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The Internet Your Rights Online

The Great .us Giveaway 107

Posted by michael from the corporate-welfare dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes: "ICANNWatch has a story about why the US Dept. of Commerce's plan to give away .us is a Really Bad Idea. Bids are fixed at $0, so the public gets nothing, but the contractor can charge what he likes for .us names, he can tie in other services, and pretty much do what he likes, except .us has to have rules that favor trademarks, and do what ICANN says. Plus it's set up so Verisign has the inside track. It's all in a paper by Brian Kahin called Making Policy by Solicitation: The Outsourcing of .us (MS Word, but ICANNWatch put up a .pdf). Last week public interest groups asked for a delay of the giveaway, but will anyone listen?"
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The Great .us Giveaway More

The Great .us Giveaway

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  • should have happened 5 years ago (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Whats the point of doing it now ?
    All the top level domains have been dominated by US firms anyway.

    I think the situation is that the powers that be wanted US companies to have an advantage over everyone else.

    Fair ?

  • Re:I want a .us (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    slashdot.us?
    Might be better to get: we.have.slow.servers.so.please.do.not.slashdot.us.

  • Re:American egotism, as usual... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Your just proving his point.

    The reason you should have gone back and changed all the .gov .mil to .gov.us and .mil.us is becasue it was (and still is) the right thing to do.

    To translate to US'ian, "the right thing to do" doesnt mean "in our own best interest"

  • Re:You know what would be nice... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    cocacola.co.us

    I thought Coca-Cola was based in Atlanta, Georgia, not in Colorado,

  • Re:The domain needs to be improved (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is *absolutely* correct. And, you can
    do this without breaking the current naming
    scheme. I can't for the life of me figure out
    why people can't see that this is the correct
    way to procede and/or they haven't done it
    yet.

    > The .mil, .edu, and .gov TLDs would then be
    > disbanded since they would no longer have any
    > use.

    Well, let's pray they won't have any *future* use
    for them!

  • Re:American egotism, as usual... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, dumbass, the Internet was created/invented in the U.S. and, at the time, there were no other countries on the 'net. It was used for the most part by academic institutions and the government in the very early years and most had no idea it would grow outside the bounds of the U.S. So, American elitism? I think not. More like common sense and utility. Why make it navy.mil.us when there's no need (at the time) for .us--just makes it longer! Once it the Internet became an international network, it was obvious something had to be done, so all of the top-level country code domains were added...but why go back and change all of the established .gov, .mil, .com, etc. sites to .gov.us, etc.? Because it would have been disruptive to the flow of information and a lot of trouble.
  • Don't forget the University of Phoenix [phoenix.edu].

    --

  • according to the Census, there was estimated to be 272,690,813 as of July 1, 1999. This means that there would be 272,690,813 domains (ouch) taking up 2,726,908,130 Megabytes in storage (based on 10MB / person - assuming everyone uses all 10MB) which is about 2.5 terrabytes of data. That may not sound like much, but maintaining the records (aproximately 2.5 million people added annually, again according to US Census data) and the servers would be an expensive endeavor.

    Don't get me wrong. I think its a great idea, just unrealistic. Now if we were able to do it in a request basis, I'd love to have my domain.

    Secret windows code
  • Agreed that it *could* be tied into the SSN information, but unfortunately, having first hand experience as a contractor for multiple government firms, I've come to realize that the seperate departments have little or no interaction, and as little information transfer as possible between departments. Case in point - for multiple government agency, they *EACH* have their own security clearance proceedure, and they don't transfer. Co-workers who had top-secret military grade clearance had to get recertified for another government agency.

    Again - great idea - but you forgot to add the government red tape, stir and add the little pink umbrella before smashing it over your head.

    Secret windows code
  • The .ca domain has recently undergone a LOT of admin changes. Check out www.cira.ca for the low-down.

    Cities can register their names now (like calgary.ca). I know this for a fact since I have been trying to register parkhill.ca for about 6 years now, and the rules just changed again so that some dinky little town of 50 people in Ontario named "Parkhill" gets that domain, and no-one else is allowed to touch it. Same for all cities, landmarks, parks, provinces, etc.

    The .ca TLD is now open to just about anyone, and teh squatters are already moving in.

  • For all of their flaws, ICANN is in fact a non-profit organization. They may be in the pockets of corporations, but it seems to be largely because they don't know any better, not because they're personally profiting directly. And I don't see how they're going to get any money for .us "hosts" under this scheme.
  • when i lived in newyork.ny.us i tried to register a domain. they never got back to me, whats up with that?
  • ...and the fact that not everyone agrees on something, and people who disagree are allowed to both register their opinions, proves what?

    Looks like moderation is working perfectly fine to me...

    --

  • Actually you could use [ssn].[first].[last].us. Athough SSNs are not unique, no SSN should be assigned to two people with the same name. (But what happens if you wish to change your name, and your chosen name happens to be that of someone who shares your SSN?) Unfortunately, there are still people who believe that SSNs are secret and will accept them as proof of identity. :-(

  • Re:You know what would be nice... (Score:3)

    by Ben Hutchings ( 4651 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @09:57AM (#74805) Homepage

    There's already a system for this, and it doesn't involve having other people do the work for you and getting it wrong. You can define a list of domains to search under before interpreting a domain name as absolute. The downside, of course, is that the search may take some time.

    Under Unix you can put a line in your resolv.conf file like this: "search fr com". Under Windows you can enter "DNS suffixes" of "fr" and "com" somewhere in the TCP/IP configuration dialogs. Then www.coca-cola will resolve to www.coca-cola.fr while www.superpages will resolve to www.superpages.com since there is no www.superpages.fr.

