[NA-Discuss] Concerning the NeuStar ~ New York City "public hearing"

Thomas Lowenhaupt toml at communisphere.com
Tue Mar 27 05:52:21 UTC 2012


Joly,

I've posted my notes from my Thursday morning opportunity to view the 
proposed NeuStar contract here. 
<http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/blog/2012/03/23/first-veiw-the-proposed-neustar-contract/> 
They are quite incomplete. And that's really a sorry state of affairs, 
because your notes and mine are the totality of reporting on the 
portions of the contract that were made available to us. (As I've noted 
in the sidebar of the written comments page, the meat of he contract is 
not yet complete).

The viewing period is over and the city has said "Sorry folks, you 
missed it." That lack of transparency is my note #1. And the only one 
that counts. No transparency no contract. (At least that's my view.)

It's really quite amazing, sickening really. It's against the law in the 
city to sell a pair of sneakers with a purchasing contract as opaque as 
NeuStar's. But they'll get 15 years of revenue from our TLD, and we 
can't see the contract. Astounding.

Gale was as usual most clear. Thanks for getting her statement online. 
Her comments would have been far more interesting had she been able to 
see the contract.

My 3-minutes of comments are probably best left on the cutting room 
floor - was I foaming at the mouth? The written ones 
<http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/comments-to-doitt-on-proposed-neustar-contract> 
make a few important points. At the hearing the one point I was trying 
to make was that DoITT should have been the last part of the acquisition 
process, not the one and only. Research, public education and outreach, 
city council hearings, and perhaps legislation preceding an IT 
purchasing process.

But I wasn't able to convince anyone here on NA Discuss that a city-TLD 
was more significant than .banjo, and it's beginning to look not in the 
city either.

