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The Internet

.us Domains Coming in 2002 261

Posted by CmdrTaco from the insert-witty-ends-with-us-joke-here dept.
marnanel writes "Perhaps it had to happen eventually: the .us top-level domain has been transferred to a private company, NeuStar. One of the most interesting effects of this is that second-level domains, such as foo.us, will be available for the first time, instead of the existing hierarchical county.state.us system." But not until mid 2002.
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.us Domains Coming in 2002 More

.us Domains Coming in 2002

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  • Finally (Score:5, Funny)

    by nyxxie ( 460418 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @04:43PM (#2610881)
    I really want "http://all.your.base.are.belong.to.us" as my HP :)))))

    • Re:Finally (Score:2, Funny)

      by quigonn ( 80360 )
      I prefer http://synflood.at/tack/ :)) (yes, _I_ reserved the domain synflood.at already).

    • Re:Finally (Score:2, Insightful)

      by altair1 ( 71744 )
      these "all your base" jokes are really really old. i dont know how they get modded up anymore, this was not funny at all...

      • Re:Finally (Score:3, Funny)

        by darkonc ( 47285 )
        nonetheless, it would be wonderful to control the 'to.us' domain...
        • come.to.us
        • complain.to.us
        • give.your.money.to.us

        kinda like if you remember when NSI wouldn't let people register domains with swears in them... (like the "f" word), so someone registered .off.com.....

        I'm just wondering what lucky porn site is gonna get fuck.us

    • The only domain worth having would be www.fuck.us!!

      Unfortunately, it won't be put to any good use. Some waste of sperm will toss up a porno clusterfuck page, with unending pop-up windows when you try to close it. I'd rather see it used for something amusing.

  • BFD. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @04:45PM (#2610886)
    Now I can watch companies sue everyone in sight over ownership of .us domains, too! Whee!

    On the upside for NeuStar, they are sure to make a fortune from all the companies sick of getting into lawsuits over this sort of thing and buy thier .us domains right away. May I pet your Ferraris?
  • spam.us
    or
    sue.us

  • .org.us (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It'd be nice to start a non-profit company, register .org.us, and let other non-profit organizations register domains on it really cheap.

  • .edu and .gov (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jeriqo ( 530691 ) <jeriqo&unisson,org> on Sunday November 25, 2001 @04:48PM (#2610904)
    What will happen to these TLDs: .EDU and .GOV ?
    Since they are only used by the US governement and US schools, i think they should be moved to .EDU.US and .GOV.US

    Just my thoughts..

    -J
    • perhaps .gov is used only by government institutions, but .edu is not used only by governments schools. private universities (like mine, NYU) use .edu also (nyu.edu [nyu.edu]).

      also, in the name of simplicity i think we should keep things as they are: established and shorter than the proposed change.

    • and .mil ? ...
    • I would like to wash the feet of the parent post.

    • Since they are only used by the US governement and US schools

      There is at least one non-US .edu domain: mm.edu. .gov is quite US-only, though.

      But it's strange that this happens now, when most other national top-domain has lost their "national" feeling, with USians controlling domains like .nu where a lot of Swedish companies (and even branches of the government) have sites (since "nu" means "now" in Swedish).

      Oh, well, perhaps we'll see non-US domains under .us? That would be the perfect retribution...

    • Re:.edu and .gov (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by nomadic ( 141991 )
      Why? I'm usually the least jingoistic American in the room, but it WAS invented here, and it was intended to be a US-centric network. Should the US really be penalized for being generous enough to let everyone else onto it?

      Plus, non-US organizations are free to use the non-country specific TLDs. Check out london.edu, nokia.com, or un.org.
      • I think that the good people at CERN would disagree with that statement. Also, generosity had very little to do with allowing others access to the internet, it was mopre like $$$.

        • Re:.edu and .gov (Score:2, Insightful)

          by 1alpha7 ( 192745 )

          I think that the good people at CERN would disagree with that statement.

          You're thinking of Tim's development of the Web. The Interent and the Web are not synonymous.

          1Alpha7

  • US TLD linked at the hip to BIZ TLD (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Has anyone noticed that the .us TLD is now using (A|B|C).GTLD.BIZ for its root nameservers?

    In other words, if you don't accept the ICANN version of .BIZ, then you might not be able to resolve stuff in .US. Very interesting.