  • Yes, I'm very aware of the election scam. But, what happened? This was supposed to be a democratic state, not a corporate state. Does everyone just not care, or just unsure what to do about it? Voting doesn't seem to be the answer.
  • Maybe the goatse.cx guy could get the domain an.us?
  • It may be long, but I've never forgotten it, and it's been very useful in the past. (Metro North New Haven Line!)

    I actually used http://www.state.ma.us/ this morning to check on Basic Cable rate regulation.

    They're useful and logical domains, and I hope they're not abused like .com has been.

  • No, the solution is to do just the reverse. Eliminate the .COM, .ORG, .NET, etc. domains altogether. Rely solely on country codes for the TLDs.

    {But that's crazy talk!}

    No it isn't, despite the fact that I seem to be talking to myself. Moving everything to the country TLDs allows domain registry, trademark disputes, and other ickiness to be handled on a country-by-country basis.

    Each country is owner of its own domain, and can do whatever they want with it. Guidelines should be suggested, such as "try to put commercial entities in ".co.xx", but countries would be free to modify these guidelines as they see fit. And if some country wants to out-source its registry, or even sell rights to the domain outright, great. It's their domain. They get exactly one. They can use it however they wish.

    Yes, this means that multi-national corporations would have to register in each country in which they want a cyberspace presence. Boo-hoo. It's not like they're not registering every TLD they can get their hands on already. So, the Coca-Cola corporation would have to register "cocacola.co.fr", "cocacola.co.uk", "cocacola.co.us", etc. And if they're smart, each one of these points to localized versions of their home page. No more "cocacola.com". Users all over the world can expect to see pages in their own languages. What a concept.

    The biggest win is that trademark issues are resolved in the jurisdiction in which they occur. Say that the Scottish sheep farmer Angus McDonald registers "mcdonalds.co.uk". Now a certain multi-national fast-food restaurant wants the name. Who decides? With "mcdonalds.com" it's unclear what the legal jurisdiction is. With "mcdonalds.co.uk" it's perfectly clear that the courts of the United Kingdom need to settle the matter.

    But that solution wouldn't generate anywhere near as much revenue for ICANN, so it'll never be done...


    Chelloveck
  • When I need information about a state service, I start with www.state.xx.us where xx is the state. I've used www.state.ny.us, www.state.il.us and www.state.in.us in just the last month.

  • The domain needs to be improved (Score:3)

    by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @07:10AM (#74811) Homepage Journal
    The .us domain has been under used mainly because of the way it is currently organized, which create mile long addresses. For this reason most US companies would rather use the .com domain. I strongly believe that the .us domain needs to be made the great American domain, whereby universities and government organizations are also encouraged to use it. The way I see it, any two letters domains following .us should be for the states, as it is at the moment and then we should use top level style 3 letter domains for nation wide stuff. Examples:

    oh.us - Ohio
    ca.us - California
    com.us - USA commerical zone
    edu.us - USA educational institutions
    gov.us - USA government
    mil.us - USA miltary

    The .mil, .edu, and .gov TLDs would then be disbanded since they would no longer have any use.

    This may be a bit off topic, but unless the domain is improved giving it away free will not encourage it to be used to its full extent.

  • Re:Imagine the possibilies! (Score:3)

    by Azog ( 20907 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @08:17AM (#74812) Homepage
    I'll have to get an "us" domain. There's too many great possibilities to pass up.

    For instance, a great second level domain would be "with.us". Then you could resell all the commercially useful third level domains: bank.with.us, shop.with.us, save.with.us, fly.with.us.

    But there's loads of other great possibilities. You read them here first:

    x.the.us (rebuild.the.us, destroy.the.us, network.the.us, educate.the.us, subvert.the.us, love.the.us, hate.the.us, fuck.the.us)

    x.is.us / x.is.not.us

    x.r.us (but toys.r.us will get you slapped for trademark violation.)

    x.for.us (linux.for.us, beer.for.us, games.for.us, cars.for.us, software.for.us)

    why.not.us, remember.us, its.on.us, kill.us, dont.forget.us, buy.us, fly.us, rent.us, sell.us, silly.us, sucks.to.be.us, computers.for.the.rest.of.us

    Quick! Rush out and reserve your us domain today!

    But which is better? free.beer.for.us or free.speech.for.us?


    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
  • wouldn't www.microsoftisbadto.us be better?
  • Two reasons, name collisions between districts (and everyone else who's squatting) and they fact they are cheaper.
  • x.r.us (but toys.r.us will get you slapped for trademark violation.)

    Toys'R'Us actually 0wns the trademarks for hundreds of *'r'Us names.
    ---

  • Unfortunately, .us is incredibly hard to use at the moment. It's not because of the decentralized nature of the system as it currently exists. It's because service from Verisign/Network "Solutions" absolutely, no-two-ways-about-it, sucks. It sucks rocks through a hose.
    They have made it intentionally difficult to use. For instance, I've been trying to give up a delgation given to me years about for a bout a year now. Neither I nor the town who would like the domain is able to get satisfaction from Network "Solutions."

    Sounds like the problem is actually lack of decenralisation. If you actually had a system which was decentralised then your town wouldn't be dealing with Verisign/NS at all, they'd be dealing with the state government to agree their third level domain (and you'd agree your fourth level domain with your local government.)

    They're nearly impossible to make. The name server listed as master for the holly-springs.nc.us domain and the domain I was trying to relenquish has to move. The company it's hosted at went bankrupt and I have no idea how long I'll have use of that server's IP address. But www.nic.us -- now a Network "Solutions" "Service" -- requires email to be sent in; does not pre-fill the web form that generates the email form; responds to the request in 4-6 weeks, even if it's just to say that a field in the form was wrong (which prefilling would take care of); no one at Network "Solutions" knows about the .us domain; the phone number given for .us domain inquries plays a recorded message saying all correspondance must be done through email (see broken "procedure" above)

    If things were set up correctly in the first place then you'd be dealing with hostmaster@nc.us anyway. What is really worrying is that the people in charge appear to have missed the whole point...
  • But yeah, in general, the forced geographical naming does make things inconvenient for anyone other than state/city governments and individual users.

