excise the word "fundamentally".

        It might also be worth replacing a few words with these, which emerged from dissociated-press:
        proliferampant
        billinghouse
        administernet
  • Let's just pray that this lot do one hell of a lot better than .info did. What a joke, took me over a month to get a few domains registered.

    • Re:.info (Score:1)

      by Jae ( 14657 )

      hahahah - you think it was a nightmare for you? i work for a registrar and i can't even begin to tell you the horrors that i experienced.

  • Now! Register your domains! (Score:4, Funny)

    by afree87 ( 102803 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2001 @08:04PM (#2500381) Journal
    http://dont.slashdot.us/

    http://please.kug.us/

    h ttp://nimda.vir.us/

  • new TLD's (Score:5, Funny)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2001 @08:04PM (#2500383)
    "The US Government picked NeuStar, the managers of the upcoming .biz registry, to manage the .us registry today."

    So will there also be a .them TLD ?

    • Well, there IS a .it domain. seems like you could have a lot of fun there. Any other pronoun TLDs out there?

      BTW, what are the rules behind grabbing a domain in a country that isn't yours? It seems to me that if your physical server is outside of the USA, you should not be able to reg a .us.

      Of course, that opens up questions about load-balancing techniques and back-end servers, but my guess it that every porn site in the Cayman Islands will have a "cum.c.us" as soon as possible.
      • There are a *lot* of ccTLDs that are also words (.TO), abbreviations (.IQ), or short-hand (.CU), it really depends on your imagintion. You could also potentially use foreign language words if that would appeal to your target audience. Of course, just because a ccTLD is available doesn't mean a foreign national can register a domain with-in it.

        IANA [iana.org] has a complete list if you want a perusal.

    • .us vs .them . What a typically American attitude ;)

  • Hey, I've got an idea! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anml4ixoye ( 264762 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2001 @08:12PM (#2500415) Homepage
    Let's just open up every single TLD to whoever wants to take it! No reason .edu should mean that it is a university, or that .org should be an organization, or that any of the TLDs should stay what they were meant for!

    I can see it now. We are already having to fight over two TLD's (one that was squatted (.com) and one that was given to the wrong people (.co.hillsborough.fl.us). Now we are going to have to buy and maintain 17 seperate web addresses just to point them all to one server so that people can find us. Great! Can't wait!

    I know this has been mentioned before, but what is the point of opening up the TLDs? Companies are just going to have to buy the ones (or sue to steal them back) that infringe upon them. So why not leave them alone?
    • Why would anyone have to register 17 domains? IP-names are not search mechanism; they are not meant to be all-encompassing taxonomy for web sites. If you want to get to a company's web page, you shouldn't have to resort to guessing dns - spelling, nor domain. Search using Google, go to Yahoo, check it out company's/organization's ads, whatever.

      Relying on DNS to act as your portal is stupid. It would be best for all if TLDs were completely open, but there would be suggestions (by W3C or IETF) for 'official' ones. Some people really just love the idea of artificial scarcity of technically unlimited resources, like domain names.

    • Looks like Lockheed Martin won more than the joint strike fighter. They're the latest defense contractor to have - yes - their very own top level domain!

      You have to admit. Owning a TLD is cooler than being a HoJo's on the Ohio Turnpike complete with pay toilets. Not only do you sell things that cost you nothing to make (more profitable than selling slightly used and still glowing land in Nevada), but it gives you that Intellectual Property high that makes you the rage at all the beltway cocktail parties.

      Imagine all the hookups and special deals Jeff Ganek will be doing for his corporate friends - couldn't get mycompany.com because some little squat company beat you to the Internet? No problem... we'll yank their .us registration and give it to ya!

      So congratulations to our ever-so-savvy beltway lobbyists. Let's give the boys at Neustar a motto that reflects their vision:

      Neustar: The Internet's Pay Toilet.
    • > what is the point of opening up the TLDs?
      > Companies are just going to have to buy the
      > ones (or sue to steal them back) that infringe
      > upon them.

