Why is .gov only for US government agencies?

Sun Oct 19 12:12:59 UTC 2014

> Wondering if some of the long-time list members
> can shed some light on the question--why is the
> .gov top level domain only for use by US
> government agencies?  Where do other world
> powers put their government agency domains?
> 
> With the exception of the cctlds, shouldn't the
> top-level gtlds be generically open to anyone
> regardless of borders?
> 
> Would love to get any info about the history
> of the decision to make it US-only.

In part due to RFC1480.  At one point, everything here in the US was 
set to transition away from the US- and TLD-centric models.  It is
now only a fuzzy memory, but at one point commercial entities could
not just register a random .NET or .ORG domain name ...  which would
have resulted in a nicer-looking Internet domain system today.

But to make a long story short, and my memory's perhaps a bit rusty
now, but my recollection is that shorter URL's looked nicer and there
was significant money to be had running the registry, so there was 
some heavy lobbying against retiring .GOV in favor of .FED.US (and 
other .US locality domains).

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.