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Perhaps they would, but that still doesn't explain why any old resident of France, Russia, Iraq, Jamaica, Papa New Guinea or Mongolia would need to get a .uk. Without huge amounts of paper work then there's never going to be any way that you can stop all registrations that aren't applicable under a rule set, but you can certainly reduce it by making it more effort to dissuade the lazier registrants.

Also, there may be 5m 'ex-pats', but how many of them want to own .uk domains? and how many are more elderly people who have no interest in technology retired abroad for the sun (mainly Spain)? and how many of those who do want .uk domains don't have a family member who they can use as the registrant contact if they were to check .uk domains were British residents?

As I said, Canada manages it somehow so it must be possible.

It also seems fairer to have 60 million potential registrants have access to the domains they want for their own country TLD with the side effect that 5 million potential registrants (a number less than 10% of the residential population) have to have family in the country or similar to register a .uk compared to having 60 million potential registrants possibly not able to get the domain of their choice in the TLD of the country of their residence because one of the approx 6,613,900,000 other potential registrants in the world (who are 11,000% of the number of residents) got to it first.

(Yes, I know the numbers also include children and babies, but it is easier to estimate off pure populations).

Other countries with residency requirements (some I thought of and quickly checked and skimmed): .us, .ca, .fr and I'm sure there's more (IIRC .dk might have requirements, but I've spent enough time hunting around various sites). .de allows non-residents to register, but you have to have a real German administrative contact address for them to server documents to. Those were the only ones I checked and all have residency checks or limitations of some degree.

Anyone know where I can find this hypothetical domain for... research purposes?

here =D

Forgive me if you were just making a quip based on its "widespread" use, and already knew about it.

Whatever. Why aren't more people just ditching their precious .COM names. Think UPS.com or Amazon.com couldn't get away with switching? Sure they could...

For those in the .US take a look at NIC.US which can point you to all the various registrars. Heck, it's cheaper -- typically $15/yr.

The only thing Verisign will understand is people speaking with their dollars. And yes, I personally have switched my domains over to .US -- of course I'll handle the .COM traffic until they expire in a year or two. In the mean time everything going out says .US as of yesterday.

Sure, business cards and letter head still say .COM, but they surely won't on the next order. Maybe a year.

Plus lets look at it from a pure financial arena. Back in "the day" Network Solutions was basically the only place to grab a domain name, but that's not true anymore. Check This out for a little taste of why NetSol is screwed in the market. I remember switching from NetSol, to register.com to finally, Tucows OpenSRS which is dirt cheap. But NetSol is like the microsoft of the DNS world where people know it as being fairly big and its security sucks.

With the trtouble to get MY OWN DOMAIN out of their database, I hope they go bankrupt and never set up anytype of ecommerce site again. Does anyone have anything positive to say about netsol, I mean they really were and are a horrible company that overprices everything. I mean look at verisign now, the prices for a "virtual certificate". Insane.

You missed the boat, myname.us is already registered, and so is "your name".us most likly because they opened dot us registrations to the public April 24, 2002. Go to nic.us for a list of registrars.

The .us country-code domain is not organised by entity type except in some special cases way down into the heirarchy.

First, there's a state code which uses the standard two-letter abbreviations for the states, then there's a 'region code' which will either be a city, region or large town. Under that people are free to register whatever they like, with some special cases.

The special cases are 'state' for special state-running bodies (are they called 'state government'?) and then a 'k-12' domain under which schools are organised by their respective school district.

The .us domain, then, is a lot more organised and distributed than most other countries, which is probably a good thing given its size. The RFC which proposed the organisation of the .us domain (whose number escapes me now -- try looking on the .us registry site) explains that they did not create .gov.us and similar because it would cause confusion, and that the US Federal Government alone would use .gov while state governments use .state.tx.us (or similar). At this stage in the game, moving the .gov domain to .gov.us would just cause a lot of problems as invalidating that many URLs en-masse is never a good idea.

http://www.nic.us/

Too bad it was NeuStar that took over, not Verisign.

you have to realize that .us domains are a new thing and it's not going smoothly for many people

.us isn't new, it has been around as long as any of the country code domains, it is just new to the registrars. You used to be able to get them for free, although they had fit a specific format (ie name.city.county.state.us or something like that).

