Subject: .GOV ??

From: peter dawson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 Jul 1998 18:29:24 +0400

Hi  Jay,Jeff,Jim,Kent..and all the folks here,

After reading all the mail from the various groups about .web,
.museum , and a lot of
other stuff. Could someone tell me if the .GOV is still the
prerogative of  the USG or not ??
if so, why ??

/pete

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From: "Roeland M.J. Meyer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 08 Jul 1998 19:46:27 -0700

>prerogative of  the USG or not ??

Hysterical note? <grin>

Way back when, when DARPA was funding everything, it was thought to be a
"Good Thing" to separate USG sites from everyone else. In those daze,
ARPAnet wasn't only US-centric, it was effectively US-only, as was it's
*only* funding source (I can't stress this enough <grin>). "International"
wasn't even on the far horizon. It is therefore excusable that the only GOV
invisioned at the time was the USG. On reflection, it could have been done
better, but hind-sight is always 20/20.<grin> Consider it a legacy situation.

If it were done today, I suspect that we'd probably have *.US.GOV or
*.GOV.US, although I prefer the former and do away with ccTLDs altogether
with <cc>.GOV/MIL/etc. It would certainly do away with a lot of the
.TO/TM/etc bull-shit.

Realistically, as it is, the USG isn't about to rename all their hosts.
Especially, since they can't even get their Y2K shit together. Try again,
around 2003, after they get all their systems back up from the millennium
bug eating their lunch. Consider it a legacy exemption.

___________________________________________________ 
Roeland M.J. Meyer, ISOC (InterNIC RM993) 
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