      You can keep creating top level domains 'til you're blue in the face, the guys with money and lawyers will keep grabbing 'em.

      How about TLDs for the various stock exchanges, like .NYSE, .NASDAQ, .Nikkei? The second level domains *must* be the registered stock symbols of the officially registered stocks on each exchange, and the holders of those 2nd level domains must *not* be allowed to register under any other domain. Then one or a few TLDs (.unregistered?) for all the rest of us, where stock corporations are *not* allowed to register at all.
      • You can keep creating top level domains 'til you're blue in the face, the guys with money and lawyers will keep grabbing 'em.

        Consider where the money is going though...
        By the sound of things we have just seen the creation of yet another .misc Which will simply result in the creation of a few million www.somejunk.whatever.
        But as this is in the direct financial interests of the people creating the problem dosn't expect anything to be done about it soon.

  • An International Internet (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Embedded Geek ( 532893 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2001 @08:17PM (#2500435) Homepage
    So, is this (the use of .US domains) going to be a step towards a more international Internet, even a baby step?

    I know that people (esp in the mainstream press) marvel at how global the Internet is, but the fact is that it is inherently biased towards people in the US. Personally, unless I have reason to think otherwise (e.g. oxford.edu, moscowballet.org, airfrance.com, etc) I (incorrectly) tend to assume that a domain is on my side of the pond (or Pacific, or Canadian or Mexican border). It strikes me as unfair that a business running in the UK realistcally has to grab both .co.uk and .com domains to be sure that they reach their (UK) customers while I could simply buy eds-taco-palace.com and everyone knows it's in the States.

    On the gripping hand... if we are entering an era of U.S. hedgmony, perhaps this skewed view is appropriate. After all, if the Romans had the Internet, would they have confided themselves to a ".rmn" country code?

    PS - Random thought - imagine IP addresses in Rome: ccv.xcv.xxx.ii. But then they'd have had to cross the Atlantic and conquer the Aztecs to get zero and make it work...

    • while I could simply buy eds-taco-palace.com and everyone knows it's in the States.

      That's because only we Americans have lousy enough taste to both:

      • Name a business "Ed's Taco Palace," and
      • Register a globally-visible domain for something so inherently local.

      :-)

      • "Register a globally-visible domain for something so inherently local"

        This reason is why I never bothered to register a domain when I was running my own home-based computer repair business. I have the state tax license and the business checking account, but no web-page. People would ask me about it, and I would generally tell them I don't see the need to let the whole world read about my business on the web, when only people in my immediate area are going to be calling me.

        This new scheme with .us seems to be much better. I would gladly pay $5 for my_company.my_city.st.us.
        It makes a lot more sense than $75 for my_company.com. And another $75 for my_company.net. And another $75 for my_compnay.com. And another $75 for my_compnay.net. And another $75 for mycompany.com. And another $75 for mycompany.net....

    • Thank gawd the Romans were smart enough to know that the Hindus had zero... and lived a lot closer.
      • Dho! 'Guess this is why American schooling gets such a bad rap. Not that my High School gave me incorrect information, but that I slipped through quality control able to forget about the Hindus. ;)

        PS - After writting the above, I noticed another "US-ism." Specifically, the use of "American" for "relating to the United States," as opposed to the many other residents of North and South America. In defense, I'm tempted to point out the use of the term "Norteamericano" in Mexico for refering to us gringos (even though Mexico is in North America), but I'm scared because I leaned that in High School, as well.

    • It strikes me as unfair that a business running in the UK realistcally has to grab both .co.uk and .com domains to be sure that they reach their (UK) customers while I could simply buy eds-taco-palace.com and everyone knows it's in the States.

      I think the unfairness cuts the other way. A UK business could at least buy a .co.uk address, and be sure they weren't competing with the whole world for it. American businesses, on the other hand, have had to compete with everyone on the planet to secure a .com.

      Having said that, I don't imagine that too many people have cried themselves to sleep over these issues.

    • Good post.