    Odd that this simply isn't an issue when it comes to postal addresses or telephone numbers. Though in most parts of the world, including the US, you can get telephone numbers which are from a different area or country wide. These tend to cost extra money. Similarly you can have post forwarded from one address to another.
    Why should domain naming be treated differently?
  • The internet would be worthless if only the US was allowed to use it.

    But not if the US was absent from it.

    The value of the internet has absolutly nothing to do with the cost of creating it, or who paid for it.

    Most of the connectivity to the US (with the possible exception of that between the US and Canada) isn't paid for by the US in the first place...
  • Well, dumbass, the Internet was created/invented in the U.S. and, at the time, there were no other countries on the 'net.

    How long did that persist for? It was invented for Military use, which would mean it wouldn't take long before there were connections to Canada, Greenland and the UK. Remember most of BMEWS is located outside the US and IIRC operated by NORAD which is US/Canadian.

    Once it the Internet became an international network, it was obvious something had to be done, so all of the top-level country code domains were added.

    Plenty of country codes date from when it was still "ARPAnet". We are going back over a decade, long before the "The Internet" had ever been heard of by most people, before HTTP had ever been invented...
  • When the top-level country domain names were enacted, to change all of the .edu, .gov., etc. to .edu.us, etc. would require a massive amount of time, effort, and money

    It might require a huge amount of work NOW considerably greater than about 15 years ago.
    Many of these domains simply didn't exist 15 years ago, most of them didn't exist even 5 years ago.
    -All remote "links" would have had to have been changed across the *entire* Internet--albeit smaller than it is today. When I say links I mean html links, gopher links (or whatever they're called as gopher was popular then), and various other protocols

    HTTP came along much later

    Massive updates to all DNS servers, at all levels

    Only those in one country since the rest of the planet used geographic domains from the start. (Even networks such as JANET managed to communicate with the rest of the world, dispite there not being any agreement between networks on which way around to have the name...)
  • There's been a lot of talk about adding new TLDs as if that would help anything, when the problem is that the TLD that should be one of the most common ones is hardly used at all:

    Nor will adding new TLD's help when people insist on everything being www.foobar.com or www.foobar.*

    I don't think I've ever visited a .us page. There are shitloads of .com sites that most decidedly serve only Americans and should therefore logically be placed under the .us domain.

    Or more likely only serve some Americans you'd think companies in Alaska and Hawaii would actually want to use geograpic domains. You even have one US city hijacking another country's domain (maybe anywhere bombed by the USA needs to get a strong grip on their domain name.)
  • ICANN is a non-profit. (Amazingly, considering how much cash they rake in; where does it all go?)

    I would guess: Very, very expensive international meetings (but why don't they shift the cost onto the governmental and commercial reps?) and high salaries for directors.

  • Pennsylvania's new non-specialized license plates actually use "www.state.pa.us" as their tagline! It also appears on all the border-crossing "Welcome to Pennsylvania" signs.

    And they have a great website, too. I recently used it to print out a pdf of the handicapped parking placard application. Pennsylvania appears to be very pro-technology.

    Now if I could just get the contract to enable the aforementioned MTA website to support refilling MetroCards by credit card. That would save me TONS of time in the MetroCard machine line.
    --
    Steve Jackson
  • No, Verisign is "working" to screw that up as well. See my previous post [slashdot.org].

    If the second-level DNS servers cannot be contacted because Network "Solutions" refuses to update the .us DNS name server delegation records, then the second-level domain is unusable.



    - - - - -
  • Step 1. Call the phone number on nic.us.

    Step 2. Call Verisign. Chase your way around that company until you have confirmed that no one is willing to help with the .us domain.

    Step 3. Call the Department of Commerce and/or your representive and senators.



    - - - - -
  • The NTIA publication
    "SPECIAL AWARD CONDITIONS, NCR 92-1874, Amendment Number Twenty-One (21) [doc.gov]" is as follows:

    1. Section I. B. 11. Other Top Level Domains of Amendment 19, as amended, is amended as follows:

    .us Top Level Domain
    Until such time as the Department of Commerce ("Department") designates a successor registry for the .us top level domain, or November 10, 2001, whichever comes first, NSI shall continue to provide administrative services, including Registry and, as appropriate, Registrar services, for this domain. Such services shall be at no cost to the U.S. Government, except that the Department shall reimburse NSI for the 1999-2000 contribution to ICANN attributed to the .us top-level domain.
    As administrator, NSI shall use commercially reasonable efforts to maintain the status quo with respect to the operational policies, practices, procedures, administration, and daily operations of the .us domain (except as may be reasonably necessary to comply with customary business practices and to minimize or mitigate risks), and, unless directed by the Department, shall not alter the registration policies of the .us domain. NSI shall have no obligation to develop or prepare any new documentation with respect to its administration of the .us domain. If NSI, however, develops such new documentation, NSI shall provide such documentation (other than internal drafts, memoranda, and working papers) to the Department upon the Department's request. Moreover, NSI shall provide, upon the Department's request, any information or documentation regarding administration of the .us domain that the Department reasonably deems necessary to secure a successor registry.

