

Edu domain meant for the world,restricted to US - Naushad
http://naushad.me/edu-domain-meant-for-the-world-restricted-to-us/
.edu is meant for Educational institutions, however, this is the domain limited to registration for US institutes Or Institutes who are recognized by US rating authorities.
======
klodolph
Generic TLDs are great for institutions with true international presence.
Microsoft may be based in the US, but they have tons of employees and
customers nearly everywhere so it makes sense to have a generic TLD. Same goes
for non-profits like UNICEF, WWF, etc.

What about accredited four-year post-secondary institutions? Sure, plenty of
universities have an overseas campus or two, but these institutions really
belong under country code TLDs. Cambridge is in the UK, Harvard is in the US,
Todai is in Japan.

So, what's the purpose of .edu? It's a legacy domain. US colleges and
universities were a significant chunk of the internet in its early days; for
years it was mostly college students and professors who had internet access.
Since URLs shouldn't change, we're not going to ditch it, and for uniformity,
we'll keep giving out .edu addresses according to the same old policies.

(Yes, a few grandfathered .edu domains don't fit the criteria. There are
random institutions like museums and high schools in there.)

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sbinetd
In the United Kingdom, we have a whole slab of second-level domains for
specific purposes. .ac.uk for educational establishments beyond school,
.sch.uk for schools, and .bl.uk for the national library. On top of that we
even have ones like .police.uk, .parliament.uk, and soon .judiciary.uk. I
believe Japan has a system like this too. I can't seeing it getting much use
in either. Then again, not every country has this, so it probably should be
released.

~~~
robin_reala
It’s always interesting to browser Mozilla’s public suffix list to see all the
weird and wonderful second level domains around the world:
<http://publicsuffix.org/list/>

~~~
josephlord
It doesn't actually seem to include .co.uk, .ac.uk, .me.uk but just the *.uk
and the particular govenmental domains (except .gov.uk).

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sjtrny
The de-facto standard has become "if it doesn't have a country code TLD" it is
in the US" (e.g. .net, .com etc). I think the majority of users understand
this, but it's not the way it should be. This is typical American insularity.

.edu should be a second level domain under country code TLDs. Here in
Australia we use .edu.au. (e.g.: csu.edu.au, sydney.edu.au, unsw.edu.au etc).
I don't think the TLD of .edu should be allowed unless you are an
international education institution that is not tied physically to a single
geographic location (e.g. Semester at Sea). Education institutions like to use
short acronyms as their domain name and we would quickly experience a shortage
of domain names if they all used the .edu TLD.

~~~
tedunangst
Nobody made your country sign up for the American internet. You could have
built your own...

~~~
micheljansen
Not sure if trolling, but I assume you are aware that the Internet is the
result of the work on lots of different projects in different countries (Tim
Berners Lee worked at CERN in Switzerland, for example). There is no such
thing as an "American Internet". There is however a North Korean internet
called Kwangmyong, so people are building their own :P

~~~
tbirdz
Tim Berners Lee worked on the World Wide Web, not the internet. The internet
was well in place beofre that: usenet, emails, resulting from the work of
universities, darpa, etc.

~~~
micheljansen
Point taken, you are right that the internet predates the World Wide Web, but
as you say that resulted from the work of universities, darpa __etc __. The
"etc" in this case is not to be neglected. While DARPA was working on ARPANET,
others were working on other precursors of the modern day Internet such as
X.25, CYCLADES etc. that greatly contributed to the development of critical
components such as TCP/IP. The Internet certainly owes a _lot_ to American
research and military funding, but there is no such thing as an "American
Internet".

Also, Usenet, email etc. are just as little "the Internet" as the world wide
web is. They are all services that run on top of the Internet (the global
system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet
protocol suite).

~~~
Turing_Machine
X.25: completely separate protocol, nothing to do with TCP/IP or ARPANET.
CYCLADES: completely separate protocol. Usenet, email: both predated the
Internet and have nothing to do with it. Usenet ran over UUCP in its first
incarnation, as did net mail.