      The reason for choosing an international domain over a local domain has two reasons:

      • People are too dumb to remember the ccTLD. When I say my website is at "kimihia.org.nz", most people take that to mean my website is at "kimihia.org". I did register the .org TLD version for one of my websites because that was where a large portion of my visitors were arriving from.
      • People are too dumb to realise the net is international. How many times do you have to explain that yes, anybody anywhere (*) can host a .nz domain, and anybody anywhere can access a .nz domain? It isn't just limited (like most consumer's minds) to one country!

      * Unless you are unable to get a 'net connection from where you are. :-)

    • but the fact is that it is inherently biased towards people in the US. Personally, unless I have reason to think otherwise (e.g. oxford.edu, moscowballet.org, airfrance.com, etc) I (incorrectly) tend to assume that a domain is on my side of the pond

      Or maybe this is just another example of how americans think they're the centre of the internet. Do you know the rest of the world loves getting the .coms as well? For example, almost all hong kong's (where my parents live) sites are .com except for governments and universities. This is an indication how hkers aren't really that patriotic. Can you tell me that these are american sites

      www.she.com
      www.tom.com
      www.singtao.com
      www.mingpao.com

      Even new zealand is getting its dose of local .com sites now, eg www.nzoom.com
    • So, is this (the use of .US domains) going to be a step towards a more international Internet, even a baby step? [...]inherently biased towards people in the US [... X.edu, Y.org, Z.com ...]
      Those aren't so bad.

      What's really offensive is whitehouse.gov and the like. If there's anything that ought to be under .us, isn't it that country's government?

      They're not the world government yet!

    • Random thought - imagine IP addresses in Rome: ccv.xcv.xxx.ii.

      /me shudders thinking of how they would have represented approximations to PI.

  • I think this says it all:

    The new rules, expected to take effect early next year, are designed to get more use out of ".us." Country code suffixes such as ".fr" for France have been sources of national pride worldwide, but in the United States it is the forgotten stepchild compared with ".com."

  • "Dot-US" and XRP/BEEP data point (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kris Magnusson ( 115926 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2001 @08:26PM (#2500471) Homepage
    Note that the article stated that the NeuLevel subsidiary will share some of the security and technical developments used in ".biz."

    Hopefully one of these shared technical developments will be the reuse of the eXtensible Registry Protocol (XRP), which is defined as a profile for the Internet-standard BEEP framework [ietf.org]. NeuStar used hardened implementations of the BEEP framework, called "Beepcore," that my former employer Invisible Worlds developed under contract.

    I don't know of any open source implementations for XRP, but these Beepcore implementations [beepcore.org] are available as free software under a BSD-style license at Beepcore.org [beepcore.org].

    ............ kris

    Kris Magnusson
    (formerly marketing and developer relations manager for Invisible Worlds)

    • I don't believe there's any public document that describes a BEEP profile for what NeuStar is calling XRP, but there _is_ one for the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP), a work item of the IETF's provreg working group:

      EPP BEEP Transport [ietf.org]

      It may be that NeuStar is using XRP as a brand name for their implementation of EPP. FWIW there is an open source implementation of EPP available on SourceForge:

      EPP on SourceForge [sourceforge.net]

  • NeuStar officials are hoping to change that attitude and said recent terrorism events may give ".us" even more of a boost.

    "The fact is right now, ... American identification is of increased importance," said Jeff Ganek, NeuStar's chairman and chief executive.

    Be patriotic! Get your .us domain now! You're not in with Osama are you? Then you better make sure everyone that looks at your URL can tell you're american!