    • Re:US TLD linked at the hip to BIZ TLD (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Not necessarily. Resolvers are almost always set to use a known list of IP addresses - otherwise you have a bootstrap problem :) So whether you're using some "alternate DNS root" servers or not is irrelevant. This is only a problem if you're one of those strident .biz protesters and wipe out the .biz server(s) from your cache listing.
  • Yet another domain to remember. We've got .info, .biz and now .us all in the past year. Now tell me again how we're better off.

    All these domains do is make things more complicated for those of us who have to remember all these web addresses and more expensive for companies trying to protect their trademarks in cyberspace. Maybe we should REDUCE the number of domains... From now on let's just just .gov, .com and .edu. Enough already!!!

  • Therefore, toys, hats, belts, boots, and any other damn thing that'll make me a buck.

    Squatters.r.us

    • That leads to a question I've been having. I thought single and two letter domain names were out of the question. For example, I wanted w.net, but no registrar I could find would allow it. So I went though all the domains, and noticed that only z.com seems to be a functioning website (redirects to Nissan's website.) What's the story on these? How did Nissan get z.com? And why can't I do the same with w? It seems like quite the opportunity.
      • So I went though all the domains, and noticed that only z.com seems to be a functioning website (redirects to Nissan's website.)
        x.com [x.com] goes to PayPal and q.com [q.com] goes to Qwest.

        Since you also mentioned two-letter domain names in your post as being verboten, what about Hewlett-Packard [hp.com] or Texas Instruments [ti.com]? (You need the "www." in front of them, though, to access their websites. General Motors [gm.com], OTOH, works without the "www.")

        • I had "z" (Score:2, Interesting)

          by ziegast ( 168305 )
          So I went though all the domains, and noticed that only z.com seems to be a functioning website (redirects to Nissan's website.)

          I was the first to register Z.COM. IANA once gave a directive that said, "all one-letter names shall be reserved to enable name-hashing at a later time". Working for a company that registered domain names on a daily basis, I thought, "If X.ORG can have a domain name, why can't I register Z.COM?" To my surprise, it worked! The following month, IANA gobbled up all the rest of the one-letter names.

          A few years later, I started having people knock on my door monthly saying they'd buy or trade my domain. They didn't see much of a value to it, and neither did I. While I was a bit altruistic, I did have a price in mind where I'd do away with my domain. One day this guy offered me 50% more than that price, so I took it. It went toward a down payment on a house that later made me some real money.

          The guy tried to make a simple Z.COM web portal out of it. Their gimmick was that all one had to do was hit "z" on their web browser address, and poof, there you were at Z.COM. The portal never gained momentum.

          Other people bought it from him and tried again to make a portal out of it, but their gimmick was to give "lifetime" e-mail accounts if they visited the portal regularly. Again, another Z.COM portal failed, and those "lifetime" addresses disappeared with it.

          The next purchaser was apparently IDEAlab. They never did anything with it and with their financial demise probably thought they should sell/dump it for whatever they could.

          Enter Nissan. My guess is that they might release or re-release a "Z" car in the future.

          I mildly regret selling the name away. I thought the purchaser would have done something better with it. I could give Nissan a web redirect as good as anyone else.

          --
          Eric Z iegast
          eric@z.com
          uunet!z!eric
        • x.com goes to paypal because there used to be an "internet bank" which went by the name x.com which provided checking accounts, debit cards, and had some mutual funds. They bought PayPal and then stopped their x.com banking crap.

          Q is Qwest's ticker symbol. I'd assume that TI and GM are their symbols as well, though HP's is HWP, so...

          OK, so there wasn't *really* a point.

          :)
  • serverkiller.slashdot.us for those that want to testt there websites.

    or

    theshortb.us for archival of all score 1 posts.

    and

    RIAA.us, MPAA.us and FUCK.us, because after all they are 4-letter words meaning the same thing, right?
    (I suppose that TLD in this case would mean Top Level Dicks...but I digress....)
  • Are they going to allow any type of "second-level" domain name? ".us" is commonly known as a country for the rest of the world, and is quite common outside of us (eg bbc.co.uk). Many countries also has fixed numbers of second-level domains, eg com.au, net.uk, org.ca Will that be the case here?