Best,

Tom Lowenhaupt



On 3/26/2012 1:35 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:
> While I support you in principle Tom, I did think at the hearing that 
> your comments, rushed as they were in the three minutes available, 
> were a little too philosophical when what was needed was sharp bullet 
> points about shortcomings in the contract and process.
>
> I thought Gale Brewer did a fair job of this which is why I have 
> posted the video of her testimony. 
> http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117&cpage=1#comment-8232 
> <http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117&cpage=1#comment-8232>
>
> I will process the rest of the hearing so your comments can be seen 
> and heard.
>
> My limited understanding, from a cursory viewing of the contract,
>
> * the City itself is nominally the applicant, but that Neustar will do 
> the applying and pay the fees.
> * Neustar will pay the City something along the lines of 40% of 
> revenue (gross? unclear)
> * there will be nexus requirements, and domains will be revocable if 
> found not in compliance.
> * the city will spot check 50 domains a year for compliance.
> * there will be reserved names - as yet undetermined, for which the 
> City will act as registrar.
>
> j
>
> On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 9:51 AM, Thomas Lowenhaupt 
> <toml at communisphere.com <mailto:toml at communisphere.com>> wrote:
> > Evan,
> >
> > Your concerns are heart warming.
> >
> > New York City might be headed off a cliff with its application. The 
> "public
> > hearing" Joly announced about a NeuStar ~ New York City arrangement
> > concerned a contract that is incomplete and therefore not available 
> to the
> > public - see http://blog.connectingnyc.org (don't care about the 
> issue - see
> > my friends BloomBORG for a giggle).
> >
> > Moving forward, I hope to find segments of the Internet community 
> that will
> > join me in developing a plan / guidelines that will assist cities 
> navigating
> > the shark infested registry-registrar waters, creating best 
> practices, and
> > effectively governing their TLDs. I'll be announcing that early next 
> week.
> >
> > In the meantime, in preparing my comments for the faux-public 
> hearing, I'm
> > getting closer to answering your "What's so important about city-TLDs?"
> > question. It might be too late to help my home city, and I'm not 
> 100% there
> > yet, but I hope the below begins to turn up the volume so that 
> people will
> > begin to hear the music to which I dance.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Tom Lowenhaupt
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From my comments to the faux-hearing:
> >
> > What is a City-TLD? 3 Views
> >
> > Let's think back to the early 1800's when work began on what's now 
> called
> > the Commissioners Plan of 1811. The Plan set out the city's street 
> grid -
> > 1st to 155th Streets and 1st to 12th Avenues. It took 4 years and 
> even then
> > they left out a few parts – like Central Park. And late in the 
> process they
> > said “Let's put in Lexington Avenue.” Not by name mind you – but
> > conceptually. The Commissioners' Plan wasn't about names. And this 
> city-TLD
> > is not, in its essence, about names. Names are part of both. But the 
> core
> > elements are structure, order, and accountability.
> >
> > My view is that a .nyc is a scaffold for our culture and our treasures.
> > Think for a second about the New York Yankees. Yes, all the star players
> > have names. But its the combination of players, coaches, trainers, 
> owners,
> > fans, and concessionaires selling hotdogs and beer that make the New 
> York
> > Yankees a success. Each and every person in this list of what might be
> > called the “Yankees Network” has a name. But it's an effective
> > organizational structure and culture that makes the Yankees win. From my
> > perspective our city's TLD is a culture making tool. A scaffold for
> > organizing our resources.
> >
> > Let me tell you another view, one I'll call The Grand View (I'm 
> thankful to
> > David Bollier's Viral Spiral for this.) – It involves the legendary Adam
> > Smith. Everyone is familiar with the impact of his The Wealth of 
> Nations. To
> > some this 1776 economics treaties is their constitution and bible. In it
> > Smith wrote about people's penchant for what he called “truck, 
> barter, and
> > exchange” - markets and capitalism. Today his thoughts serve as a 
> basis for
> > our global economy.
> >
> > In another work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith wrote about “deep
> > impulses of human sympathy and morality” that included the most 
> important of
> > human traits – sharing, loving, caring, sympathy, empathy. The Grand 
> View
> > holds that the .nyc TLD is a organizing force for digitizing these most
> > important human impulses. At first glance, to an old timer like me, this
> > sounded like crazy talk. But when I look at developments like 
> Wikipedia and
> > the Open Source movement, I see Smith's “deep impulses of human 
> sympathy and
> > morality” played out on a daily basis. Projects like these are all about
> > people sharing to help one another.
> >
> > So 250 years later Adam Smith's sympathetic half may reach fruition 
> through
> > Internet resources like the .nyc TLD. Because now we have a tool to more
> > effectively identify, count, track, and value the good.
> >
> > Imagine our city with a 1,000 Wikipedia scale projects. Efforts like:
> >
> > JacksonHeights.nyc
> >
> > GreenwichVillage.nyc
> >
> > Harlem.nyc
> >
> > Voters.nyc
> >
> > CivicIssues.nyc
> >
> > CandidatesForMayor.nyc
> >
> > So what's a city-TLD? It's a powerful planning and organizing tool 
> that can
> > improve our city and our lives during the foreseeable future.
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > On 3/22/2012 4:45 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> >
> > On 22 March 2012 15:10, Joly MacFie <joly at punkcast.com 
> <mailto:joly at punkcast.com>> wrote:
> >
> >
> > A public hearing on NYC's allocation of the .nyc contract to
> > Neustar will be held tomorrow, Friday, in Brooklyn.
> >
> >
> > Looks like all of Thomas Lowenhaupt's multiple years of hard work
> > advocating for a community-focused .nyc TLD for may turn out to have 
> been
> > blazing a rugged, obstacle-clearing trail through which Neustar may now
> > drive its HumVee.
> >
> > Thomas, I feel for ya. I was a vocal skeptic of your proposal but am 
> even
> > more critical of a direct government-Neustar registry (both in 
> process and
> > likely substance). I didn't expect that your project would seek out
> > defensive domains but I can feel fairly confident that a pure 
> generic play
> > would consider defencives as part of their revenue mix.
> >
> > Personally, I've delighted that so few geoTLD proposals have come from
> > North America. I expect .québec for historical reasons (much 
> conceptually
> > in common with .cat), and I consider the current plays for .nyc and 
> .vegas
> > to be almost defensive TLDs themselves, given those cities' own branding
> > efforts.. The other two listed at http://www.citytld.com/ (for 
> Ottawa and
> > San Francisco) appear dead
> >
> > Most of the others are proposed for Europe. What a massive waste of 
> money
> > and time. I feel truly sorry for all the small businesses that will be
> > compelled to register defensively for those that roll out.
> >
> > Maybe there are so few North American ones because people here 
> already see
> > what a bust ".us" is and figure that almost all the incumbents are 
> Amercian
> > anyway. But I'll appreciate the sanity wherever I can find it.
> >
> > - Evan
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > *Information Technology and Telecommunications Public Hearing*
> >
> > Notice is hereby given that a Contract Public Hearing will be held on
> > Friday, March 23, 2012 at DoITT, 2 MetroTech Center, 4th Floor, 
> Brooklyn NY
> > 11209, commencing at 2:00 P.M. on the following:
> >
> > In the matter of a proposed contract between the Department of 
> Information
> > Technology and Telecommunications and Neustar located at 21575 Ridgetop
> > Circle, Sterling, VA 20166, to apply for, and if obtained, operate,
> > administer, manage and market nyc. The term of the contract shall be for
> > five (5) years with two (2) five (5) year renewal options at the City’s
> > discretion. The contract is a Revenue contract, PIN: 85812P0001.
> >
> > *10/5/2009 City issues RFP for .nyc management 
> <http://isoc-ny.org/?p=902>
> >
> > *
> > *
> >
> >  Comment <http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117#respond>    See all
> > comments<http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117#comments>
> >
> >
> >  *Trouble clicking?* Copy and paste this URL into your browser:
> > http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------
> > Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
> > WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
> > http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
> >  VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
> > --------------------------------------------------------------
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>
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
> WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
> http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
>  VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> -



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