  • .us domain (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 30, 2001 @08:29PM (#2500477)
    The main reasons I've really liked the .us domain is 1) it's free; and 2) assignment of domain names is completely local and decentralized. The guy in charge of administering my records lives here in the same town as I, and has been real quick about changin ip associations when I've needed to do so (like 2-hour turnaround). I've been using my domain (bullcreek.austin.tx.us -- i'm not an anonymous coward, I just don't like registering) for many years now. Not sure I like the idea of paying 5 bucks for what has been free, and turning over admin to some faceless corporation that's *very* likely to be less responsive than what I've been used to.
    • The main reasons I've really liked the .us domain is 1) it's free; and 2) assignment of domain names is completely local and decentralized

      Which is really how the entire thing should work. One side effect is making cybersquatting difficult because identity checking is easier

      The guy in charge of administering my records lives here in the same town as I, and has been real quick about changin ip associations when I've needed to do so (like 2-hour turnaround).

      The problem is that, as with any system, there are good people and bad people. The solution is deal with the bad.
      Effectivly this action is almost analagous to the US repealing the 10th ammendment on the basis that officials in some small towns didn't do a good job...

      Not sure I like the idea of paying 5 bucks for what has been free, and turning over admin to some faceless corporation that's *very* likely to be less responsive than what I've been used to.

      It's quite possible that the worst operators of the existing system are corporates anyway.
  • I was always under the impression that the country TLD's were meant to be used for sites that had geography-specific information. Such as city government sites, or a store that is in one city. The example "clothingstore.los-angeles.ca.us" given was a good example, but now they want to make it "clothingstore.us"? Doesn't that pretty much defeat the point?

    Another point to consider is who can buy these. Will it be US people only or will it be like cc, tv, to, etc which will sell to anyone?

    On a third note, do I care? I already have a couple .com's :)
    • I was always under the impression that the country TLD's were meant to be used for sites that had geography-specific information

      I don't know if that was the original intention, but it certainly hasn't been the practice. Outside of .us - domain (esp. before .com became 'hot') companies and universities did use country TLDs, many still do. Sometimes multi-national co's have localized sites (www.company.com for 'main page', www.company.fr for french version etc) using these too.

    • I was always under the impression that the country TLD's were meant to be used for sites that had geography-specific information. Such as city government sites, or a store that is in one city.

      The vast majority of business is geographically (according to either physical or political geography) based. Though the scale of course varies..

      The example "clothingstore.los-angeles.ca.us" given was a good example, but now they want to make it "clothingstore.us"? Doesn't that pretty much defeat the point?

      The point has already been defeated, by "mom and pops" winding up with .coms. Problem is that the people doing this are those handling the registration.

  • in other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Malachite ( 8328 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2001 @08:33PM (#2500497) Homepage
    ...the number of stupid webpages sporting american flags and those silly "osama bin laden: wanted dead or alive" posters is expected to skyrocket.
  • What good is .us going to do now?

    The only purposes I can see are these...
    1. International companies can now add more seperation to their domain names. For instance, sony.com.us vs. sony.com.jp.
    2. Cybersquatters can now go and grab domains like microsoft.com.us and send out porn spam trying to fool the clueless into clicking on the link.

    Am I missing something?

    I really don't see any great advantage to them releasing .us, if they're going to do .us, they should let us use .'anything'

    My DNS servers are ready, how about yours?
  • My submission (early yesterday) had a better title:

    All Your Domain Are Belong to .US

  • Scrap .com, all use contry codes. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mike McTernan ( 260224 ) on Tuesday October 30, 2001 @08:42PM (#2500534)

    Country code suffixes such as ".fr" for France have been sources of national pride worldwide, but in the United States it is the forgotten stepchild compared with ".com."

    It's always annoyed me how the world seems to use country codes for it's TLD's, and then the US has some other TLDs that is just uses.

    For example, when shopping online I want to know if a company will ship to the UK. If it is a .co.uk company I can be sure it will. If it is a .com, it might or might not.

    Essentially it seems logical for organisations to just register the TLDs for the countries in which they operate/are registered, and for the .com TLD to be scrapped (Although this would never happen).

    Oh, I'd scrap .edu too. .ac.us would be a fine replacement.

    • It's always annoyed me how the world seems to use country codes for it's TLD's, and then the US has some other TLDs that is just uses.

      Bastards! What, do they think they invented the Internet or something?

