At 02:07 -0300 4/2/03, Adrian Mugnolo wrote:
Um, no.[snip] Then, top level domains supposedly point to U.S. locations but not always.
The domain names in *.us are the ones which are "supposedly" in the United States. (Though very few American companies register themselves in *.us, because very few Americans in general seem to appreciate the fact that most of the world is not America.)
The Top-Level Domains (TLDs) are global (apart from some exceptions) and are described in the official documentation as "generic" and "created for use by the Internet public".
http://www.iana.net/domain-names.htm
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1591.txt
As the relevant RFC describes, the TLDs are meant to be "generic", but of course for historical reasons some have been restricted to the US. For example, *.gov is the US government (not some "world government" with its black helicopters etc), and *.mil is for the US military. But anyone on the planet can register a *.com or *.org or *.net and the rest of the new ones.
Given the fact that the US comprises only 4% or so of the world's population, and given the enormous growth of the Internet outside of the US while US figures have reached a plateau, I suspect that the majority of generic TLD domain names are now not American. Certainly here in Australia many companies will register a *.com domain in preference to *.com.au, if only because it's about half the price and there's no annoying compliance rules.
The history of all this is more complicated, of course, and makes for interesting reading. But the short version is that the TLDs cannot be assumed to be American (except in those special cases), as the registration is open to everyone.
As a further side issue, of course the nature of domain name registration has changed a lot since RFC 1591 was written in 1994. And one writer has put some further thoughts into a more recent RFC, number 3071.
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3071.txt
Ah, I hope I haven't bored everyone now! :)
Kind regards,
Stil
--
Stilgherrian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Internet, IT and Media Consulting, Sydney, Australia. ABN 25 231 641 421
mobile 0407 623 600 (international +61 407 623 600)
fax 02 9516 5630 (international +61 2 9516 5630)
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