    As custodian of the .us registration data, NSI shall have no obligation to verify or validate the completeness and/or accuracy of the data provided to NSI by the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California. NSI will use the existing constellation of secondary .us DNS servers to propagate the .us top level domain zone files, to the extent that the volunteer top-level domain server administrators agree to continue such operation, and reliability and stability of the .us domain are not jeopardized. NSI will use commercially reasonable efforts to replace any volunteer top-level domain server administrator that elects to discontinue service. NSI will not be held either responsible or liable for any consequences related to the actions or failure to perform by any of the volunteer .us top-level domain server administrators.

    Upon designation by the Department of a successor registry, or November 10, 2001, whichever comes first, NSI shall use commercially reasonable efforts to cooperate with the Department to facilitate the smooth transition of operation of the .us domain. Such cooperation shall include timely transfer to the successor registry of an electronic copy of the then-current top-level domain registration date and, to the extent such information is available, specification of the format of the data. Upon receipt of written acknowledgment by the successor registry that it has accepted full and complete responsibility for all tasks associated with administering the .us domain, the Department will concurrently relieve, release, and discharge NSI from any responsibility for administering the .us domain.

    Nothing in this Amendment is intended to preclude NSI from seeking or obtaining the rights to function as the successor registry for the .us domain consistent with Federal acquisition law or regulations.



    - - - - -

  • Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:5)

    by 1010011010 ( 53039 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @06:47AM (#74827) Homepage
    Does anyone know who uses .US now? And why is it America has not used this TLD like most other countries have had to do? (IE: www.myDomain.or.jp, etc.)

    I do (see email address). My town does. All k-12 schools do.

    Unfortunately, .us is incredibly hard to use at the moment. It's not because of the decentralized nature of the system as it currently exists. It's because service from Verisign/Network "Solutions" absolutely, no-two-ways-about-it, sucks. It sucks rocks through a hose.

    They have made it intentionally difficult to use. For instance, I've been trying to give up a delgation given to me years about for a bout a year now. Neither I nor the town who would like the domain is able to get satisfaction from Network "Solutions." So, I just set the domain back up on my servers and provided the delegation.

    Which bring me to the second problem: updates. They're nearly impossible to make. The name server listed as master for the holly-springs.nc.us domain and the domain I was trying to relenquish has to move. The company it's hosted at went bankrupt and I have no idea how long I'll have use of that server's IP address. But www.nic.us [www.nic.us] -- now a Network "Solutions" "Service" -- requires email to be sent in; does not pre-fill the web form that generates the email form; responds to the request in 4-6 weeks, even if it's just to say that a field in the form was wrong (which prefilling would take care of); no one at Network "Solutions" knows about the .us domain; the phone number given for .us domain inquries plays a recorded message saying all correspondance must be done through email (see broken "procedure" above).



    - - - - -
  • I'd be guessing that the yanks have more than one "bob's shoe store" too

    Yes, but how many bob's shoe stores do you think there are in Toledo, Ohio?

  • Explains a lot... (Score:4)

    by scoove ( 71173 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @06:24AM (#74829)
    We've been trying to deal with Verisign for 6 months on several community applications, to no avail in every case.

    Verisign has been effective in stalling on every application, usually by taking 6-8 weeks to reply with an incorrect response like citing lack of authorization for the community (which was sent with the application). After you receive the erroroneous response and send a note to them pointing out their error, they take another 6-8 weeks to send a response saying "contact the community domain administrator for assistance" (which is what we would be if they'd get their act together).

    All Verisign's efforts have done is fully alienate each community (we do a good job letting folks know who's botched up the job) and given them a reputation as a company to avoid like the plague.

    We had a hunch the stalling tactic had another purpose...

    *scoove*

  • Some info from the FAQ (Score:4)

    by RedX ( 71326 ) <{redx} {at} {wideopenwest.com}> on Thursday July 19, 2001 @06:36AM (#74830)
    From http://www.nic.us/faq.html [www.nic.us]:

    Who can get a US domain name?
    Individuals, organizations, businesses, city/county governments, Native Sovereign Nations, schools (K-12, private, community colleges), libraries, state agencies, and museums may obtain a US domain name.
    Examples:
    Jane Doe in Canoga Park, CA = jane-doe.canoga-park.ca.us
    Bob's Shoe Shop in Toledo, OH = bobs-shoe-shop.toledo.oh.us
    City Hall in New Orleans, LA = ci.new-orleans.la.us
    Monroe School District in MT = monroe.k12.mt.us

    Can I register something.us?
    No. See the examples above and read the Overview section of the Web site for complete information on the structure of the US Domain. Domain names are constructed with organization-name or personal-name followed by the city-name, the state-code, and .us.

    How much does it cost?
    The US Domain Registry does not charge any fees. Organizations approved to register .us domain names by the US Domain Registry may charge a nominal fee

  • I use .us - I registered rose.columbus.oh.us awhile ago. I found it rather difficult though; I submitted the document on http://www.nic.us and then was contacted by oar.net which handles the columbus.oh.us subdomain (plus numerous others). One problem is, there is no way to find out if it is taken already or not. You just have to submit and pray that it's not. I like it because I don't think it's that hard to remember, and plus you can pretty much pick whichever 4th level domain you want (right now). And, another benefit is the domain is free so you don't have to pay the yearly fee.
  • Because it would build into the system the knowledge about where you were coming from. Look at all the proxies you have to use, and how slow htey are, just to read the new york times from Bejing or browse Nazi paraphrenalia from Paris.

    What we really need is simply alternate DNS systems. Then you could set up your France-matters-on-the-internet example by having the French ISP run it's own DNS, probably offering a couple of different DNS's for it's customers. The rest of us could continue to pretent that the whole EU was some mythical place that was invented for a movie or marketing purposes, like Gotham City or Oz.