      For example, when shopping online I want to know if a company will ship to the UK. If it is a .co.uk company I can be sure it will. If it is a .com, it might or might not.

      So why not just stick to .co.uk companies? How will using the .us TLD help you here, since it is quite possible for a company in the States to ship to the UK? Your real complaint seems to be that there are some companies using purportedly international domain like .com (although, really, .int is the OTID) without having a certain level of international support. Just as the new TLDs don't solve any real problems, increased usage of the .us TLD doesn't solve your real problem.

      Essentially it seems logical for organisations to just register the TLDs for the countries in which they operate/are registered, and for the .com TLD to be scrapped (Although this would never happen).

      And what is the "logical" solution to country neutral organizations? Should I really care where in the world Slashdot or The Onion is? You're taking outdated geographical notions and superimposing them on the Internet, which goes beyond illogical to simply unreasonable. There's more to the Internet than bloody shopping.

      • Bastards! What, do they think they invented the Internet or something?

        It seems odd that someone would invent one system for themself, and a completely different one for all others... although this mess probably evolved, as mess does.

        So why not just stick to .co.uk companies

        Lots of .co.uk companies think it is cool to be a .com! Depending on what you are looking for, you can be limited by adding .co.uk as a constraint - esp if bargain hunting.

        It is true that lots of US companies will ship, as will companies from all around the world, but there isn't a term you can easily put into Google to differentiate such companies. Putting in site:.co.uk should do a good job, but doesn't for reasons given.

        You're taking outdated geographical notions and superimposing them on the Internet, which goes beyond illogical to simply unreasonable

        I'm not sure I agree with the whole Internet as a different place concept. It is very firmly rooted in the real world. Companies, be them .com's or whatever will have some registered trading address that ties them to some place on Earth. Some may have a number of addresses, in which case they can take a number of country codes.

        In fact, if you think about it, a limited company is a legal entity, so it must be tied to laws of at least one country.

        Slashdot or The Onion is

        Slashdot is .us because of it's US biased content. The Onion is .us too, since at calls itself 'America's Finest News Source' (go there and look at the title bar of your browser yourself).

        Oh, and I'd keep .org for global organisations such as Amnesty International.

        • I'm not sure I agree with the whole Internet as a different place concept. It is very firmly rooted in the real world.

          It's actually a little more complex than that. A company selling a physical product is certainly tied very much to geography. One which sells something which can be sent over the Internet (some kind of service or IP) could be less tied. Especially if they allow use of many currencies. The issue of where they actually are occurs when something goes wrong or there are other issues of legality.

          Companies, be them .com's or whatever will have some registered trading address that ties them to some place on Earth. Some may have a number of addresses, in which case they can take a number of country codes.

          If you want a special address you tend to have to be big. A closer analogy would be with telephone numbers, if you want anything other than a standard geographic number you have to specifically ask and probably pay. (Quite likely you still have the standard number anyway.)
    • hey - while we're at it - why don't we scrap letters and words and use icons .. it's just as random if you think about how silly it all it - it's already too late for anything resembling order in the domain namespace game anyhow, and the multilingual namespace is a joke (albeit an expensive one)

      the new TLD will be known as <img src=foo.gif> "the domain formerly known as .us" </img>
    • Essentially it seems logical for organisations to just register the TLDs for the countries in which they operate/are registered, and for the .com TLD to be scrapped (Although this would never happen).

      Problem is that this needed to have happened before the ".com bubble".
      Problem is that DNS names have been treated as arbitary strings, rather than postal addresses or telephone numbers. (Indeed maybe you could make a rule such that as a precondition for any .uk you must have a +44 telephone number and an address in the UK, similarly +33 and in France for .fr. If you want a .com then you must provide a +800 number. Problem is that this won't work for the US/Canada/etc because they don't have a proper country code.)
      • > If you want a .com then you must provide a +800
        > number.

        Why should I have an internationally tollfree number to register a .com domain?

        > Problem is that this won't work for the
        > US/Canada/etc because they don't have a proper
        > country code.)

