On Oct 19, 2014, at 9:35 AM, Rubens Kuhl <rubensk@gmail.com> wrote:
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?
RFC 1591.
Where do other world powers put their government agency domains?
Under their ccTLDs.
Note that .mil is also restricted to US DoD,
Yes. See RFC 1591.
and that although .com is not restricted to US citizens and companies, it is under contract with US DoC. The only legacy gTLDs that are not in US control of some sort are .net and .org.
No. NET is under essentially the same contractual agreement as .COM (specifically, Cooperative Agreement NCR-9218742). By the terms of Amendment 24 of that CA, ORG was removed from the CA when that registry moved to PIR (in 2002 I believe). Regards, -drc