  • No big surprise (Score:3)

    by twjordan ( 88132 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @06:21AM (#74833)
    the government has been giving away all our public resources to big business for years and years (land, trees, clean water, oil, gas, coal, radio spectrum) and we get very little in return. This sucks, but .us is a lot less important to me than some of the other things I mentioned above...

    Tony

  • ....which was mentioned hear a while ago. Thing is, it's still going to be the same ol' landgrab. The Oz version is designed so that everyone can register their family name for an email domain. Hate to say it but I bet there's more Smith families than mine in Oz. I'd be guessing that the yanks have more than one "bob's shoe store" too....

    Buckets,

    pompomtom
  • Actually you could use [ssn].[first].[last].us. Athough SSNs are not unique, no SSN should be assigned to two people with the same name.

    They're not? Are you sure? This is absolutely not a troll; but your claim refutes things that I've always thought true, and that I'd thought that I had seen sufficient evidence for.

    EINs and SSNs might conflict -- I'm not asserting that they do, but logically they might commingle in the same 9-digit-identifier space -- but please inform us, absent identity theft, whether two different people might find themselves with the same SSN, absent fraud or some other deception.

    --

  • how in the world did that get moderated redundant? it's comment #4 for cying out loud!

    ---

  • moderation on the parent:

    Moderation Totals:Troll=1, Redundant=1, Funny=4, Overrated=1, Total=7.

    ---

  • woohoo! (Score:4)

    by cheezus ( 95036 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @06:20AM (#74838) Homepage
    i'm going to register

    icannisfucking.us!

    ---

  • Does anyone know who uses .US now? And why is it America has not used this TLD like most other countries have had to do? (IE: www.myDomain.or.jp, etc.)

    For a long time - this may still be true - the .us TLD was fragmented geographically. If you wanted a domain, you couldn't get foo.us, or even foo.ca.us - it was foo.sf.ca.us. This is:

    • no good for a company that has a presence in more than one city
    • no good for individuals (since you'd have to change domains every time you moved)
    • no good for projects and organizations either (who wants to make people remember what city and state you lived in when you started a site for exchanging vegetarian recipes or whatever?)
    Basically, the geographic fragmentation made .us suitable only for organizations based on a geographic locale, such as local governments and community organizations. And that seems to be mostly who's used it. (Surprise, surprise.)

  • Had to come sooner or later... (Score:3)

    by 11thangel ( 103409 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @06:37AM (#74840) Homepage
    Let's face it, ICANN is a business. Even if they don't get money for the control of the domain name, someone is gonna be paying for buying .us hosts, and I would guess ICANN gets a share of the profits. Any business (especially the king of the .com's, which is what ICANN pretty much is) would be trying to get as much money as possible. The only question is how much abuse is going to occur because of this, not whether or not it will happen.
  • Here in the UK we have second level domains that reflect the top level domains but end in the .uk TLD:
    • .co.uk - companies (equivalent to .com)
    • .gov.uk - government
    • .ac.uk - Academic institutions (like .edu)
    • .org.uk
    • .net.uk - (I'm sure you get the idea now)

    Perhaps a similar scheme could be adopted for .us

    All the major multinationals in the UK have a .co.uk as well as a .com, all universities have had .ac.uk for ages, and the others are gaining in popularity now as well.

  • This is the way it is supposed to work now. Joe's Pizza in Plano, in theory, can get joespizza.plano.tx.us for free. In practice, however, it's quicker and easier just to get joespizzaplano.com.

    As for the free websites thing.. don't we have it already, and it isn't it called Geocities? It's not like people are in dire need of 10Mb online storage space.

    --
  • on AllYourBaseAreBelongTo.Us
  • no good for a company that has a presence in more than one city

    From http://www.nic.us/overview/locality.html [www.nic.us]:

    For large or distributed entities, such as large corporations with multiple facilities in several cities or states, the corporate headquarters locality should be used. The corporation can then manage its own structure under this domain name. For example:

    IBM.Armonk.NY.US
    Microsoft.Redmond.WA.US

    no good for individuals (since you'd have to change domains every time you moved)

    From the same page:

    There is no requirement, as far as the overall US domain administration is concerned, that the user of a "locality" US domain name actually be in or have any connection with that locality. For example, the user of Smith.Boston.MA.US could actually reside in New Hampshire. However, please note that the organization information must match the domain name.
    no good for projects and organizations either (who wants to make people remember what city and state you lived in when you started a site for exchanging vegetarian recipes or whatever?)

    Well, there is the statewide .gen.state.us domain, so people would only have to know the state.

    But yeah, in general, the forced geographical naming does make things inconvenient for anyone other than state/city governments and individual users.

    I have a domain under austin.tx.us, and luckily, austin.tx.us was delegated over a decade ago to a guy who has plenty of clue. No hassles with Network Solutions, and no registration fees :)

  • Re:Who uses .US now? (Score:3)

    by msaulters ( 130992 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @06:31AM (#74845) Homepage
    Does anyone know who uses .US now? And why is it America has not used this TLD like most other countries have had to do? (IE: www.myDomain.or.jp, etc.)
    Why, I can name at least 50: tx.us, al.us, mi.us, ne.us, ak.us, ar.us, ny.us, etc...

    Each state has total control over it's own portion of .us, because the country codes were originally meant to officially represent that country. After all, .gov would get REALLY crowded as every little municipality started to use it. The MIS-use of the country-code domains began with the explosion of domain-squatting and as a few bright individuals in charge of domains such as .cc and .tv figured out they could sell control of them to private corporations.

    I fear the disruption that will occur when .us authority is switched to a different registrar. Your average state agency in Texas doesn't even employ knowledgeable IT people. Usually, their work is farmed out to independent contractors. Many many many of them will be behind when it comes to making any required changes to their DNS.

