The question is interesting, but peripheral. Much
government information is found at *.mil and *.org and
*.us extensions. And it may be hard to assess the
quality of contracted-out work when you are unaware of
the contracting out. Note that the Canadian statute
site (accessible from www.droit.umontreal.ca) warns
that the Web version is for convenience only and that
only the printed version is definitive. Which gets us
back to the matter of the "definitive" source of laws
that have not been re-enacted in codified form and,
for foreign laws, the matter of official gazettes vs.
session laws and compilations. Web sites would seem to
have less credibility than any of those, no matter by
whom created, in view of the possibility of hacking.
Not be ruled out even at a *.gov site.
Andy Grossman
University College London, SLAIS
--- Troy Johnson <Troy.Johnson@valpo.edu> wrote:
>
> I am teaching a class dealing with assessing the
> quality of
> legal information that is found on the web. I have
> always
> taught that looking at the .gov extension was one
> thing to
> look at when assessing the source of the
> information.
>
> For example, you are looking for the Alaska Code. At
> the
> site www.alaska.gov you find the Alaskan code and
> the page
> says this is an official page and the code is up to
> date.
> Well of course, anyone can create a page that says
> they are
> the official site so looking at the url is one piece
> of
> evidence to determine the source of the information.
> If you
> were searching for the Alaska code and you found an
> official site at the address
> www.geoworldnet.com/~doug you
> would be more likely to question the source of the
> information.
>
> What I am hoping to find out is how hard is it to
> register
> for a domain name with a .gov extension. How much
> reliance
> would you put in the .gov extension? I know that
> there are
> many librarians on this list that work for
> governmental
> units, if you have had the experience of registering
> a .gov
> domain name I would be interested in the process
> that was
> needed to get the domain name.
>
> I have gone to web sites (including Internic) that
> register
> domain names and they only seem to be giving out
> .com,
> .org, and .net extensions. This would seem to
> indicate that
> not anyone can sign up for a .gov but if you have
> differing
> info I would love to here it.
>
> Thanks
>
-------------------------------------------------------
> Troy Johnson School of Law
> Library
> Public Services Librarian Valparaiso
> University
> 656 S. Greenwich St. Valparaiso, IN
> 46383
> 219 465-7820 219 465-7917 (fax)
>
> email: Troy.Johnson@valpo.edu
>
>
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