> policies for it like "You can't hide your WHOIS info" would be set by the US government
I have actually checked this, and you're (partially) wrong on this one. To be fair, I was also wrong that GoDaddy (within limitations set by the Department of Commerce) has free reign here. The actual process is more boring: while the US DOC has veto powers, in practice it's the .US Stakeholder Council (https://www.about.us/stakeholders) which decides on matters about .US policies.
I have actually checked this, and you're (partially) wrong on this one. To be fair, I was also wrong that GoDaddy (within limitations set by the Department of Commerce) has free reign here. The actual process is more boring: while the US DOC has veto powers, in practice it's the .US Stakeholder Council (https://www.about.us/stakeholders) which decides on matters about .US policies.
On that note, in the specific issue of no-proxies rule it was the US DOC who enforced it, not GoDaddy or Neustar (which was the previous operator): https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7251-2005Mar...