    (And just to kick in my own idea for a cool .us name: godhelp.us)
  • How about preparing for the future now? Use truly fully qualified names: myname.country.planet.solar_system.galaxy.universe myname.us.earth.sol.milky_way.universe

    Edward Burr

  • I would guess ICANN gets a share of the profits

    ICANN is a non-profit. (Amazingly, considering how much cash they rake in; where does it all go?)

  • Re:Had to come sooner or later... (Score:3)

    by e_lehman ( 143896 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @07:18AM (#74849)

    I checked around and found this from Karl Auerbach:

    Second, I do not believe that ICANN is paying enough attention to economizing. I have noted that ICANN's previous President is jetting around the world on ICANN business. That strikes me as odd - and expensive. Similarly, ICANN's senior staff does seem to show up, sometimes by two's and threes, at a lot of meetings around the world, even if only to give a short presentation. And I have heard quiet, but persistent, rumbles that some of these the presentations were not particularly well technically grounded. It seems that ICANN would be better served by fewer trips by fewer people.

  • I agree with you about the national forests, et al, but this seems to be an egregious example of the US government helping an entrenched business and harming the consumer. I'm sure that having another company handle the domain names is preferable to using the resources of the government, but a give-away like this seems a little sketchy. It seems like there could be another organization that could take these duties on, rather than give the domain name away to entrenched businesses, who charge consumers undefined "adminstrative costs."
    OTOH, this could become very price competitive, since anyone can come in and undercut prices since there is no fee to pay. They just have to keep the servers running and bandwidth available.
    Finally, how do we know that it will just be the same big companies protecting their trademarks and narrowing the pool by getting redundant .us domains to complement their .coms?

  • I agree with this structure as well. The Internet is a global system (hence the Inter- as in International). Every country should have control over their domain. That way they could see as to how they want to make second level domains. That way there would be no ICANN to worry about. And when users complain "The web address is too long" first we tell them "Hey everyone who doesn't live in the US already has to type the long addresses" and second forward looking browsers like Mozilla, Galeon, and Konqueror will implement a region look up URL filter. This will allow you to tell the browser what country you live in and it will automatically fill in the .us, .uk, .jp at the end of each URL. Then if you want to go outside the country you are in you just have to type the whole thing including country code.

    Of course this seems like extra steps for the browsers but knowing how stupid/lazy the typical american surfer is (yeah the ones who don't know what USENET or IRC is) I think it would be met with favorable reviews.

    And the forseeable unfortunate side-effect of this is that countries that like to sensor people, we all know who they are, will be able to filter / firewall people out a lot easier. But compared to this massive mess of disorganization I believe that would be worth the risk at this point.

  • (And just to kick in my own idea for a cool .us name: godhelp.us)

    That gives me a really.... dumb idea. Register help.us and make it into a wildcard domain...

    • jesus.help.us
    • god.help.us
    • allah.help.us
    • tux.help.us
    • zeus.help.us
    • slashdot.help.us
    • etc...

    The possibilities are endless! ... And useless.

    --

  • Does anyone know who uses .US now? And why is it America has not used this TLD like most other countries have had to do? (IE: www.myDomain.or.jp, etc.)
  • Dear CEO of AndHellHasFrozeOver:

    I am the CEO of The Chicago Cubs. Since we all know that our team will win the World Series when hell freezes over, we have trademarked the phrase "Now hell has froze over". Your company name will confuse people over our company.

    You may resolve this by the following: 1) You pay us the sum of $10^10, send us your firstborn child, and YOUR bowl of clam chowder! Or 2) Have Sammy Sosa slug you and all your employees all over the place while Kerry Wood smashes all your equipment. We are after all protecting our trademark.

  • With a little research one could probably find a relationship between the givers and the givees.
  • A couple of years ago I tried to register a domain in .ma.us, but the manager of the domain wouldn't let me have it.

    I tried to get it resolved with the branch of USC that was supposedly the arbitrar of such issues. They replied:

    Thank you for your message. We are investigating your complaint and

    will contact you when we have more information.

    US Domain Registrar

    That was in October of 99. Further inquiries on my part yeilded no results.

    Maybe ICANN will screw it up, but at least you'll have someone to turn to with an issue.

  • Rather than have the Hague convention everyone's net rights, I have a simple solution. Force all website IDs to use their national domain names from their country of origin, and then any national laws re: censorship are applied to that domain. The domains become 'national' property in the same sense that radio spectrum is, and we're done with these legal hassles. Won't happen, but it is elegant.
  • The internet was designed to maintain the military-industrial complex's nervous system after a nuclear war. The idea that governments will allow everyone to do whatever they want domain name-wise or content-wise is absurd. Remember- they have the police power to march in and pull the plug on their nation's domain name root server and/or telecommunications infrastructure. In fact I expect the next uprising/suppression to include the line 'X forces took the radio, TV and internet routing stations'. Libertarian communications ain't happening in the biggest communication revolution since TV. So given this ugly reality, I say nationalise the domains lest we lose even our own paltry rights to free speech to some international body.
  • This partly explains why nobody uses .us. It's easier to say your url is randomname.com than randomname.citycode.statecode.us. The latter sounds a lot more like some geocities type of page, doesn't it? Who wants to remember the city and state of every business they want to visit online? I think it's kind of a shame that the cityname and state code is required since it prevents such nifty little urls as "dependon.us" and "call.us"
  • That seems to be a good way of doing commercial web sites. You know they're wouldn't be many people trying to grab the same domain, if it were broken down to that level. It would also give a lot more businesses web presence. If Plano, Texas, were to host a "Plano Portal" site (which could be done extreamly cheap) they could seriously boost commerce for their town.

