[NA-Discuss] Concerning the NeuStar ~ New York City "public hearing"
Thomas Lowenhaupt
toml at communisphere.com
Mon Mar 26 13:51:00 UTC 2012
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
<http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/comments-to-doitt-on-proposed-neustar-contract>,
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
<http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/comments-to-doitt-on-proposed-neustar-contract>:
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/ <http://bollier.org/> 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> 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
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> -
>> ------
>> NA-Discuss mailing list
>> NA-Discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org
>> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
>>
>> Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org
>> ------
>>
> ------
> NA-Discuss mailing list
> NA-Discuss at atlarge-lists.icann.org
> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
>
> Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org
> ------
More information about the NA-Discuss
mailing list