Dot-What? Will_This_Name_Happen.nyc

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Dot-What? Will_This_Name_Happen.nyc?
By Jennifer 8. Lee June 9, 2008

A grass-roots group is trying to build support for a .nyc top-level domain when the naming policies for Internet Web sites are expanded.

Maybe — just maybe — dot-nyc will be coming soon to your browser.

A small group of New Yorkers, led by Tom Lowenhaupt of Queens, are organizing for a .nyc domain — as in joining the ever-dominant .com, .org and the more unwieldy .mobi and .aero.


The group, Connectingnyc, is gearing up for an open application that is expected (as much as bureaucracies can be expected) to begin next year, and which aims to make the approval process for the next generation of top-level domains (like .com and .us) more standard and transparent.

On Monday, the group was passing out fliers to city workers to solicit ideas for reserved domains for government use, like mayor.nyc, council.nyc, citytaxforms.nyc and traffic.nyc.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which helps coordinate the Internet naming system, has been criticized for having a less-than-transparent and consistent approval process for top-level domains — specifically because of the debate over the .xxx domain, which Icann rejected (again) last March. The delay in putting out new ones was giving an unfair advantage to those that exist (like .com).

So last year, Icann announced a process in which groups could essentially propose their own dot-whatevers if they had both the financing and technical ability to handle the registration. Imagine: .radio to go along with .tv (which is actually the country domain for the country of Tuvalu), and .dog to go along with .cat (which is actually for Catalan), .con to go with .pro.

(If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress? Joke.)

Currently, New York City is one of at least three cities pushing for their own top-level domains under the new regime. The other two are Berlin and Paris. (As for our cross-coast rivalry, there is already a .la — but it refers to the country of Laos).

"When you hear about people out in the great wide world talking about possible extensions, one thing that keeps on coming up is city extensions — and some talk about regionals ones," said Jason Keenan, a spokesman for Icann.

The .nyc effort is led by Mr.Lowenhaupt, a 61-year-old civic-minded Jackson Heights resident. "The role of .nyc is to reconnect the city," he said.

Mr.Lowenhaupt was on Community Board 3 in Queens — which includes Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst and Corona — when the board passed a resolution in support of .nyc in 2001. "A year and a half ago, I decided that no one else as been really doing it," he said.

So he set aside his consulting work and has been more or less working full-time on the project since then. "I think it's important to the city," he said.
He has enlisted a small group of volunteers and essentially goes around lobbying for support of the idea. Their efforts remind us of that Margaret Mead quote.

City Councilwoman Gale A. Brewer, chairwoman of the Technology in Government Committee, is expected to introduce legislation in support of the .nyc initiative within the next few weeks.

"A .nyc address gives New York City a recognizable brand name on the World Wide Web," Ms. Brewer said. "It lets New Yorkers and anyone else search for and find New York City businesses and nonprofit organizations, and helps us further enhance our economic development. It also shows that New York City is truly a digital community on par with the other tech centers across the globe."

At a discussion meeting held a few weeks ago in the West Village, the .nyc group debated a number of issues. For example, whether or not registrants should be restricted to only New York City, if some civic domain names should be reserved (like schools.nyc and cityhall.nyc), whether some of the names should be sold to the highest bidder (like hotels.nyc) or assigned to existing organizations.

But the resources needed to survive the rigor of the Icann application process could run several million dollars, industry analysts say, which can be a stumbling block for a largely grass-roots effort.

"I think it's a great identity for New York on the Internet; I think it's going to bring a lot of yet unknown economic benefits to New York," said Antony Van Couvering, chief executive of names@work and a longtime participant in the domain name industry. "I think New York wants to be in the first round. I think it would be a disaster if Berlin got one and Paris got one, and New York was scratching its head and saying that we'd better get one, too."

The fliers that Connectingnyc is handing out tell people to go to Connectingnyc.org and make suggestions:

Got an idea for a domain name that will help your agency function better over the Internet? Help us identify good .nyc domain names to reserve for use by city government. Here are a few .nyc names that have been suggested:

mayor.nyc
council.nyc
citytaxforms.nyc
traffic.nyc

Join residents from all over the city in imagining our city's Internet face: help identify names for city government, small businesses, tourism, for ideas, and our community and civic life. The .nyc TLD provides a clean-slate upon which we can plan our digital future.

What other .nyc domains name would serve a useful purpose? Suggest away.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...name_happennyc