    ~LoudMusic
  • Wouldn't it be nice if someone setup a system for everyone to have a hostname in their birthstate? It wouldn't take much of a data center to manage it either. Give everyone an email account and 10 to 20MB of space. There would have to be more identification in the host/domain to avoid overlaps, but I think it can be done. Maybe [first][middle][last][birthyear].city.state.us.

    johnwilliamdoe2001.dallas.tx.us

    Hey, I'd take it if it was free!

    ~LoudMusic
  • Here in Canada things could possibly be worse. If a company is doing business in only one province it could not use a .ca. In Alberta it would be .ab.ca and the system is the same in all other provinces as well. Try finding the city of Calgary http://www.gov.calgary.ab.ca One would think that cities could be reserved names so Calgary could be http://www.calgary.ca but in Canada more often than not Bureaucracy is more important than simplicity.
  • For instance:

    - WhatifGodwasone.of.us
    - Justthetwo.of.us
    - Thestory.of.us


    Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
  • Just to throw a little spice into the debate (and provide another perspective from the constant, if somewhat justified "Evil corporations are trying to steal our daughters!" tone around here), let's compare this to railroads.

    Yep, railroads. Specifically, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. During their initial construction of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s, they were given scandalously good deals by the government--largely in the form of huge land grants that in many parts of the American West exist to this day, but in other ways such as backed bonds, as well. This, of course, caused a great hue and cry at the time, despite a great deal of popular sentiment supporting railroad building in general. By modern standards, it was a staggering giveaway of public resources--you would never see anything on that scale happening today with modern communications and press.

    But there was a reason for it--it opened the greater part of the country to settlement and development (whether that is a desirable goal is a topic for a different thread). Both railroads nearly went bankrupt even with such advantages--it was an undertaking that could not have ever been accomplished without the resources of the government behind it; yet it was a private venture, and private investors eventually profited from it. But, less directly, so did the entire country--we became a wealthy, influential nation largely due to the effect of those railroads on commerce. Nor could the government have accomplished it without the drive and freedom of private companies.

    I will not argue that Verisign is performing a similar service. But what if the Internet is the American West, and Verisign the Union Pacific? Or, at least, what if that is how our government is looking at the situation? The Internet is the vast, un-exploited frontier, awaiting the chugging engines of commerce to enrich us all... I'm not sure I believe any of that to be the case. But take a few moments at look at it from that angle and comment. Are ridiculous deals for large companies ALWAYS bad? Or may they sometimes be justified in the larger context which we may not always consider?
  • Umm... If I have your IP, I can find your ISP. Usually I can figure out what city you are in. I'm sure the tiny bit of extra information isn't going to make a hill of difference.

    I'm sure I am not the only one here who is sick of the .com sillyness. It's really the only way that can scale. Can you imagine the mess we are going to be in in 5 years when most personal domains look like dfghifuhiug.com because it's they are the only ones free?

  • Re:American egotism, as usual... (Score:4)

    by yttrbium ( 228142 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @07:50AM (#74866)
    Why does the US essentially control the .gov and .mil domains? It seems to me that this is yet another example of American elitism...

    This is a valid argument only if this were to happen today. When .MIL and .GOV were created, there was no such thing as a country code. .EDU and .COM weren't even delegated to anybody when .MIL started up. The "internet" was really just a connection of researchers and US governmental institutes. This isn't an example of American elitism, or even a matter of America-centric thought -- the simple fact is, the internet started as an American government entity. That's why we have .MIL and .GOV.

    just like when you fill out a form on a web site and there's a country drop-down..."United States" is often the FIRST option, as if the other countries in the list are trifiling and unimportant.

    As you admit, you're American. Therefore, you visit a lot of websites that have an American presence (you probably don't visit too many Dutch farmers news sites, or?). When people fill out those forms, you want to make it easy for them. So, you put the country as the default for what most of your visitors are going to be. And on .DE sites, Germany is the top country. In .CO.UK sites, England or UK is going to be the default country.

    Being an American and seeing the US chosen by default validates this point. How many times has another country shown up that you had to change it? I would venture you're not visiting too many Syrian sites where US was the default country. One the other hand, how annoying is it to find that you had to search a list of 200+ countries to find the US sandwiched somewhere between the United Arab Emirates and Uraguay, when you're on a site in English by a company that has a large American presence. At the very least, most companies put their top markets right at the top of the list so that the majority of their users don't have to take much effort searching through a list, whether that list is US & Canada or UK, Scotland, Ireland, etc.

  • Finally, after 5 or so years, these helpful sites:

    The MTA [nyc.ny.us] (MAPS and Sched's for Trains and Subways, etc..
    DMV Vanity Plates [state.ny.us] Real nice, even shows you the plate and how it'll look before you order it..3 years ago, you could look it up to see if it was taken, but couldn't order it over the net...

    EZ-Pass once was on ny.us, but they changed over to www.e-zpassny.com [e-zpassny.com]. They actually have online stuff instead of a link over to a form you have to snail mail...


    .kb
  • slashdot.moderators.are.evil.to.us

    .kb
  • Yes, because as we all know, only corporations register .com, only ISPs register .net, and only organizations register .org. So, where is the verizoneatspoop main office? They're a corporation, right? sheesh.