    If not who will get screw.us? A p0rn site or another "name your price" e-tailer site?? ;-)
  • There is no justice. It's just.us.

    long.live.the.us
    you.missed.the.b.us
    time.to.disc.us/s
    come.to.us
    visit.us
    screw.us
    i.hate.the.us

    Okay, that's enough...

  • so.. (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by RainbowSix ( 105550 )
    porn sites are going to spam me with www.screw.us?
    • porn sites are going to spam me with www.screw.us?

      So? Spam them back as www.screw.eu!
    • I'm just dreading all the spam I'm going to get as a *former* domain holder about "RESERVE YOUR HOT NEW .US DOMAIN NOW!!!!!"... I get enough bullshit about .biz and such like already....

      <sigh>

      --
      Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
      -- H. L. Mencken

  • http://all.your.base.are.belong.to.us
    http://toys.are.us

    Any other funny URL predictions?

  • .asm (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lowtekneq ( 469145 ) <lowtekneq@hotmailTWAIN.com minus author> on Sunday November 25, 2001 @04:56PM (#2610941) Homepage
    im still waiting for .asm so i can own http://www.org.asm. But as for .us i wonder how many people will get anti-american sites, www.taliban.says.fsck.you.us/ or www.bomb.the.us/. And what kind of action would be taken against the owner(s).

    These domain names were just brain farts, i do not support acts of terrorism.
    • Why wait for .asm, when you already can have .sm.
      Get http://www.orga.sm quick. It's still available.
      • I doubt you will get it from them.

        From their registration rules:

        B.0.1 Identification

        The domain name that is requested for the registration of an entity must neither be misleading nor obscure. San Marino RA can inform the applicant about possible ambiguities and ask for a changed application.

        NOTE: The domain name that is chosen for the registration must be similar to the applicant entity name or it must be similar to one of its services, products, trade-marks and so on in order to assure an easy identification of the name itself.

        So, unless your last name is Orga, or own a company that's called that way, you're not gonna get it from them.

        Dunno about sex sites though: "So what do you sell?", "Well, we provide people with orga's, don't know what they are?" :-)
  • Look out, here comes "ask.us!"

  • .us domain: (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jucius Maximus ( 229128 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @04:58PM (#2610947) Journal
    http://slashdot.us

  • finally (Score:4, Insightful)

    by erikdalen ( 99500 ) <erik.dalen@mensa.se> on Sunday November 25, 2001 @05:00PM (#2610955) Homepage
    Finally USA gets a top domain like all the other countries have. It might bring some order to the chaos.

    Now if only .gov and .mil could be transferred to .gov.us and .mil.us it would almost be a perfect world :)

    /Erik

    • Yeah, and reserve .gov for the future world governement, and .mil for the global military that will defend us from evil Borgs...

    • Finally USA gets a top domain like all the other countries have. It might bring some order to the chaos.

      First, we've have a top level domain like all the other contries have had -- each with their own rules and rulers -- it's just that ours were outstandingly misguided.

      However, I have little confidence that the new ones will be any better. In any event, there is no chance that <big-american-corp> is going to give up <big-american-corp>.com -- they'll just have <big-american-corp>.com.us too -- wheeee, won't that be special!

  • Weird (Score:1)

    by Cally ( 10873 )
    I could have sworn I'd seen .co.us URIs before this?
    Hmmm, obviously I know less about the history of the DNS than I thought I did :) (Which reminds me: aren;t NeuLevel the people responsible for trying to fork the DNS root (ie., break the DNS) by issuing domain names in non-ICANN approved, and in the case of .biz, conflicting TLDs?

    Everytime this comes up on nanog, I tend to glaze over. I should pay more attention, I know...

  • Open to Afghans? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Knunov ( 158076 ) <eat@my.ass> on Sunday November 25, 2001 @05:03PM (#2610969) Homepage
    If so:

    please.stop.bombing.us

    (will it be Funny or Flamebait?)

    Knunov
  • Most american companies use .com as their site. When you look at a web address, you look for the .au, the .uk, or other country code at the end. And if you don't see it, it's human nature to assume it's an american site.

    • Unfortunately, .com and friends is much too polluted to be able to make that distinction. But then again, so are most the national domains as well, so I don't really see why this would be any better.

      Perhaps we should just scrap the current DNS system and create a new domain structure from scratch? That would be something...

  • Wow. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 )
    Not only will the last orthodox free registrar be gone forever, but we'll have 20 million all.your.bases.belong.to.us variants.

