Western Samoa - Was: seven years mix

[B]

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, Pope Jeremy wrote:

> If this isn't a silly joke, I didn't know that a state
> could profit from the use of its top level domain. How
> does that work? Does the U.K. get cash-money every
> time someone registers www.foo.uk.com with verisign?

The *short*, *simplified* version: every country gets to decide how they
want to manage the names in their top-level domain.  (Which would be .ca
for Canada or .uk for the UK.  The USA is special and gets lots of stuff
like .com and .net and .org in addition to .us.  www.foo.uk.com would
actually be a USA address because of the ending .com; somebody out there
having registered uk.com and re-selling everything "under" it.)

In the USA, the government farmed out management to private industry.
(There are complaints that they are not doing an optimal job; not to
digress...)  Small countries (like, say, Samoa, or the lucky little island
which got .tv) usually keep it government-run.  They rent out the names
for what they can get from them.


brian j. parker
gamer, geek, & black-clad cliche

"Brian...resigned a few months ago to spend more time with his video
games."  -- Kelly Ashkettle