Registered in the dot U.S. of A

In real estate, they say there are three key attributes of a property: location, location, location. But on the Web, apparently you guys don't want to use what should be a great virtual location - the top-level domain ".us" and I can't blame you.

The consequence of being geographically defined is an unacceptably long domain name. For example, I would have to be mgibbs@ gibbs.san-buenaventura.ca.us - which is a little unwieldy.

The current registrar for the .us domain is the U.S. Domain Registry administered by the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California (www."nic."us/). USC has assigned a zillion third-level registrars for all major locations (New York, Chicago and so on) as well as for many more obscure places (simivalley.ca."us, pflugerville.tx.us and - my favorite - smackover.ar.us).

Just imagine how much of a pain it will be trying to reach someone at one of the latter . . . . "Sorry, we couldn't get back to ya sooner, we wuz roundin' up cattle in the back 40."

This, of course, raises the curious question of how the various registrars were deemed qualified to control a town- or city-sized subdomain. For example, my city, Ventura, Calif., is under the sub-domain san-buenaventura.ca.us, which is controlled by I-Theta Corp. in Manchester, Mo.

And New York (new-york.ny.us), Atlanta (atlanta.ga.us) and Portland (portland.or.us) are controlled by Silicon Prairie Communications in Indianola, Iowa!

'Scuse me? Am I missing something here? How ridiculous is it that these registrars aren't even in the same state let alone the same county as the geographic domains they control? Ridiculous!

Even more interesting is that there is virtually no information on I-Theta! All you will find at www.i-theta.com is a statement proclaiming that it is a "network systems developer." There is no word of its role as a registrar.

Silicon Prairie is a bit more loquacious, but its presence is rather amateurish - a broken hit counter on the home page isn't the sort of presentation that makes you think it pays attention to details.

What astounded me is the scale of what these companies control: Silicon Prairie controls 65 subdomains while little old anonymous I-Theta manages 460!

I can't tell you anything about what it costs to register in the domains controlled by I-Theta because of its almost nonpresence on the 'Net. On the other hand, Silicon Prairie indicates that there is no charge unless you have multiple registrations, in which case it will cost you the princely sum of $10 per additional subdomain, per year.

According to ISI, pricing for registration is under the control of each registry. I tried to find out what it would cost to register gibbs.reno.nv.us but the registrar, Great Basin Internet Services, told me it no longer accepts registrations in any of the 75 subdomains it controls under .nv.us.

According to the Associated Press as reported in Edupage (www.educause.edu/), the U.S. Commerce Department proposes to create a new administrator for .us domain names. The intention is to increase the use of the .us domain and reduce demand in the "crowded dot.com field."

But I would like to see town and city councils getting some control. It would seem logical that if you're going to tie people and online businesses to a geographically defined subdomain, the virtual geography should be managed like the real geography.

Perhaps fees for business registration could be tied to business licenses (get the latter and you get the former, and perhaps a tax credit as an incentive if you actually do e-business), while personal registrations should preferably be free and encouraged - to stimulate the growth of citizenship and community.

This Commerce Department initiative will be interesting to watch. If it does it right, the .us domain will become hot property.

Locate your thoughts at nw_column@gibbs.com.