Good summary.
There's a poorly reported article on the .US ccTLD hearing yesterday at NTIA
at http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/18371.html. For one thing,
the Postal Service rep is misidentified (the name he used was on the agenda,
You might also want to check out Jeri's piece in the NYT
at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/03/cyber/articles/10domain.html
She was a little more even handed.
but they switched). The U.S. Postal Service, while it's conceivable that
they do want to run the whole thing, was pretty good about not saying that
it was the best solution; I'd have to give them credit for being
hands-offish about it.
Indeed, although sometimes fuzzy, they're mainly focussed on
being allowed to provide on a non-exclusive basis, services at
the local level using a compelling platform already paid for
by consumers - namely local ubiquitous post offices.
Network Solutions, predictably, thought that .US was just fine as it was, a
non-commercial space -- let .com handle the commercial space for the United
States.
You may have misread a remark by NSI Litigation Counsel Phil
Sbarro on this. He was simply saying that Jon Postel's
use of a geographic structure for .US had value, and that
this and similar structures should be continued and fostered.
This doesn't imply any exclusivity as to other structures
or affinity groups that could meet a market demand.
--tony