    Then again, because certain municipalities were delegated to various ISP's it wasn't necessarily free... in Richmond, VA i2020.net wanted $200 per year for mydomain.richmond.va.us. This was only after 6 hours on the phone, trying to convince various people there that they had it delegated to them...

    Maybe I take these things too seriously, but it makes me sick just thinking about it.

  • Fair. (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by famazza ( 398147 )

    I always thought it's fair that US companies register themselves as .com without .country sufix. It's fair because internet has born in US.

    But ITOH every country has its own sufix and US has none. Now each country has its own sufix and also can register a "country-sufix-less" domain. It's much more fair to everybody.

    Well, it's good to have .us domains, for me it sounds that www is becoming much more world than web.

    • I always thought it's fair that US companies register themselves as .com without .country sufix. It's fair because internet has born in US.

      That's not how it's set up. .com is for companies. No mention of them being US, just commercial. If you want a regional domain for the us, use .us.

      • .com was just an example. Do you want another one? What about .gov and .edu?

        Here in brazil governmental sites uses .gov.br what about in US? It's .gov and not .gov.us.

        That's what I meant. Not only to commercial sites, but also for government, educational, etc

    • I'd agree.

      I've always thought of .com/net/org as a international/US domain. Not just US. I think it would be good to have a .us.
      It's as if the .coms are being used as an interational suffex. Even though a site may not be based in the US, they might have a .com to show that they are expect an international audiance.
      Sometimes is's even sillier, like when people get somethingNZ.com, and don't even bother to get something.co.nz or somethingNZ.co.nz. When the site is clearly supposed to be local.

      So, don't think that MS or Canon, IBM, even slashdot (any big company, or location irrelivent sites) will be getting a .com.us for their main domain anytime soon. But maybe walmart.com.us might appear (or any other US only places).

  • (Sigh) (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Sunday November 25, 2001 @05:26PM (#2611040) Homepage
    Dammit, why couldn't they take the opportunity to do it *right* for a change? .com.us domains should be given only to a real corporation with that name. .tm.us should be administered by the USPTO and subdomains given strictly on the basis of trademark ownership. Conversely, trademark considerations should not impinge on the other subdomains - as long as it is clear that this is the case, so nobody gets misled.

    You could also have .org.us strictly for non-profits (or maybe .charity.us for legally recognized tax-exempt charities), .fcfs.us for strictly first-come-first-served assignment, and so on.

    Still, one positive feature of the new setup is that there won't be artificial scarcity created underneath the .us domain. Someone can buy .co.us and happily hand out the levels below that. At least until the lawyers get their hands into it...

    (Possible new business for Sealand: lawyer-proof .sealand domain names. If you can get yourself assigned a country code that is.)

    • Re:(Sigh) (Score:3, Informative)

      by rvaniwaa ( 136502 )
      Someone can buy .co.us and happily hand out the levels below that. At least until the lawyers get their hands into it


      Umm. .co.us should be all Colorado domains in the US...

    • Do you seperate your M&M's into groups of colors, and carefully eat them in order to keep an equal number of each color at all times? No one wants to have to remember whether the group/company they're looking for is registered as a trademark or first come first serve, etc. We don't need any pain-in-the-ass buerocracy that will determine if we're truly deserving of a specific TLD either. This just makes things confusing and annoying.


      I think the big secret about the TLD system is that it isn't pefect, but it works as well as any other system would. Your system would not stop the lawsuits due to trademark confusion just because someone registered it as mcdonalds.fcfs.com instead of mcdonalds.tm.com. The only real problem with the DSN system is that it is hard to get the exact name you want. But that is going to be the case with any number of TLDs I believe, because people will buy them up either way.


      Making people prove they deserve a domain is even worse....it takes time, and would be an anchor on the internet. I don't want to have to wait 2 weeks to get some pinhead to approve my registration application.


      Unfortunately, big corporations have an advantage over an individual. Such is life.

      • We don't need any pain-in-the-ass buerocracy that will determine if we're truly deserving of a specific TLD either.

        I agree, but some people will try to inflict PITA bureaucracy whether you ask for it or not. Witness the arbitration system for .com (guinessbeersucks.com, gateway.com and so on).

        My suggestion was aimed at keeping these people in a contained space. They can have their legally regulated .tm and .com domains - where the rules are clear and explicit, and not as arbitrary as the current system - and everyone else can use .fcfs for first come, first served.

