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NeuStar to Manage .US Registry
flatt writes: "The US Government picked NeuStar, the managers of the upcoming .biz registry, to manage the .us registry today. NeuStar has made a press release and there's an AP article over at Excite about it. Finally a country code that I'll register in." This has been brewing for a long time, and has been criticized as a giveaway.
The main reasons I've really liked the .us domain is 1) it's free; and 2) assignment of domain names is completely local and decentralized. The guy in charge of administering my records lives here in the same town as I, and has been real quick about changin ip associations when I've needed to do so (like 2-hour turnaround). I've been using my domain (bullcreek.austin.tx.us -- i'm not an anonymous coward, I just don't like registering) for many years now. Not sure I like the idea of paying 5 bucks for what has been free, and turning over admin to some faceless corporation that's *very* likely to be less responsive than what I've been used to.
Country code suffixes such as ".fr" for France have been sources of national pride worldwide, but in the United States it is the forgotten stepchild compared with ".com."
It's always annoyed me how the world seems to use country codes for it's TLD's, and then the US has some other TLDs that is just uses.
For example, when shopping online I want to know if a company will ship to the UK. If it is a .co.uk company I can be sure it will. If it is a .com, it might or might not.
Essentially it seems logical for organisations to just register the TLDs for the countries in which they operate/are registered, and for the .com TLD to be scrapped (Although this would never happen).
Oh, I'd scrap .edu too. .ac.us would be a fine replacement.
-- Mike
Since most countries are charging for domains in their TLD the domain operator usually sees it as a profit center, and with the exception of the few remaining communist countries - and maybe some of them, too - I suspect you can get a registration in just about any country's tld whether or not you live there.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
I think the unfairness cuts the other way. A UK business could at least buy a .co.uk address, and be sure they weren't competing with the whole world for it. American businesses, on the other hand, have had to compete with everyone on the planet to secure a .com.
Having said that, I don't imagine that too many people have cried themselves to sleep over these issues.
Exactly the case here. Verisign's rules specified that one could not use a community domain unless they were doing business in the community and were authorized.
.us since it wasn't able to make money off of it.
We met both conditions and yet the squatter (that wasn't even within 300 miles of here and wanted extortion rates) who was never authorized by the community was both registered and extended grandfather rights in violation of Verisign policy by Verisign. We became quickly aware that Verisign simply wanted to destroy
What about complaints to Verisign? Try filing one... they take 6 weeks (no exaggeration) to respond, always with a form letter either with useless advice that doesn't apply, or statements of the obvious like "in order to register in this subdomain, please contact the subdomain administrator" - yea, call the squatters to complain about them squatting.
I'm confident there are thousands of others like us that were willing to handle subdomain registration at no expense (same as running primary & secondary dns for folks), but because Verisign hozed it up, we'll have another landrush feeding a government-granted monopoly.
It's little different than granting the railroads land to sell in Wyoming, Nebraska, Utah, etc., except after they were inhabited...
*scoove*
p.s. If you're not happy with the situation, be sure to add Verisign to your "banned vendor" list and make the Internet a better place.
I thought that there was no .us for the same reason that British postage stamps don't mention the UK anywhere... When you're the first to do something, you don't have to identify yourself.
You can't be serious! That's like saying if the company's name is Jones, they have to buy every address with the word "jones" in it. What about people who have the last name "Jones" or have some other legitimate reason for wanting a site named "Jones" or "Acme"??? (Or even ihateacme.com--what, are people who have a reason to hate a company not allowed to speak?)
The only way companies need to protect their names on the internet is if someone is attempting to misrepresent themselves as being the company or agents of the company. That is the reason tradmarks were created. If a company's site is acme.com, and someone else owns acme.us or acme.org, the Acme company still doesn't have a real reason to be threated by those websites unless they claim to be part of the Acme company!