Out of Its Domain.

• Author: Sager, Ryan H.
• Position: United States Postal Service attempting to carry electronic mail - Brief Article

While most Americans would be content with the U.S. Postal Service if it simply delivered "snail mail" reliably, the agency has boldly set its sights on cyberspace. The USPS wants to control the "top-level" domain. us. A top-level domain is the final Internet suffix that can identify an e-mail account's or World Wide Web site's country of origin, as in www.city.palo-alto.ca.us. Although not very common in the United States, top-level domains are used in many European countries, and in 1997 the Clinton administration decided the idea of encouraging such usage was worth exploring. The White House asked the USPS to draft a proposal to run the operation and put forward a plan "to commit substantial resources to accelerate the development of .us as an enabling framework for electronic commerce." The USPS said it would do this by providing "universal" access to geographically based electronic addresses (such as name@city.palo-alto.ca.us) for all U.S. residents.

As might be expected, the thought of bringing the USPS' particular brand of efficiency to cyberspace has not exactly been well-received. Critics of the...