  • How do I become a contractor and get to redistribute these things? Microsoft.us is going to the trademark holder alright, but they're going to pay, and I'm going to include web hosting services on Linux in the deal.
  • This is another example [issues2000.org] in case anyone is wondering what that term means. There are several ways to contact The Department of Commerce [doc.gov] to tell them what you think, (check the bottom of the page).
  • I wanted to get the contact up quick to make sure people saw it, but after finishing the professor's paper, I don't see the DOC's role as implied by the submitted story. It looks to like the people to send gripes to are at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (rdesilva@ntia.doc.gov), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology [nist.gov]
  • actually AOL has two doors to the internet, one in the USA, and the other in Germany.
    but that changes barely nothing to ur point, that is right: AOL is pure crap ;-)

    anyway, the situation is even worse. Germany and France share one very bad situation: the TLD is used for everything (schools, universities, companies, etc.). The french nic has promoted .asso.fr (=.org) and .gouv.fr (=.gov). but even the french government itself doesn't stick to those domains...
    that leads me to my point: in France, .com domains are very popular, because "commercial" in french is said .. "commercial"... but .net is unused, as a contrary (network=reseau in french). So, why would we choose .co or .net or .gov or anything as pre-extensions for TLDs (".co".fr), instead of language-specific extensions (.res.fr instead of .net.fr) ? So, there i think we start the mess....

  • [...]but the contractor can charge what he likes for .us names, he can tie in other services, and pretty much do what he likes, except .us has to have rules that favor trademarks,[...]

    So does this mean, for example, that the website for the City of Phoenix, Arizona (www.ci.phoenix.az.us) could be found guilty of infringing a BIOS manufacturer's trademark? And the trademark holder is granted preference in a domain name dispute?

    I'll bet the case would get thrown out before it even got to www.supreme.state.az.us.

  • That makes sense for those of us US citizens who might like a home page. .com doesn't work (I'm not a corporation), .net doesn't work (I'm not an ISP), .org doesn't work (I'm not an organization). .us just says "I am in the US somewhere." .us might be nice for us purists who don't want to use the other top-level domains because they don't quite apply.

    I (despite the fact I am not catholic) would pay a premium for a .va just because it would be cool. Only 700 people live in Vatican City [cia.gov] anyway, so I would think they could sell a .va to me :)

  • Yes, but icannisfucking is a registered trademark of my company AndHellHasFrozenOver, and your use of said name is in violation of the Trademark Dilution Act. Registration of icannisfucking has diminished my company's ability to earn massive amounts of profits.

    To remediate this measure, you must send me the following $10^9, your first born child, all of your Body Thetans, your immortal soul, and a bowl of clam chowder (hey, I'm hungry here).

    D - M - C - A

  • It would be nice if .com, .org, .net weren't location specific. So if I were using a French ISP typing in cocacola.com would resolve to cocacola.co.fr, and if I were in the states cocacola.com would resolve to cocacola.co.us. The French site would have english and french available, the american site would be in english. If I wanted to look at the american site from a french isp i'd just type in cocacola.co.us. Kind of like dialing a phone number, if I don't dial a country code first, then I'm dialing within my own country, otherwise I dial a country code to get to that country. I guess hindsight is 20-20. I'm thirsty now.
  • So VeriSign may get control of the .us TLD. They may be assholes about fees and services in .us, but they probably won't be able to touch existing lower-level domains. So while registering a mywebsite.us may require bending over, registering mywebsite.fl.us or mywebsite.ca.us or any other of the 50-some-odd state, district, and territory domains still controlled by the state/district/territory/whatever governments will still be the same.
  • many public school systems use the .us domain. My school does. the format is usually

    www.(cityname).k12.(2 letter state code).us

    for example, my school's website address is www.oakgrove.k12.mo.us [k12.mo.us]


  • > The .mil, .edu, and .gov TLDs would then be > disbanded since they would no longer have any > use.

    Well, let's pray they won't have any *future* use for them!

    • WTO.gov
    • UN.mil
    • AOL-TimeWarner.edu

  • Imagine the possibilies! (Score:5)

    by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Thursday July 19, 2001 @06:29AM (#74881) Homepage
    all.you.base.are.belong.to.us
    --
  • And spammers will know your your nationality, your age, where you're likely to live. Nice.

  • Let's see, at 10MB a person, times 280 million people, that's 2,800 terrabytes. I think we should wait till disk space becomes really cheap before we worry about government subsidized web pages.

    But more to the point, I think .us geographic domains should generally be available to the public for free. People and businesses should be able to call up their city/county clerk and grab a domain. If I own a Joe's pizza in Plano, TX, I should be able to get joespizza.plano.tx.us for free. It just seems so cheap to implement and would help pull the Internet towards some semblance of organization.

  • Well, with a .geek domain, you probably wouldn't be targetting those kinds of people. It'd be like the main Internet, initially only for those with the technical know-how to be interested, and then for the masses later.

    Yes, a business wouldn't want to use OpenNIC right now. But a geek might!

    OpenNIC would come down firmly on the infinity side, I think. Check their page. (Cool link, though.)

  • True; hence my attempt to make that subset a greater percentage.

  • OpenNIC [unrated.net] is a nice alternative to ICANN's tyranny. It's complementary to the existing structure, too. (New TLD's don't conflict, so you can use both at the same time.) Wouldn't you like a .geek website?

  • > The internet would be worthless if only the US
    > was allowed to use it.

    Worthless? I wouldn't go that far. Not as cool, yes. But worthless, no.

    Off the top of my head, I can't think of any non-US site that I goto with any regularity.
  • I am not surprised to read this announcement because while the U.S. government talks the acronynms and flavs of the day ("We not have a revolutionary E-Government portal!" "The are at the forefront in B2G initiatives"), the U.S. government has no understanding how to utilize technology or the Internet.

    There are many possibilities for .us and the government takes this action? Pathetic.
  • Because what takes a private individual or foreign country to do in 1 year, it takes the U.S. government to do in 5 years.

    I am curious to read just how hard federal government workers work.
  • Now I can have a website with URLs such as armsagainstwashington.us or whycantwedestroythe.us or charlesmansonlivesamong.us or slashdot.us or wearethebulliesoftheworld.us or Democracyisgreatintheold.us. The possibilities are endless.
    ----

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