If you want to register a fourth level domain in an already delegated locality domain (e.g. yourdomain.new-york.ny.us), you need to contact the delegated manager. Keep in mind that this is a hit or miss--some of them are very good, while some, like hostmaster@prairie.net, are incommunicado, not answering any communication. I hope after things settle out, that those blowing off requests will have their delegations taken away, but for the moment, things are static.

But the .us TLD isn't "for use anywhere"-- unlike the generic TLDs such as .com and .org, it's only for US citizens, residents and businesses. So it does have some level of specificity.

Domains under .us must have a state and typically a city code. For example, microsoft.redmond.wa.us or aol.dulles.va.us. I imagine that's done to free up domains in .us, and to discourage domain name squatting. Too bad...I imagine a certain large toy store would love to have www.toysr.us or a sex site called culling.us (grin).

You can get the straight skinny on the .us ccTLD at http://www.nic.us.

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

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

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.

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 :)

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 -- 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).



- - - - -

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

In order to phase out generic TLDs, you'd have to give the .com owners a way to migrate to .us (where the majority of domain holders are). Unfortunately the .us domain is based on geographical hierarchy -- Slashdot would have to become slashdot.andover.ma.us -- and that system isn't as user-friendly as a .com.

Here's who to contact if you're interested in lobbying.

In order to phase out generic TLDs, you'd have to give the .com owners a way to migrate to .us (where the majority of domain holders are). Unfortunately the .us domain is based on geographical hierarchy -- Slashdot would have to become slashdot.andover.ma.us -- and that system isn't as user-friendly as a .com.

Here's who to contact if you're interested in lobbying.

Except that Versign (Network Solutions) already has control of .us, which quietly changed hands around November of last year. Supposedly, they are running it for a year, on contract from the Commerce Dept., but I don't believe that they will ever give it up. Rumour has it that they may start charging.

I remember when they sent out the letter to all the admins of the .us. It was over Thanksgiving weekend, and it said something like, "If you don't agree to this contract, notify in 7 days, and we will revoke your .us domain. Otherwise, we take no notice as agreement."

Funny thing is that the mailing list they created to send to all the domains was left open, and all the admins of the .us domains started chatting (Ok, fumming) with eachother. Seems that Verisign/NSI can't even set up a mailing list correctly. We expect them to be able to manage most of the worlds TLD?

So, if you are in the US, and they lock out .com, .org and .net, you can't turn to .us without dealing w/ the same jerks. I suppose you've got to go offshore... (Anyone heard anything about Sealand lately?) This was much more fun when it was the wild west, I tell you...

Gyp.

I have to admit, I'm glad someone's going after ICANN, even if it's too little, too late. $50,000 for ".museum"?? Apparently, ICANN isn't too familiar with existing museum nomenclenture. Taken from the .us doman page (http://www.nic.us/overview/special.html):

e. MUS - Museums
This branch is used for museums. For example:
<museum-name>.MUS.<stat e-code>.US.

If this wasn't a scheme to bilk people and honest (if not very clued-in) groups out of a bunch of cash, I don't know what would be. I say let the ACLU sue 'em until the cows come home.

What I can never figure out is why no one uses a .us domain. Aren't they free? Maybe no one knows where to register them!

You're not supposed to register "yourname.us", but only "yourname.city.state.us". And "cybertron.podunk-city.co.us" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

More info on .us domains (including how to register them) can be found straight from the horse's mouth.

The US Domain
Here you go. There are links to each individual spot from this page. The registries are controlled in a strong hierarchy for the .us - you usually end up at your local city.

At this page you can find most of the local contacts.
--

The US Domain
Here you go. There are links to each individual spot from this page. The registries are controlled in a strong hierarchy for the .us - you usually end up at your local city.

At this page you can find most of the local contacts.
--

http://www.nic.us and if you look real close you can see the tagline:

The US Domain Registry is administered by VeriSign, Inc.

You know...Network Solutions: "The Monopoly People(tm)"

Just to mention, it's .gov and .mil, top level domains in their own right, not .gov.us and .mil.us-- the second-level domains under .us are state abbreviations (.mn.us, for example).