    • Ed Avis [mailto] writes:

      .com.us domains should be given only to a real corporation with that name. .tm.us should be administered by the USPTO and subdomains given strictly on the basis of trademark ownership. Conversely, trademark considerations should not impinge on the other subdomains - as long as it is clear that this is the case, so nobody gets misled.

      It's so easy to be sure of oneself when ignorant.

      Exactly which "Olympia" gets that olympia.us? Olympia Pizza down the street from me? One of the 1,000 other unrelated Olympia Pizza's across the US? Olympia Cruise Lines? Olympia Finance Corporation? Matt Olympia?

      What about trademarks? NT goes to Microsoft or to Nortel (nee Northern Telecom)? What about the dozens of other trademarked NT's in various fields? NT adhesive or NT car parts?

      Sigh - Ignorance must be bliss.

      • The IOC - don't you know...congress gave them ownership over Olympic and therefore they think they own anything similar.
      • I was thinking of .tm subdomains corresponding to trademark categories - so olympia.food.tm.us, olympia.travel.tm.us, and so on.

        For .com.us, I was thinking of a company registered with that exact name. Company names have to be unique, right?
      • Exactly which "Olympia" gets that olympia.us? Olympia Pizza down the street from me? One of the 1,000 other unrelated Olympia Pizza's across the US? Olympia Cruise Lines? Olympia Finance Corporation? Matt Olympia?

        Tnus you need geographic parts (which is what exists now) and most likely "type" parts of the name. Certainly you need those for trademarks.

        What about trademarks? NT goes to Microsoft or to Nortel (nee Northern Telecom)?

        Most likely domains for companies should be restricted to legal or trading names. Rather than those of products. Also Nortel is a Canadian company IIRC.
    • Some people go for .net as they're on the net, others go for .org as they're not trying to make a profit.

      Where are the little guys supposed to go? they're not .biz, rarely .info

  • And what this means is: (Score:3, Flamebait)

    by Kymermosst ( 33885 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @05:43PM (#2611074) Journal

    The last bit of organization associated with United States centric domain name organization is gone.

    It sucked when .net, .org, and .com were relegated to equals rather than their intended purpose.

    Now .us will just be the same.

    The evolution of things? It's like this:

    1. In the beginning, commercial companies who were not network infrastructure providers could only register .com, thus leaving .org and .net free for nonprofit orgs and network providers.

    2. Bill Clinton came along and gave the internet to the corporations, and suddenly U.S. companies registered their names in .com, .net, and .org. Thus, using even more namespace.

    3. .biz comes along, and those same companies will now have FOUR names in the namespace.

    4. Now .us will be exactly the same. Now those companies will just have mytrademark.com, mytrademark.net, mytrademark.org, mytrademark.biz, and NOW mytrademark.us.

    So, can anyone tell me what good this move is, rather than making them register under county.state.us?

    Anyone else remember when domain names were free and you never got spam on usenet or e-mail? It was the giving up of .org and .net brought about by Clinton-Gore that got us where we are today.

    When Gore "invented" the internet, what he and Clinton invented was the destruction of it's beauty as a free exchange that wasn't dominated by giant corporations wielding laws like the DMCA.

    • Some of the very, very first Mom and Pop providers (~1990) got feeds from .edu. And this is part of what put internet in the hands of the individual in our country. (at least outside of The Well and Netcom crowd and elite bands of graduates)

      The move was afoot long before Bill and Al came in.

    • Bill Clinton came along and gave the internet to the corporations, and suddenly U.S. companies registered their names in .com, .net, and .org. Thus, using even more namespace.

      Not just their names but also names of their products, even advertising slogans and misspellings. Also quite a few things ended up as .com which were never commercial entities. Effectivly .com=.misc1, .net=.misc2 & .org=.misc3
  • I mean, great, now they are available. But will anyone actually use them? Except in the "humourous" ways evidenced here on Slashdot?

    I can imagine that some large companies will get the domain, simply to "collect the whole set", but do you seriously imagine that you will start to see adds for www.ibm.us on the billboards? I just simply don't see it happening.

    Although i would like to see who ends up with trust.us ;-)

    • I mean, great, now they are available. But will anyone actually use them?

