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by ninkendo 1140 days ago
.com is a US domain though. It's run by a US corporation (Verisign). Check whois.

That said corporation lets non-US entities buy domain names doesn't change this fact.

Similarly, if a site with a .tv address published articles explicitly about Tuvalu, in the Tuvaluan language, you probably wouldn't complain about a Tuvaluan bias, right? After all, it's a Tuvaluan TLD. The fact that lots of companies around the world use .tv addresses for other reasons that have nothing to do with Tuvalu, doesn't change the fact that it's a Tuvaluan TLD.

If you want more information on this, the intro in the Wikipedia article on .com is quite informative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com ... particularly:

> The domain was originally administered by the United States Department of Defense, but is today operated by Verisign, and remains under ultimate jurisdiction of U.S. law.[2][3][4] Additionally, as the Internet was invented in the United States, most American businesses and enterprises have used the .com domain instead of a more U.S.-specific .us.
1 comments
detaro 1140 days ago
Verisign is contracted to run .com

.tv addresses are different, because ccTLDs are explicitly tied to countries (hence "ccTLD"). generic TLDs (gTLDs) like .com are not.

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ninkendo 1140 days ago
Huh? Contracted by who? DARPA originally invented the internet and DNS in the first place (it was originally an American project) and gave over control over .com to Network Solutions which was eventually bought by Verisign. What do you mean "contracted to run"?

.com registrations are ultimately under US jurisdiction. It's what happens when you have a name system that was originally intended for one country's project (The Internet) and said project ended up becoming internationally used. The original TLD's are grandfathered in even after we got country-specific ones.

Nobody complains that .mil is US-centric either. .mil isn't a ccTLD but of course it means US military.

.com is a very popular TLD used all over the world. It doesn't make it non-American. Just as .tv is also very popular outside of Tuvalu, it doesn't make it non-Tuvaluan.

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