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.us Domains Coming in 2002

marnanel writes "Perhaps it had to happen eventually: the .us top-level domain has been transferred to a private company, NeuStar. One of the most interesting effects of this is that second-level domains, such as foo.us, will be available for the first time, instead of the existing hierarchical county.state.us system." But not until mid 2002.

7 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Finally by nyxxie · · Score: 5, Funny

    I really want "http://all.your.base.are.belong.to.us" as my HP :)))))

  2. BFD. by supabeast! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now I can watch companies sue everyone in sight over ownership of .us domains, too! Whee!

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

  3. .edu and .gov by jeriqo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What will happen to these TLDs: .EDU and .GOV ?
    Since they are only used by the US governement and US schools, i think they should be moved to .EDU.US and .GOV.US

    Just my thoughts..

    -J

    --
    Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
  4. finally by erikdalen · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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

    /Erik

    --
    Erik Dalén
  5. Open to Afghans? by Knunov · · Score: 4, Funny

    If so:

    please.stop.bombing.us

    (will it be Funny or Flamebait?)

    Knunov

    --
    Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
  6. (Sigh) by Ed+Avis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Dammit, why couldn't they take the opportunity to do it *right* for a change? .com.us domains should be given only to a real corporation with that name. .tm.us should be administered by the USPTO and subdomains given strictly on the basis of trademark ownership. Conversely, trademark considerations should not impinge on the other subdomains - as long as it is clear that this is the case, so nobody gets misled.

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

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

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

    --
    -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
  7. Should've been from the start! by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

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

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

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

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

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