M

I was actually looking forward to the new domains. I thought they would create some good ones that might be worth using. I find these new ones to be most illogical, however. Except for .biz and .pro, they are all over three letters! Judging from how unsuccessful .us has been due to its long extensions (see nic.us to see how long they are; domainname.city.state.us), you would think that they'd learn. What about .web? And how about .porn or .xxx, which would finally make it easy to create filters that didn't have large rates of misblocking pages while not blocking all pages that they are supposed to (see peacefire.org)? I could have done a better job than them and I'm just a teenager.

The whole point of this was to get rid of the congestion that has overtaken .com, .net, and .org. There is no way that creating extensions that only apply to a small percentage of people will work. We need to get rid of this appointed web authority.

They are exceedingly long. Have you ever been to nic.us? If you want a .us domain you have to choose domainname.city.state.us. For example, if I wanted to choose a domain with them I would be choosing mathjmendl.rochester.ny.us instead of mathjmendl.org. Who would want to make their surfers type in so many letters when there is a simpler way? They would also be harder to remember. Luckily, there are currently people reviewing this policy so that it might soon changing. Plus other countries don't have to register their name with the .country TLD as well. They just choose to more often, as they often have better policies than .us does.

But don't forget you guys still have your own country domain, just like the rest of the world - .us - lucky bastards =)

When was the last time you ever saw a .us website? nobody pays it any attention, well maybe you should start taking advantage of the luxury of having this additional upper level domain space. go register some .us websites and give icann the finger. http://www.nic.us/

Never mind all these arguments about whether someone can actually manage to have a world-wide domain. If we restrict our sphere of influence to within the US only, it's still easy to understand the popularity of .com: Unlike .us, .com is completely non-regional. The .us TLD is "locality-based": With a few official exceptions, a .us domain deliberately encodes the geographical location of its owner. (See http://www.nic.us/overview.html for details.) If I register a domain under .us, I'm tying the domain (and my email addresses, web site, etc.) to a physical geographical location.

This is silly. The Internet's geography is not required to be congruent with real-life geography; in fact, it often is not. The .uk TLD doesn't work this way; it's possible to get a geographically-neutral domain name within the .uk name space. Ditto for .au.

From a purely practical standpoint, if there's even a remote possibility that I might move--say, from northern NJ to Manhattan--why would I want a domain that encodes my location? If I'm living in Manhattan, I'm probably going to feel a little silly getting my email via mydomain.hoboken.nj.us. By contrast, if I get a .com domain, the domain name doesn't become instantly silly if I change my physical location, because the name itself doesn't reflect my physical location in the first place.

His proposed domain: www.ph34r.us.

Perhaps he should've read the US domain overview or very first bullet of the registration instructions then. You certainly don't have to be a business, or any sort of organization... I've got a domain under austin.tx.us, and I'm just some guy with a few computers.

His proposed domain: www.ph34r.us.

Perhaps he should've read the US domain overview or very first bullet of the registration instructions then. You certainly don't have to be a business, or any sort of organization... I've got a domain under austin.tx.us, and I'm just some guy with a few computers.

After seeing this article, I got rather curious about registering a .us domain (I had thought about it 3 years ago, and really should have done it then-seemed easier.)

Well, according to the handy-dandy guide at http://www.nic.us, the US domain registry can't take care of it for me, because the town subdomain is delegated. Unfortunately, the company it's delegated to is no longer doing business under the same name, and the contact address is for the postmaster. I'm too tired to mail them now, but in my past dealings with company in question all I've received is a letter on the proper place to forward spam.

Is it no wonder the locality in question gave up on ci.town-name.mn.us and went over to town-name.org?

So my question is-anyone manage to register a .us successfully? (Especially in Minnesota?)

Currently, there are no fees charged by the US Domain Registry for delegating a .us domain name.

Some administrators of delegated domains do not charge for registering a host in the US domain in their locality, and some do. There is no requirement that domain names be free, only that any charges be fair and applied equally to all customers.

In the past, managers provided the nameservers and registration services for localities (and other branches of the US domain) for free. Some people came forward to provide this public service, and it was very much appreciated.

Many locality names in the US domain are delegated to small companies. These companies need to charge a small fee to set up and maintain the database and run the nameservers to support this service.

I say we force everyone to get geographically-specific domain names...

