Why is .gov only for US government agencies?

[johnl at iecc.com (John Levine)]

>The same problem exists with .EDU capriciously adopting new criteria
>that excludes any non-US-based institutions from being eligible.   I
>believe the major issue is that if a TLD is in the global namespace,
>then it should NOT be allowed to restrict registrations based on
>country;   the internet is global and  .GOV and .EDU are in Global
>Namespace.

Gee, someone should alert NANOG management that the list has fallen
through a wormhole into 1996.

To answer the original question, many governments use a subdomain
of their ccTLD such as gc.ca or gov.uk.  Or they just use a
name directly in the ccTLD such as bundesregierung.de.

R's,
John