        They have : Both +1.

        E.g. from Germany, you dial 001-976-555-4678, just like you would dial 0033-1-12345678 for a phone in Paris (IIRC).
        • > If you want a .com then you must provide a +800 > number.
          Why should I have an internationally tollfree number to register a .com domain?

          Because the only way you will get one of these is by operating in more than one country. Also it's an additional barrier to any entity not an international company being able to get a .com SLD.

          > Problem is that this won't work for the > US/Canada/etc because they don't have a proper > country code.)
          They have : Both +1.

          No they don't the whole of the NANP is under +1, with no easy way to work out which of the nearly 20 odd countries a number applies to.
    • Firstly i wont comment on the spelling...... ;) Next i agree with you, when i want stuff that i have a feeling wont be available to me in the uk, i go to the .com tld, but find many companies not willing to ship to the uk. A lot of the responses to your post were along the lines of "well then stick to your own domain then" but why should we? the .com .net etc are supposed to be international, and i reckon companies that take a .com should be made to at least make a effort to ship internationally. Yes the americans may be the leading force behind the internet, but does that mean they can bulldoze us all out of the way?
  • the whole and the sole purpose of domain names is for people to REMEMBER the domain name, it's already hard to remember with .com .net .org but now we've got .biz, .pro, .us .whatever. How am I gonna remember anything know Domain name is suppose to be EASIER, ip seems to be a much better deal right now, it's free and there is only 12 digits to remember. and btw, when the new mod system are gonna be in place, I am sick of reading goatsex crap.
    • *brrp* wrong - thanks for playing

      the purpose of domain names was for the identification and organization of entities. In the original scheme they had accounted for commercial, educational, network,and nonprofit entities that were globally based, and things that were to be regionally and locationally based represented by the .US TLD and the other ccTLDs .. but guess what happened when NSI compromised the standards because of their greed? unregulation in the .com space crept into .net and .org and the whole thing fell apart. Until his death, Postel was relegated to working out silly squabbles in the .US domain (which NSI literally forgot about), and the .US domain seemed too regulated and became underutilized as it seemed almost everyone was seeking to make their fortune for doing nothing.

      now guess what people are discovering - locational identification of entities are important and virtually impossible to do in the current scheme. we screwed the system up ourselves!! and in the process alienated some of the greatest minds and contributors.
  • We gave the country away to John Ashcroft, might as well give the TLD away to NeuLevel.
  • How is this "new" domain extension registry going to differ from all the rest? Are trademark holders once again going to get first shot? Are we private citizens going to be subject to litigation by the corporate types that want to snatch our domain names away from us? I happen to share a surname with a very large brokerage house that has seen fit to register just about every iteration of the name I can think of without stretching it to an ungodly number of characters. Is this just going to be another domain extension where they'll snap up all the useful variations of our name?
  • I take it this is already registered...
  • Register r.us as a domain and taunt the evil ones!

    geeks.r.us
    babes.r.us
    trolls.r.us
    lawsuits.r.us

    etc...

  • That I'll now be getting hundreds of "Register your .US name now! The good domains are going FAST!!" spam mails, on top of the .biz and .info spam I already get??
  • if i tried to register i-hate-the.us would i have mailbombs sent to me by hoards of kneejerk patriots who decided that its bad to speak your mind?

    i wouldn't be surprised...It's a perfectly legitimate statement, but when did that ever stop anyone?
  • I thought that there was no .us for the same reason that British postage stamps don't mention the UK anywhere... When you're the first to do something, you don't have to identify yourself.
  • Correct me if I am wrong, but .biz is managed by NeuLevel, whereas .us, by NeuStar. Or are they one in the same?
  • Ugh. Anyone who already owns Acme.com and is serious about protecting Acme as a trade name is going to now have to buy Acme.us and Acme.com.us, just like they have to buy Acme.info, Acme.biz, and Acme.pro. Then there will be Acme.store, Acme.brand, Acme.workplace, Acme.services, Acme.product, Acme.ICANNkickback, Acme.RegistryChristmasPartyFund, and on and on as they add more and more gtld's without any apparent bound.