Honestly, I would be perfectly happy with pillars.norfolk.va.us for a domain name. Just didn't think it was possible, given the front page of the US domain registry home page. But let's find out for sure... Okay, the norfolk.va.us domain is controlled by infi.net. I'm calling them now....

Apparently the receptionist has never heard of this kind of request before.

I got referred to Tony Rolls' voicemail and left a message.

I'll keep you posted. Maybe it IS possible to get a geographically specific subdomain, even if you're not a part of city government, but I've never seen it done before.

From nic.us: Domain names cannot be of the form .us or ..us. You can apply for a delegation of a locality (third-level) name or an fourth-level name, but you should not apply for the delegation for a specific host or function (such as "www"). The domain name for an organization, company, or individual should only be of the form ...us. Although the site states that an individual or business can register a name, it looks like a pain in the butt (unless you are a local government, school or museum) and too restrictive to allow for a business or individual to get a domain name.

--

--

Off topic yet again, but...

This is the US TLD It's very heirarchial, and messed up IMHO. But it's there.

Yes, I am karma whoring for -1 informative.

e.g: Jane Doe in Canoga Park, CA = jane-doe.canoga-park.ca.us.

In fact, the .us domain has second level state domain names, such as dc.us, with third level cityname domain, such as washington.dc.us - the authority over these domains is delegated to whatever organization local authorities designate to exert it. It seems that almost nobody knows about the .us domain, especially not US citizens ;-)

For a exhaustive listing of ccTLDs and links to their registrars see the IANA ccTLD database

For .us domain delegations see the official United States domain registry

Note how beautifully hierarchical the .us construction is. Most ccTLDs (such as .nl) have a yucky flat namespace, just like .com

P.S.: it's spelled 'mnemonic', as in Johnny.

HTH, HAND

--

Whether it is good or not, .US domains are still like this. But I don't think it was necessarily so great, because there is a potential for abuse. Its fairly easy to make sure only schools get k12.LOCALITY.STATE.US, but what about organizations who want to register a domain? Do they have to be non-profit? if yes, doesn't that waste a lot of potential domains for useful services (movies.LOCALITY.STATE.US, etc.). Who's going to do the research to follow through? What if the person in charge of the somebigcity.STATE.US domain is not representative of the people of Some Big City and refuses a gay organization's request for a domain? It's not like they were elected to register domains, they volunteered and did the work needed to set up a DNS server. There are extensive rules listed at nic.us but they still have a lot of holes and makes the whole .US TLD seem muddled, IMHO.

US is the country code here, we just truncate it for convenience since we in the US run the show. Here you go, read all about it. You may also wish to browse rfc1480 but I'm sure they will point this out to you at the ICANN forum .

while we are on the topic, does anyone know if appending .us onto a regular US site is supposed to work? I wouldn't imagine any dns servers bother with it. And it don't work from here...


:)Fudboy

Has the tld .us got entries for organisation type in it? I know the 2 letter state codes are all present & accounted for (apparently, they are fairly difficult to get hold of tho'....)

The .us domains are, unlike almost everything else, based on geography. They in the form of organization.city.state.us So, for example, Slashdot would be slashdot.holland.mi.us There is *no* .com.us, .org.us, or anything like that. The city and state are supposed to be based on the location of the organization (or person)'s headquarters, so you'd be stuck with things like "dupont.wilmington.de.us", even though they have facilites all over the country.

As you can see, there are some problems with the system. Add that to the length of the names, and there's not much reason to migrate from .com

The big benefit, though, is that they are free. Despite this, they still aren't used much, which I think says a lot about the whole system.

For more info, check out http://www.nic.us/.

So don't do it. You don't have to change your domain if you move. See http://www.nic.us/usdom-overview.html:

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.

• Domain Names cannot be of the form
  (Organization).US or (Organization).(state).US.
• The domain name for an organization, company, or individual should only be of the form
  (Organization).(Locality).(State).US

Also from the page:
The US Domain currently registers businesses, individuals, federal government agencies, state government agencies, K12 schools, community colleges, technical/vocational schools, private schools, libraries, museums, and city and county government agencies.

But I don't think businesses or individuals would be useful using it.

"Well, it's a problem with their policy then." Yes, but anyone is free to get a .com, .net, or .org name, so does it matter? Even foreigners can get it.