.us
.us is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United States. It was established in early 1985. Registrants of .us domains must be U.S. citizens, residents, or organizations – or foreign entities with a presence in the United States or any territory of the United States.[2] Most registrants in the U.S. have registered for .com, .net, .org and other gTLDs, instead of .us, which has primarily been used by state and local governments, even though private entities may also register .us domains.[3] The domain is managed by Registry Services, LLC, a domain name registry, on behalf of the United States Department of Commerce.[4]
Introduced
February 15, 1985
Active
Registry Services, LLC
Entities connected with the United States
Used in the United States but not as widely as gTLDs
- U.S. state and local governments (declining in favor of .gov)
- Some American businesses as alternative to .com
- Domain hacks (e.g. del.icio.us)
1,799,026 (October 2021)[1]
Connection with the U.S. requirement can be enforced by challenge but rarely is
2nd-level registrations allowed; originally only 3rd- or 4th-level registrations in a complex hierarchy
RFC 1480; USDoC agreements with Neustar; Other policies
yes
The .us domain is less commonly used by American businesses and enterprises than the more international .com.[5]
History[edit]
On February 15, 1985, .us was created as the Internet's first ccTLD.[6][7] Its original administrator was Jon Postel of the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California (USC). He administered .us under a subcontract that the ISI and USC had from SRI International (which held the .us and the gTLD contract with the United States Department of Defense) and later Network Solutions (which held the .us and the gTLD contract with the National Science Foundation).
Postel and his colleague Ann Westine Cooper[8] codified the .us ccTLD's policies in December 1992 as RFC 1386[9] and revised them the following June in RFC 1480. Registrants could only register third-level domains or higher in a geographic and organizational hierarchy. From June 1993 to June 1997, Postel delegated the vast majority of the geographic subdomains under .us to various public and private entities. .us registrants could register with the delegated manager for the specific zone they wished to register in, but not directly with the .us administrator. In July 1997, Postel instituted a "50/500 rule" that limited each delegated manager to 500 localities maximum, 50 in a given state.[10]
In June 1998, Postel raised the possibility of covering IANA operating costs by charging locality name registrars, who would pass the costs along to individual registrants. In September 1998, the United States Postal Service proposed funding the operations in order to assume control of .us, as part of a plan to diversify away from postage revenue.[11] On October 1, 1998, the NSF transferred oversight of the .us domain to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the United States Department of Commerce.[12] Postel died that month, leaving his domain administration responsibilities with ISI. In December 2000, these responsibilities were transferred to Network Solutions, which had recently been acquired by Verisign.[10][13][14]
On October 26, 2001, Neustar was awarded the contract to administer .us. On April 24, 2002, second-level domains under .us became available for registration. One of the first .us domain hacks, icio.us, was registered on May 3, 2002, for the creation of the subdomain del.icio.us.[15][16] A moratorium was placed on additional delegations of locality-based namespaces, and Neustar became the default delegate for undelegated localities.[17] Neustar's contract was renewed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in 2007 and most recently in 2014.[10][18]
On March 31, 2019, the .us registry made it clear that under its Acceptable Use Policy it would not allow the sale of opioids through the .us top level domain.[19]
In Q2 2020, GoDaddy acquired Neustar's registry business.[20]
Kids.us[edit]
The Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002 (Pub. L. 107–317 (text) (PDF)) established a .kids.us second-level domain. The general public could register third-level domains under .kids.us for educational content that met strict requirements, including conformance to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and adherence to Children's Advertising Review Unit standards. Webpages were prohibited from linking outside the .kids.us namespace. On July 27, 2012, in response to declining usage and a petition by Neustar the previous year, the NTIA suspended .kids.us registrations. By that time, 651 domains were registered under .kids.us, and only five registrants (Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., PBS Kids, the Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies, and Super-Fun Sports Inc operating trampoline.kids.us and trampolines.kids.us) were operating active websites.[25]
Under .us nexus requirements, .us domains may be registered only by the following qualified entities:
To ensure that these requirements are met, GoDaddy frequently conducts "spot checks" on registrant information.
To prevent anonymous registrations that do not meet these requirements, in 2005 the National Telecommunications and Information Administration ruled that registrants of .us domains may not secure private domain name registration via anonymizing proxies, and that their contact information must be made public.[26] Registrants are required to provide complete contact information without omissions.[27]
Under the locality namespace, delegated managers may impose additional requirements.[10] For example, the Texas Regional Hostmaster restricts each of its delegated localities to organizations that have a mailing address in that locality.[28]