    Every one of these increases the yearly tax on businesses, making it more likely that only big businesses can keep up and that little businesses won't be able to. Now it's not $35/yr for a domain, but $35*6 or *8 or *10 to keep even one point of contact maintained. And it's even worse if you have a multi-word name because you need twice as much money for my-acme.com, myacme.com, my-acme.us, myacme.us, my-acme.com.us, myacme.com.us, and so on.

    I don't know about anyone else, but I am fed up with new TLDs. It may be useful to those who haven't invested yet, but anyone who hasn't invested yet isn't in it for business. To those of us who have bought in, it's a constant scramble to keep up and extraordinarily painful.

    ICANN seems to me an out-of-control organization with no apparent checks and balances to its exercising its capricious whims. I am quite upset about this, but have no idea who to complain to. I suspect the answer is: there is no one. If someone knows otherwise, I'd be interested.

    • Ugh. Anyone who already owns Acme.com and is serious about protecting Acme as a trade name is going to now have to buy Acme.us and Acme.com.us, just like they have to buy Acme.info, Acme.biz...

      You can't be serious! That's like saying if the company's name is Jones, they have to buy every address with the word "jones" in it. What about people who have the last name "Jones" or have some other legitimate reason for wanting a site named "Jones" or "Acme"??? (Or even ihateacme.com--what, are people who have a reason to hate a company not allowed to speak?)

      The only way companies need to protect their names on the internet is if someone is attempting to misrepresent themselves as being the company or agents of the company. That is the reason tradmarks were created. If a company's site is acme.com, and someone else owns acme.us or acme.org, the Acme company still doesn't have a real reason to be threated by those websites unless they claim to be part of the Acme company!

  • My first email address's domain was linknet.kitsap.lib.wa.us ... And that was over 7 years ago. So I know that .us domains have been around for a while. So whats the story? Who stopped mainting them, and why do we need somebody else to maintain them?

  • So, it appears that the public not allowed to see the rules for the .US domain unless it helps spread Adobe software to other computers while Adobe actively attempts to ruin lives [eff.org]. Adobe still has not even bailed Dimitry Sklyarov out after screwing him over. Meanwhile, at least as of October 31, the U.S. Department of Commerce only converted the press release to a normal format, but doesn't have the real information for free in a normal format.

    Has anyone converted these nonstandard documents [doc.gov] into an standard Internet format (like plain text or HTML) so that free society can see them? If so, please post a URL. Thanks!

    P.S. for anyone who cares: At the bottom of that page is contact information for "further assistance".

  • The State of Connecticut...

    TLD's are bastardized beyond belief. What do you think about the Department of Motor Vehicles in Connecticut having a .org domain? I mean really, should a duly authorized state agency have a .org domain? Chek it out for yourself - it's right here. [dmvct.org]

    How did this happen, and since it did, is there any rhyme or reason to any domain naming? (Apologies to non-US readers)
  • Having used the net for many years, I have met a few Americans that have asked me what it is like to use online store, look for information (cinema times, etc) on the global internet. I forget that a lot of stuff is in the states. The simple mechanism that let me forget this is the .co.uk extension used by all companies in the UK. If I reach a website with a .co.uk everything is instantly clear.
    I would not ever want to be without the .co.uk extension that marks a website I visit as being in the uk. I don't know how you have managed over there so long without it, having to compete for .com with the rest of the world. I have often wanted to go a page in the US, and never been entirely sure that I got to one that was there. I think the quicker companies adopt a .us extension, the better for you.

    Embrace the country you live in! Send it forth on your email addresses and webpages. Shout it loud and be proud.
  • "The fact is right now, ... American identification is of increased importance,"

    so people are just going to register for .us domains and the country becomes unified and stronger?

    or will pepolpe be registering .us because they're patriotic and this is a nice way to profit from that?

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