~~~
micheljansen
Yes, X.25 is a completely separate protocol and so is CYCLADES, but they were
both early packet switched networks that were influential in the development
in the modern day Internet _just like ARPANET_. The Internet is not ARPANET,
but of all the other "internets", it owes the most to ARPANET (built in the
US, based off British design). Either way, there is no such thing as an
"American Internet". There is just "the Internet".

~~~
Turing_Machine
X.25 had nothing whatsoever to do with the ARPANET. It was a wildly different
protocol in EVERY respect, and had NO influence on the Internet. At all.

CYCLADES maybe had a bit of influence. X.25, nope.

Packet switching itself was, of course, also invented in the United States.

The ARPANET was not "based on British design", either.

I realize that it bothers some people that the United States invented the
Internet, but that's how it was. Sorry, and you're welcome.

~~~
micheljansen
No, X.25 had nothing to do with the ARPANET. X.25 __did __have something to do
with the Internet and so did CYCLADES (both of which, by the way, came after
ARPANET and was inspired by it, then inspired changes in ARPANET again). They
are both packet switched networks that contributed to the Internet we have
today (though arguably not as much as ARPANET).

Packet switching was, by the way, not invented in the United States, but in
Britain [1], but ARPANET was the first to actually implement it, so yes, part
of ARPANET was based directly off British design.

Like I said, most of the Internet we have now would never have existed (or
looked quite differently) without the work of American universities or DARPA.
This is not even what this is about.

This thread is about the global .edu TLD being restricted to US accredited
universities, whereas it was originally intended to be open to the world. The
comment I replied to was "Nobody made your country sign up for the American
internet. You could have built your own...". The internet is _not_ property of
the USA, and it shouldn't be.

The USA clearly had a key role in the development role, which is cool, but
don't pat your own back like that. Stay classy.

[1] <http://www.internethalloffame.org/inductees/donald-davies>

------
junto
I often think that it would have been smarter to have dropped generic TLDs
early on. As a result of various factors, it has now created an artificially
constricted supply of virtual real estate that has an associated price demand
pressure that is unlikely to ever ease.

My personal preference would be to see these disappear, to be replaced with
more geographical focused TLDs. The .us ccTLD would have been the ideal
replacement for US companies and educational establishments. .com.us and
.edu.us as examples. Elsewhere in the world this is common and accepted.

For those in the US, or those who have a vested interest in the .com and .edu
TLD, I imagine they would view such a suggestion with abject horror.

~~~
Gormo
How is geography relevant on the internet? National TLDs have the exact same
problem as organization-type TLDs - i.e. artificial scarcity - but the
information that they convey is often _less_ relevant than the prevailing
system.

Why not relatively open expansion of TLDs? Why does there need to be a
controversy every time someone proposes a new TLD?

~~~
freehunter
Like pbhjpbhj mentioned, when I'm looking at a product being sold on a .co.uk
domain, I know I likely won't be able to buy it. If I'm on amazon.co.uk, I
know they won't sell to me. If I'm on amazon.co.de, I know the site is in
German, prices are in Euro, their books will be auf Deutsche, and when I click
buy, they'll likely redirect me to the .com domain where I can't buy the
product in German language. When I'm looking at a service being sold on a .jp
domain, I know I likely won't be able to access that service. taxis-for-
hire.co.jp probably won't pick me up from the airport in Chicago.

Non-novelty country code TLDs are a good way to indicate you are doing
business exclusively in that country. .com is a good catch-all, the problem
with .com is that it's difficult to tell if it's a US-specific product/service
or a general purpose domain.

~~~
tbirdz
If I'm on amazon.co.uk, I know they won't sell to me.

I'm in the USA and I have bought things from the other amazons before, from
amazon japan and amazon uk.

~~~
freehunter
Interesting. I was trying to buy a book in German from Amazon DE, and with my
US account they would not let me buy it. Maybe I need a German account as
well.

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cschramm
Many of the universities around here (Munich) got an edu domain (tum.edu (e.
g. www.cs.tum.edu), hm.edu).

Really US-restricted TLDs, as far as I know, are mil, gov and pro.

~~~
chinmoy
.pro is not US restricted.

------
whathappenedto
So according to the article, it's not restricted to the US, it's just that the
US decides who gets it and who doesn't. The article says the procedure is
tedious, but I imagine it's strict so corrupt countries don't just start
passing them out to anyway who can pay. People generally trust .edu domains,
and they want to keep that reputation. For example, some places use .edu email
addresses to identify and grant benefits to students.