      To the Great Unwashed Masses, the only domain worth knowing about is ".com". I was trying to set up a "Reply-To" line for my SprintPCS mail. When I called their tech support, I was told that my email address <xxxxx@xxxxx.chi.il.us> was invalid 'cause it didn't end in ".com"! *sigh*

      If it doesn't start with "www." and end with ".com", the muggles just can't cope with it.

  • NEUSTAR CAN KISS MY (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sloop ( 135178 )
    Am I the only one who is enraged? Neustar sucks! Look at what they did with .BIZ - just a new hyped up domain so they can bring in loads of money for companies scrambling to protect their trade name.

    The .US domain has been used for years without problems. I don't see why the Dept of Commerce needed to hand this over to Neustar. Neustar is going to be charging and making ungodly sums of money.

    The United States is a LARGE, well-connected country. It is NOT practical to give 2nd-level domains (joeblow.us) out to the public. The system of org.locality.state.us is much more fair as there will be less disputes. Granted, companies and organizations that span more than one locality or state should be allowed to have lower-level (3rd or maybe 2nd) domains.

    I emailed Neustar (that is the stupidest name of a company I have ever heard) last week about some of these issues I am concerned about, and never received a response.

    As a .US domain owner, I am pissed off.

  • Overly confusing? (Score:3, Informative)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @05:47PM (#2611092) Homepage
    This comes at a very bad time. The .us extention should have been available since the beginning. Extentionless domains (.com; .org; .net) should be classified as "worldwide sites", example: www.amazon.com should lead to Amazon's worldwide site, or a portal page that leads to Amazon's localized sites (amazon.co.uk, amazon.de, etc..). Instead, amazon.com leads to amazon's USA homepage. This is clearly wrong and a problem. The .com extention should be intended for non-localized sites, not the american site (are we too good for our own extention)?

    This also leads to another problem. Smaller sites don't want to have to manage two extentions (for the sake of costs and fragmentation). A few poltically-correct people will start typing in .com.us, instead of .com, leading to a 404 or the inevitable: the site of some domain stockpiler out to cheat a few innocent individuals out of their money.

    Here's a scenaraio:
    Small US based business with a website, does no international business. Clearly, Company X shouldn't have to buy a .com domain, because they are strictly a US company (just like most foreign companies do). The webmaster makes the politically-correct decision to purchase a .com.us domain.
    Once the site has been up and popularized, a potential customer hears about the site; oxygenrx. He types oxygenrx.com into his browser... 404:not found. The potential customer releases a string of obcenities, then proceeds to a competitor's site. The opposite of this is true as well.
    The obvious solution to this problem would be to buy a .com domain. But, the webmaster shouldn't have to: oxygenrx isn't a worldwide corporation.

    Another way to put this into perspective is with the naming of a company.
    For example, there is a company: Brooklyn Cheese House inc. From the name, you can tell it is strictly a small local business. One day, the managment changes it's name to Cheese House International. But, it's not an international business: it's still a small retail store in Brooklyn. Surely this will confuse customers (probably those who choose to patronize a local business over a large one). Same concept with the domains: a proper name prevents confusion and improves business.
    Of course, this can't all be credited to the lateness in the availability of .us domains. It mixes in politics, the stupidity of the average Joe AOL-user. Another solution could be simply removing locale specific extentions... AHHHHHH!
  • I can see why it is happening, but the organization scheme of county.state.country, imho, was a good organizationalk system -- but one that wasn't truly taken advantage of enough.
  • A rogue domain operator, TLDUSA, is busy spamming offers to sell/buy .USA domains for $59 per year. These are NOT .US domains, and whether or not someone will be able to contact those domain servers is problematic.

  • Should've been from the start! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rice_burners_suck ( 243660 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @08:09PM (#2611455)

    It should have been this way right from the start. Every country should have its country code as its top level domain, and that should be subdivided as best convenient for that country. In the U.S., each state would be assigned a 2-letter name under .us, and that state would be responsible for subdividing further. A big state like California might subdivide further by counties.

    It should never have been simply "something.com"--this may have actually helped lead to the .com mess of the past several years, which has screwed up the tech sector so badly. ("Hey! Here's a business idea! Better register that domain name NOW before someone gets it, write up some press releases, and we're millionaires!" It's all psychology. Make the system more organized and its users will have to be too.) From the very start, people would have gotten used to the fact that some company's domain name is something.county.state.us or something.city.state.us or whatever. (Subdividing by city actually makes more sense (to me) than by county, as your snailmail address includes your street address, city and state, not your county.)

