What is this possibly meant to imply? Nonprofits run international ad campaigns, governments run international ad campaigns, the military runs international ad campaigns, most organizations could probably find a reason if they have international domain. What is your insinuation specifically?
The fact that you view an international space as belonging to the US is precisely what's weird and objectionable. Most countries don't do that sort of thing and most intranational companies are happy to use a domain from their own country, except for the US.
(Most of your list are multinational corporations which is a perfectly reasonable use for .com).
On the contrary, the accusation is warrranted. Domain names are printed on billboards, in newspapers, shown in TV ads and a myriad other examples outside the programming domain. I have not heard anyone from a non-English speaking country argue your viewpoint.
Would you be so kind as to say what you mean by "foreign" in this context? I'm asking because I was sure that .com, .org, and .edu are international domains...
I find it grating too. I thought this was an interesting point:
"Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) don’t target specific countries. If your site has a generic top-level domain, such as .com, .org, or any of the domains listed below"
I actually consider .com etc to be largely US based, particular as it appears they can be seized by the US government and are under US jurisdiction.
The .COM domain has always been international in nature, not a country domain restricted to the US. See the extract of RFC 1591 below. Or have I missed something?
It is fairly clear that .US is for US companies, .COM is international commercial, and the .GOV and .MIL domains are restricted to the US.
"Each of the generic TLDs was created for a general category of organizations. The country code domains (for example, FR, NL, KR, US) are each organized by an administrator for that country. ... These administrators are performing a public service on behalf of the Internet community. Descriptions of the generic domains and the US country domain follow.
Of these generic domains, five are international in nature, and two are restricted to use by entities in the United States.
World Wide Generic Domains:
COM - This domain is intended for commercial entities, that is companies. ...
EDU - This domain was originally intended for all educational institutions. ...
NET - This domain is intended to hold only the computers of network providers, that is the NIC and NOC computers, the administrative computers, and the network node computers. ...
ORG - This domain is intended as the miscellaneous TLD for organizations that didn't fit anywhere else. ...
INT - This domain is for organizations established by international treaties, or international databases.
United States Only Generic Domains:
GOV - This domain was originally intended for any kind of government office or agency. More recently a decision was taken to register only agencies of the US Federal government in this domain. State and local agencies are registered in the country domains (see US Domain, below).
MIL - This domain is used by the US military.
Example country code Domain:
US - As an example of a country domain, the US domain provides for the registration of all kinds of entities in the United States on the basis of political geography, ..."
I was ambiguous on purpose, I was hoping to see how people would define it.
In my case, there is a country whose country code top level domain is very appealing for my company. But it's an oppressive and totalitarian regime - it's not a country I want to be associated with, although 99.99% of people would never even know what country the domain name belongs to.
This is really just a vague complaint more than anything.
It would be interesting if this resulted in .com/.org/.net becoming de jure international (they are de facto international domain names now), and removing them from US control.
IIUC, there are many such TLDs, but you should really only use these if you yourself are a citizen, and your organization is based in the country in question.
.com, .org and nearly all original TLDs are used internationally, though there are also local derivatives like co.uk. Even .edu used to be available internationally. I suppose most people have realized by now that .gov is strictly US, but it's not like that was obvious from the naming scheme alone.
Yes. Growing up in a non-US country, almost every website I interacted with or was advertised was the TLD of my home country. It was incredibly rare to see global TLDs. It usually implied it was a multi-national company, and even those often registered an additional domain locally because people are more familiar with it. I would guess this is the same for most countries except the US, which makes that statement untrue.
The abstraction layer the internet is implementing on top of geography is proving increasingly leaky these days.
I think the irony in this incident is that it might actually strengthen the original purpose of ccTLDs, as namespaces for domains within a particular country. Because it shows that, no matter what your domain vendor or even the country's registrar tells you the domain is ultimately controlled by the country's government and is therefore subject to the whims and fate of that country.
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