http://Home.nyc

­New York City, April 27, 2009 - The city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) in preparation for the acquisition of the .nyc TLD (like .com and .org but just for New York City). We applaud this outreach effort and request that all members of Connecting.nyc’s community join us in assembling a comprehensive body of information to assist the city with this important policy development effort.

Over the next weeks we will gather and organize information that might aide the city’s decision making process. (Due date May 27th.) With our public interest perspective, decade-long involvement with .nyc, and the collaboration of our community, we expect that our submission will assist the city in better understanding the multitude of ways .nyc can help create a more prosperous and livable city.

We will augment our submission by including information presented on a collaborative wiki we’ve created, see RFI Workspace. The Workspace links to the abundance of information on Connecting.nyc Inc.’s wiki, and enables our community to help create an imaginative and innovative assemblage of ideas for the city’s consideration. We are particularly interested in ways the TLD might facilitate security and privacy. As well, we’d like to hear how .nyc can help connect New York City’s civic, social, and business communities using networking tools.

Going forward, we expect DoITT to review the various RFI submissions and, in collaboration with city agencies, business & civic organizations, and residents, to develop a road map leading to .nyc’s acquisition, development, operation, and oversight. (Image elements courtesy Google Maps.)

Learn more about our RFI Collaboration. 

Link to Connecting.nyc Inc.’s wiki pages.

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­­New York, ­­­­­February 12, 2009 - City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced today that New York City will seek the acquisition of the .nyc TLD.

Speaker Quinn said:

While we look to cut spending, we’ll keep our eyes open for any new sources of revenue. Here’s one that’s been right in front of us for years. Web sites end with dot com, dot org, dot this and dot that.

Thanks to the leadership of Council Member Gale Brewer and Deputy Mayor Bob Leiber, New York City will soon have its own place on the web – with dot NYC.

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Mark Twain famously advised “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.” Well now we can make more New York addresses – just on the internet! A local business won’t have to outbid a guy in Kansas to get Tony’s Pizza dot com. They’ll be able to get Tony’s Pizza dot NYC, a name associated with the greatest city – and home of the greatest pizza – in the world.

Most importantly, we expect to generate millions of dollars a year through the sale of web addresses ending in dot NYC.  ­(See the full speech here.) ­

While we’re delighted that the city has come aboard, t­he Speaker’s first and last sentences are somewhat troubling and we are watching out that Manhattan is not again sold for a few beads. Easy to imagine in these troubled economic times.­

Learn more about The Campaign for .nyc on our wiki pages.­­

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September 9, 2008, New York - Today I received the following scoping information about auctions and comparative evaluations from the ICANN:

You first asked­ whether there were papers in preparation on other allocation methods for new gTLD strings. You also asked about the process.

The Economic Case paper only describes the case for auctions as a tie-breaking mechanism for resolving contention among competing generic TLD applications (but not for community-based applications if at least one community-based applicant in a contention set opts for comparative evaluation). The paper does not describe the proposed auction model. This is the subject of a paper soon to be released in advance of the considerable work in preparing a draft RFP for community review prior to the ICANN meeting in Cairo. A number of other papers are being prepared, including descriptions of contention set handling and comparative evalu­ation processes. I think once you, and other commenters, have an opportunity to review these papers, you will have a better understanding of the proposed process.

As other commenters on the forum have noted, many applicants applying for a gTLD may never have to go through the proposed auction process, if their application is not in contention with any other proposed string, or because they represent a particular community and opt for comparative evaluation.

I look forward to reviewing these papers upon their publication. 

Learn more about The Campaign on our wiki pages.