    Furthermore, .net, .com and .org should only have existed for international entities; .net being for network providers; .com for multinational commercial entities and .org for multinational nonprofit organizations. ONLY! These domains, and only these domains, would be regulated by some international mess of a bureaucracy. Their rules would include a minimum number of countries you have to do business in before getting a domain like that. For example, you must do so many millions worth of business in, say, 10 countries in order to get a .com.

    When limited to the U.S., these entities would have to get a .com.state.us address, and the name must be the name of the business (or entity). Registered trademarks would get a .tm.us. Federal government sites would get a .gov.us. State governments would get a .gov.state.us. County and city governments would be further organized in a hierarchy.

    In short, by using rules that make sense to KNOWLEDGEABLE computer folks, a very large mess wouldn't exist now. Huge technical problems would be reduced to nothing. Legal problems would nearly go away too--we wouldn't have people fighting over domain names and stupid stuff like that. (If there was a fight, it could only happen between people in the same city (or state in the worst case) and there would be no authority to handle it--all names are first-come-first-serve. (The protection is already in place, since you have to own the appropriate trademark or have the appropriately named business in order to have that domain name.) And if all else fails, one party could buy the name off the other, as was done in the past.)

    The way the system is today causes another big HUGE chunk of bureaucracy that is totally unnecessary and costs a lot of money and headaches. OH WELL.

    • In fact, about six years ago, private domains were encouraged to get *.us domains, instead of *.com domains, which were specifically for commercial ventures. Likewise, *.net was only for network providers, and *.org was only for non-profit orgs. But when the NSF stopped paying for everyone's domain name, InterNIC / Network Solutions took control of how the domains would be allocated among purposes, and that was to not allocate them at all, but blow them wide open to everyone. This of course maximised NSI's ability to sell domains. (NSI did not and has not controlled (*.us).

      Web-era veterans might remember Netherlands BBS, originally at netherlands.ypsi.mi.us ('ypsi.mi' because it was located in Ypsilanti, Michigan). Eventually it was changed to nether.net. This of course worked in NetherNet's favor, because they then had a shorter hostname, and users did less typing, and there was much rejoicing.

      Regardless, the current system is hardly bureaucratic -- its the opposite, uncontrolled and manipulated for profit over most beneficial function. And the solution of throwing more TLDs at the problem will only end up spanning the problem across TLDs. Sure, ICANN tells the TLD applicants who were lucky to win their lottery disguised as a review process that they have to limit who can get domains under their TLDs, but if ICANN's pattern of bending to commercial pressure continues, I expect that rule to hold for two years max.
    • DNS was never well-suited to be at the layer users interacted with the Internet. Its purpose was to identify nodes on the Internet with names. If you wanted to find the web server for a given company, you weren't expected to know or remember the company's web server's hostname; you were expected to locate them on a directory and have the software automatically send your web browser to the correct URL behind-the-scenes. Heck, even URL's weren't meant to be human-visible.

      The problem is that the directory technology never matured fast enough, and was never adopted globally enough for it to serve that purpose. We're just now getting LDAP to start serving in the capacity of an e-mail directory, but short of the numerous incompatible search engines and proprietary "keyword" services out there, nothing has been able to do the same thing to sit above the DNS layer in a sane fashion.

      If things had turned out the way they should have, DNS space wouldn't be traded like such a huge commodity, and we wouldn't have everybody and their freakin' pets with their own domain space sitting right off the top-level domains like we do today. It would end up as a nice hierarchy, but nobody but the techies would even care because it's not something generally exposed to the public. It's just ridiculous the way things are today.

      Another poster mentioned that having his identity associated with a geographical domain name would suck since he'd have to rename everything when he moved. If things had been done right, this wouldn't really be an issue. The only naming that would need to change would be the naming of the Internet hosts that would move with him. If he was using a geographically-identified ISP and moved, he'd probably need to get a new ISP anyway, so his e-mail address would have changed. If he was hosting his own e-mail on his geographically-identified hosts, his hosts would have to move with him, so not only would he have to renumber, but yah, he'd have to rename as well. This really wouldn't have been as bad as it seems, since a higher-level directory would be what's linking his name and identity with his e-mail address, so after changing the address, a quick trip to the directory's update function would still allow him to receive his e-mail.

