Originally posted by mike
uu, Who is the ISO? I'm sorry, I but do not think I know. I know who ICANN is ( UCANT would be a better acronym for that lot of one world government types).
ISO is the International Organization for Standardization (http://www.iso.ch/), it is an international onganization made up of representatives from the standards bodies of countries around the world. The purpose of ISO is to develop standards and practices to allow countries to trade and communicate with each other (like when a company says they are ISO 9000 certified).
ISO 3166 is a document identifying 2-letter country codes for all countries in the world: http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html
Because these documents are approved by all members of the ISO, they are accepted as standard. That is why the .us domain was originally developed almost 20 years ago. When ccTLD were first introduced in the 80s it made sense for the IETF to adopt the existing ISO standards, rather than create new standards.
Further uu, I think the DOC, should claim the .USA, on behalf of Americans like you and me, so it can be free! Free from UCANT tyranny!
And UU, how could a three letter ccTLD be a technical difficulty? Sorry to do this to you but, Ever hear of .com or .net? So what if they are gtld's. It is possible to restrict .com registrations to Americans only if the gov wanted too.
The Department of Commerce had the chance to run the gTLD, and were unable to, which is why they farmed it out to Network Solutions. I am also not sure I feel comfortable with any government organization running a gTLD or a ccTLD. Despite my misgivings, if the government were to run a .usa domain, there is no guarantee that ICANN would support it. Therefore .usa would not be part of the root name servers, and would be about as effective as a .sex domain.
A 3-letter ccTLD would not be a difficulty, in and of itself, however, if the standard is that ccTLDs should be 2-letter, why should the US be any different? There is nothing wrong with a .us extension, and I don't see any reason that it should not be used.
I'm not concerned about restricting access to domain registrations, I am more concerned with following accepted practices, and us is the internationally accepted name convention for the United States.