~~~
ktizo
_"So according to the article, it's not restricted to the US, it's just that
the US decides who gets it and who doesn't."_

Well, a private company overseen by the US Chamber of Commerce gets to decide
and is only taking guidance of eligibility from US agencies for international
accreditation of educational facilities. What could possibly go wrong?

Now I'm not saying that this is completely destined to end up in abject
comedic failure, but it is hardly ideal and I am sure that there are several
international academic organisations that would be better stewards for this.

~~~
saryant
I might be wrong, but isn't ICANN controlled by the Department of Commerce,
not the Chamber of Commerce?

They're two very different organizations. One is a government agency, one is a
lobbying group.

~~~
ktizo
Oops, my bad. I misread.

However, going through the website for .edu domains, it does seem pretty
restrictive for anyone outside the US.

 _"For postsecondary institutions located outside the U.S.: As specified by
the Department of Commerce, only postsecondary "U.S. institutions" that are
institutionally accredited by one of the agencies on the U.S. Department of
Education’s list of Nationally Recognized Accrediting Agencies may apply for
new names in the .edu domain. We thus require applicants to be located within
the United States (including U.S. territories and possessions); or to be
licensed, chartered, or incorporated within the United States (including U.S.
territories and possessions); or to be otherwise officially recognized by a
U.S. state or federal government agency (including U.S. territories and
possessions)."_

<http://net.educause.edu/edudomain/eligibility.asp>

~~~
pc86
> _...or to be otherwise officially recognized by a U.S. state or federal
> government agency_

Why is it a bad idea to require recognition before handing out an .edu domain?
As stated earlier people implicitly trust those domains and emails coming from
them, and it would be downright dangerous to let untrustworthy nations hand
them out to anyone.

~~~
ktizo
It isn't a bad idea to require recognition, but it is a bad idea to cede
control of the process of recognition of academic institutions for .edu
domains to the government administration of a single nation as there is far
too much potential for a conflict of interest.

Also, although there are many places a hell of a lot worse, the US is not
generally thought to be the worlds most trustworthy nation, if the argument is
about the potential for political corruption or interference.

I just think it makes a lot more sense for .edu to be managed by one of the
established international academic NGOs.

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quinndupont
Where is this quote from: “The .edu domain was originally intended for
educational institutions anywhere in the world, when it was launched in 1985”?
This seems historically dubious. While I appreciate the argument that all
educational institutions should have access to the .edu TLD, like .com the
original intention was likely for US. The US dominated the early history of
the Internet (and still does).

~~~
ktizo
_"the original intention was that any educational institution anywhere in the
world could be registered under the EDU domain"_

from RFC1480 - <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1480#page-3>

_"The US dominated the early history of the Internet (and still does)."_

Only until North Korea finishes their secret time-machine (Codename: Ding-
Dong).

------
jrockway
I don't think the actual rules are as strict as the article states. The
article says that only post-secondary institutions can get .edu addresses, but
that's simply not true: the high school I went to has a .edu address, for
example.

~~~
ktizo
They probably got it before 2001.

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darkhorn
<http://www.metu.edu> is a Turkish university, both in Turkey and TRNC. You
can send me emails to my both email accounts user@metu.edu or user@metu.edu.tr
Both are same.

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buraksarica
I don't know how, but the Sabanci University from Turkey, has an edu domain
too: <http://www.sabanciuniv.edu/>

~~~
buraksarica
oops, I haven't read the whole replies, it was taken in 1998, so i think there
is nothing special.

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OoTheNigerian
I was actually surprised to learn my home Uni here in Nigeria has a .edu
domain

<http://www.uniben.edu/>

~~~
ya3r
Sharif University of Technology in Iran also has a .edu domain.

They redirect all web traffic to .ir, but all emails work with .edu

<http://sharif.edu>

------
stefantalpalaru
you don't understand. US _is_ the world

~~~
Naushad
Its still IN the world. :)

