Re: I'm from the government, and I'm here to control your email....

[James Glave <james@wired.com>]

See Also:


http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/13129.html

Postal Service Eyes .us Domain

12:30 pm PDT 19 Jun 98 The post office is circulating a draft laying out
its case for taking over the United States' official top-level Internet
domain as a means of accelerating ecommerce.

The 8 May proposal outlines four goals the postal service would pursue if
granted authority over the domain by Jon Postel, who heads up the numbers
authority and administers the .us domain. The service said it is already
working with Postel's group to map .us domain space against its postal
address database. 

Postal service spokeswoman Sue Brennan said the proposal was developed at
the urging of the White House. 

"The administration requested that we investigate the policy of a .us
domain, just to investigate what would be involved," Brennan said. "The
majority of the other countries have their own country domain ... managed
by the government, so the Commerce Department was investigating the
possibilities [of doing the same in the United States]." 

According to the proposal submitted to the institute, the postal service
would "engage the private sector in the development of credentialed,
commerce-enabling space under .us [and] promote classified business
addressing under .us at local, state, and national levels as an open
reference for public and private delivery systems and competing directory
services." 

The proposal also said the postal service would "manage an open policy
process to develop policies for expanding the .us domain... [and] work
toward the establishment of a governance structure that will represent the
diversity of stakeholder interests -- private, nonprofit, and public -- in
a fully developed .us domain space 

	[snipped...]


James Glave, News Editor, Wired News, http://www.wired.com  (415) 276-8430