      I really don't see a huge problem with the top-level generic domains like .com and .org, provided they were used for the purposes they were intended. It's just a namespace. Companies or individuals that are not geographically centered shouldn't be forced under a geographically-centered domain. You have to root those guys somewhere, so the generics are the place to be. I was rather distressed to hear that new TLD's like .biz were going to be opened up. I see no distinction in functionality between .biz and .com, and they're still intending to open them up for anyone that wants one. Now we just have ambiguity when people are trying to locate businesses. Do I try www.microsoft.com or www.microsoft.biz?

      But who knows, this may force a globally-recognized directory of proper names to services. As the number of "equivalent" top-level domain names increase, so does the ambiguity. Users are going to start using search engines more to locate an organization, which I see is a good thing, and the overall value of DNS space will begin to diminish.

      Things will get there eventually, but many of us will be banging our heads on our desks in the mean time...
  • The United States Department of Commerce may have done some underhand dealing for the .us TLD. For just one - they give it to a business that run the illegal .biz lottery. Did DoC open .us for tender?

    The United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization and the United States Department of Commerce are hiding the simple solution to trademark and domain name problem.

    Virtually every word is trademarked - Alpha to Zeta or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over (even in same country).

    Trademarks are for the good of the people, as well as business. Most trademarks share the same words with many others in a different business and/or country. For example, 'cat' is used in 1746 trademarks in the USA alone. The authorities are allowing certain trademarks to be abused by their owners, giving them dominance over others. This is against unfair competition law.

    The US DoC do this purposefully, also knowing they abridge peoples right to use these words - even the common words you learnt with your A B C's - like apple, ball and cat. This violates the First Amendment.

    I have been in contact with various Government bodies (US and UK) and attorneys for quite some time now - they understand arguments perfectly. Nobody has denied the assertions made, not even UN WIPO.

    Like I say, most trademarks share its name or initials with many others. When authorities could put trademark identity beyond shadow of doubt, they are either devoid of intelligence or corrupt. I have come to the logical conclussion, that they are corrupt.

    Please visit WIPO.org.uk [wipo.org.uk] to see the simple solution.
  • Why does everyone feel this is good? I thought the internet was supposed to bring about globalization - where your location didn't matter for you to do business. Country-specific TLDs such as .us, .uk, .fr, etc might seem reasonable for companies which are specific only to that country, but will only muddy things more.

    Suppose someone registers ibm.com.ru who isn't IBM. Suppose that country doesn't care about that person infringing on IBM's trademark? Now suppose someone in that country assumes ibm.com.ru is the country-specific site for IBM. What is IBM's country specific site is ru.ibm.com (which is how I think it SHOULD be). I can definitely see a problem here.

    Does IBM register EVERY IBM.com.TLD as well as IBM.com? Should they have to do so? Seems ridiculous to me. TLDs should say something about the type/business of a company (which they no longer do) instead of stressing location. Furthermore, things will get muddier as the managing bodies decide to do force stupid things later on for "more organization" like "company.businesstype.city.state.country". Type rather than location isn't perfect, but it's BETTER than what is being proposed.

    What we need are BETTER TLDs. .com, .net, and .org are obviously too cluttered, and domains like .tv are just plain dumb (how about .media anyone?) A better TLD structure would be something like:

    .media - for TV, Radio, Newspapers, and the like
    .isp - for ISPs, since the .net domain is now meaningless
    .retail - for retail businesses like Amazon, Sears, B&N, etc.
    .pr0n - you get the idea
    .linux - of course!

    and, of course, some sort of governing body which FORCES the general business of the company to be related to the domain, or else forfeit their domain name (after a reasonable appeals process, of course). The existing .com, .net, .org, etc domains could be left, or phased out over the course of several years.
    • Globalization doesn't always make sense. If you are ordering pizza, for instance, it would probably work a lot better to go straight to (say) internetpizza.kalkaska.mi.us than to go to internetpizza.com and hope that this web site would link to the correct store. It ought to be possible to build a geographically aware national or international site, but in my experience, usually where I live is not in their system, and their attempts to find someplace nearby are off by 200 miles...
  • Wow. This was really big news, a month ago when I submitted it.

    Now it's just a press release. Press Releases for Nerds, Stuff That Mattered Last Month.

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