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

Mon Mar 26 17:35:58 UTC 2012

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

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>
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> 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
--------------------------------------------------------------
-