why can't i creat a URL ending in USA?

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Request for Question Clarification by politicalguru-ga on 06 Nov 2003 08:54 PST

Dear Birkel, 

What do you mean "A URL ending in usa"? 

Do you mean the suffix .usa as in www.site.usa (doesn't exist) or
www.site.co.uk (possible for UK sites) ?

URL's are the web addresses associated with domain names.  An example
of a domain name is example.com.  An example of a URL is
www.example.com/index.html.  Neither a domain name nor a URL can end
in .usa because, as politicalguru suggested, there currently is no
approved ".usa" generic top level domain ("gTLD").  An organization
known as ICANN is responsible for deciding which gTLD's (like .com,
.net, .org, and .edu) will be added to the domain name system root
servers so that your browser can find a web site that has that gTLD
appended to it.  There are also country code top level domains
("ccTLD's") like ".co.uk" for United Kingdom and ".hk" for Hong Kong,
but at the moment ".usa" is also not an approved ccTLD.  There are
also some domains that are not part of the domain name system, like
those offered by new.net (e.g., ".shop" and .travel"), but you must
add a plug in to your browser to go to URL's using those domains.

Just realized I was unclear--a URL can end in "usa," technically, like
www.example.com/index.html/usa, if that's the file name on the server,
but there is no such thing as ".usa," for the reasons mentioned, and
so a valid web address or domain cannot today use ".usa" as the top
level domain component.