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Educational Consortium Will Control .edu Domains

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the big-crocodile-tears dept.

PxT writes: "According to this Reuters story, the U.S. government is going to hand over control of .edu to an association of 1800 college IT departments. Anything is better than Verisign ..." I wonder how long VeriSign cried over this move, considering that it probably wasn't very lucrative to administer .edu names. (It would be very nice to see .edu domains that aren't only 4-year colleges, too, so I hope that happens.)

12 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why America only? by Sabalon · · Score: 3

    Uh.... do a whois on oxford.edu, glasgow.edu, kingston.edu, mcgill.edu

    Sorry - that's about my limit on non-us college knowledge - not even enough for a full Jeapordy category.

  2. Not true, was never true by maggard · · Score: 3

    Reuters:

    Unlike unrestricted domains such as .com, .org and .net, use of the .edu domain name is reserved for the approximately 2,000 four-year colleges and universities in the United States.

    There have been many institutions over the years with .edu domains that are not accredited 4-year academic institutions. Museums, research facilities, schools without 4-year programs, there are numerous examples of all of these (thank you, we don't need every /.'er noting the dozen closest to them.)

    Either Reuters has simply gotten their 'facts' wrong (gee - a misreported tech story? Never!) or the enforcement of the 4-year policy has been innefectual.

    Frankly I'm inclined to believe that either this supposed policy is a relatively recent one or there's a lot of details that have been omitted. In any case the Reuters story is clearly innacurate.

    --
    I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
    1. Re:Not true, was never true by mperrin · · Score: 3
      There's a simple explanation for this: The policy is more recent than the .edu domain. Back when the domain name system was first getting set up, there were so few high schools on the internet that it was entirely reasonable to give all four or five of them .edu domains. As time went on and the number started to go up, someone made the decision to restrict new .edu's to 4 year colleges only. Existing high schools etc with .edu's were grandfathered in, but no new ones were granted. As far as I know this policy was enforced rigorously.

      I'm speaking from personal experience here. We wired up my high school to the net in '95, when it was still pretty much bleeding edge for a high school to have a T1 and a server room of its very own. We wanted severn.edu but were refused due to not being a 4 year college, and thus went with severnschool.com. Not nearly as nice a domain, and believe me there's no way we would have gone with it if we had had any choice!

  3. Re:Non 4 year college .edu domain by nosilA · · Score: 3

    Until around 95-96 ish, the rule about 4-year accredited institutions was not in place. They were still somewhat selective, but high schools, school-related research centers, trade schools, etc could get .edu domains. They changed that, I assume, due to potential namespace collisions between the 3000 Thomas Jefferson schools in the country. Any new registration required a school to be a 4-year accredited institution. This could change, but I'd be surprised to see high schools and grade schools getting in there.

    -Alison

  4. Re:Why America only? by Wayfarer · · Score: 3

    Why is there a second America-only tld? Why isn't this .ac.us (in the uk we use .ac.uk for educational institutions). I always thought the main tlds were supposed to be international, with only the country codes being restricted by country... Evidently not, though...

    Well, the internationalization of TLDs such as COM has been only a relatively recent development. In fact, several of the top-level TLDs are reserved for the United States, in particular, GOV, MIL, and (as you pointed out) EDU. The others (COM especially) have traditionally been dominated by US organizations.

    Furthermore, the administration of the US domain is a bureaucratic mess, despite the (in my mind) wonderful structural scheme that's present in it. Also, it doesn't quite have the accessibility of the top-level TLDs. (Was that .ny.us or .nv.us?)

    One could go on and on about whether or not the US has the right to claim such exclusive access, but the history remains the same. ^_^


    -W-

    "Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"

    --

    -W-

    Is it all journey, or is there landfall?
    --Ellison & van Vogt, 'The Human Operators'

  5. ICANNWatch.org for breaking ICANN/DNS news by Froomkin · · Score: 3
    We ran this one, plus some commentary, at http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=102 about 24 hours ago. If you are interested in ICANN and the DNS, you may want to know that the site is now updated daily, sometimes more often, and has a slashdot-like interface (PHP nuke). We do have a very slightly more restrictive posting policy than slashdot, but it is explained in our FAQ.

    Since then, we've run stories on

    --

    I have a blog.

  6. Why America only? by SmileyBen · · Score: 3

    Why is there a second America-only tld? Why isn't this .ac.us (in the uk we use .ac.uk for educational institutions). I always thought the main tlds were supposed to be international, with only the country codes being restricted by country... Evidently not, though...

  7. Could be bad. by dimator · · Score: 3

    (It would be very nice to see .edu domains that aren't only 4-year colleges, too, so I hope that happens.)

    I'd like to see it given to only accredited universities, actually. .edu has come to signify something, just like .com has. If you start giving it to every other "online university" or other sillyness, then you diminish the .edu title, and soon you'll have things like www.hard-knox.edu.

    I could be crazy though....
    --

    --
    python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
  8. dude! I hope this consortium has a sense of humor by StandardDeviant · · Score: 3

    I would so love to have hardknocks.edu! I know just about a bazillion people that would be qualified to have an alumni.hardknocks.edu email address (myself included, if having your kidneys fail when you're 20 counts as a hard knock ;-) ).


    --
    News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org
    --

    News for Geeks in Austin, TX
  9. Oldschool.edu by gleam · · Score: 4

    ...is my personal favorite.

    Time to break internic's rules:

    Registrant:
    The Old School (OLDSCHOOL7-DOM)
    1111 Karlstad Drive
    Sunnyvale, CA 94089
    US

    Domain Name: OLDSCHOOL.EDU

    Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Billing Contact:
    Bell, Wade (WB216) wbell@BEST.COM
    8oz. Publishing
    2432 Karen Dr #1
    Santa Clara, CA 95050
    408 249 1557

    Record last updated on 08-Mar-2001.
    Record created on 12-Oct-1998.
    Database last updated on 12-Apr-2001 06:35:00 EDT.

    Domain servers in listed order:

    NAME.ROC.GBLX.NET 209.130.187.10
    NAME.PHX.GBLX.NET 206.165.6.10
    NAME.IAD.GBLX.NET 204.152.166.155

    -----

    -gleam

    --
    this .sig is not a .sig.
  10. Dr Evil may apply... by po_boy · · Score: 4

    for evilmedical.edu. After all, he didn't spend 8 years in Evil Medical School to be called "Mr. Evil".

  11. I just want one thing. by GoNINzo · · Score: 5
    ninja.edu.

    I've wanted since the begining of all this, and every time i've applied (at multiple places) when asked by the person 'is this a 4 year school', i patiently reply 'One cannot become a ninja with only 4 years. ha! ha! ha!' and then they hang up on me, I think cause of the mocking tone.

    --
    Gonzo Granzeau

    --
    Gonzo Granzeau
    "Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty