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New York, November 16, 2009 - The key accomplishment of the ICANN’s Seoul meeting was the approval of the Internationalized Domain Names ccTLD Fast Track application system that will, for the first time, enable non-English speakers across the globe to see Internet addresses completely in their own language - both before and after the dot. Access to the IDN ccTLD Fast Track online application system and all associated materials are now available here.

In the photo at right, Peter Dengate Thrush (left), ICANN Chair, and Connecting.nyc Inc.’s Thomas Lowenhaupt are shown holding a calligraphic presentation of potential Hangul (Korean) IDNs at the ICANN’s 36th Meeting Gala Event held at the National Museum of Korea on October 27, 2009. The top option says New York, the bottom says New York City. In addition to Korean, New York City can one day present itself in local markets around the world in Arabic, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and other scripts.

­New York, October 31, 2009 - On Wednesday I had breakfast on the 18th floor outdoor patio of the Eastgate Hotel, a bit cool, but it provided a great view of the city. However, the breakfast options lacked any Korean dishes and was not worth writing about.

I took a 7:30 PM Air Korea flight back to New York City on Wednesday and left for the airport at 3. The day’s session I was most interested in was “Role of GAC & Institutional evolution of ICANN in light of the AoC” but it was a closed meeting. Traditionally some GAC meetings have been closed to public purview, with the general presumption that those closed talks were about how to gain some leverage with the ICANN. But now, with their newly empower role under the AoC, such actions are totally unacceptable.

The saving grace news for the ICANN was the announcement of the availability of IDNs beginning in November. This achievement was recapped nicely in today’s New York Times. 

But from the perspective of those seeking new TLDs, this was just another meeting from which to bring home the ‘DELAYED AGAIN’ message.

When the 2rd draft of the Applicants Guidebook was issued in April, the promise was that applications would be accepted later this year. Now there will apparently be a 4th (and perhaps a 5th) draft before the process is finalized. There’s not even an estimated date for the issuance of the 4th Draft Guidebook. Those selling new TLD services were traumatized by the news as they’ve been burning through cash in anticipation of big paydays when ICANN begins accepting applications. Some won’t be at ICANN’s March meeting in Nairobi.

We took solace in the belief that a new track for city and cultural TLDs will now be established. But even in that case, ICANN will not be accepting our application anytime soon. However, there’s lots of work to be done preparing city residents and organizations for .nyc’s ultimate arrival, and we’ll be encouraging DoITT to follow through with the RFP (now with a December 7 due date).

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­Seoul, October 27­, 2009 - I awoke with the birdies today and took a run along the Cheonggyecheon, a stream that flows between the Eastgate and the Lotte. It was a delight. Yesterday I was reading in the Korean Times that the mayor of Seoul indicated he was going to run for another term and had promised to stay in office for the full 5 years. He said he wanted to do for the Han, the city’s main river,  what the previous mayor did for the Cheonggyecheon. The writer noted that the previous mayor had ridden that accomplishment to the nation’s presidency.

Seoul is just an amazing physical city. And the people are about 2/3 the width of Americans, i.e., I haven’t seen an obese person yet. My only negative observation is about the quality of the air, nothing you can smell, perhaps it’s smog, but it’s difficult to see the nearby mountains.­

As to ICANN meeting…  It was more doom and gloom for the timely issuance of TLDs. The first post AoC meeting of the GAC and the ALAC brought to mind one of the early ICANN meeting I’d attended remotely in the late 1990’s, in that every possible problem that might arise with the issuance of of additional TLDs was raised, largely by the ALAC. Some constructive thoughts were added by GAC participants but overall those looking for rapid issuance of a gTLD would have come away saddened. But there was much talk of specific categories of TLDs that might warrant rapid processing, city and cultural. However, even there some of the old, seemingly resolved issues, such as user confusion and TLD failure, were raised anew.

Perhaps an aside, but then again maybe the central point, yesterday the Committee for Open Fashion NYC issued a statement that the fashion.nyc domain name “should present a complete and unbiased directory of the city’s fashion industry.” More on this soon.  

And then there was the Gala Event - the food, the museum, and the entertainment were fantastic. One of my favorite remembrances was a calligraphic rendering of “New York” and “NYC” in Korean. You’ll be amused. It will be the subject of a separate post. And making the Gala more gala, we learned that DoITT had extended the deadline for filing the .nyc RFP to December 7.

My view of Seoul as a perfect society was tainted somewhat when I entered the Metro last night to return from the Lotte to the Eastgate: dozens of homeless were setting up their boxes for a good night’s sleep. It was quite open and obviously “overlooked” by the Metro operators. Then again, this might be a more humane way of handling the homeless problem than the way we do it back in New York City. [Post 7:14 AM on the 28th - Seoul.]

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­Seoul, October 26, 2009 - While I’m a bit tired now, at 7:11 PM, I suspect it’s due to the busy day I had rather than to the 13 hour time shift. I awoke at 8 this morning after a decent night’s sleep, so I guess I’m “adjusted.” First thing I needed to do was change hotels. The new one, Eastgate Tower, is closer to the conference hotel - about 1.5 miles - and spanking new. It’s a bit odd though, and I suspect that it’s a hybrid hotel /condo of some sort. 

The walk to the Lotte from Eastgate was quite interesting as it passed through a light industrial / shopping area. Small shops lined the street with different classes of products - several lighting shops, then hardware stores, a slew of tape stores (the sticky kind), then it was the wall paper district… Many of the stores were also making the products they sold, or at least modifying them. Saws and hammers were seek regularly. This contrasted with New York City where little is manufactured and what is is rarely within view of the public.But I didn’t notice any foul odors or obvious signs of pollution.

I arrived at the ICANN conference at 11:30 and started talking to the trickle that was exiting the New TLD Program Overview session: sad faces all around - more delays - not even proposed submission dates - disbelief - too many loose ends… It seems the Draft Application Guide 3 is hardly worth reading.

But there was hope for .nyc being processed by ICANN within a reasonable time period. This was embodied in the “Airport Scenario,” proposed by Bertrand de La Chapelle, the French GAC representative, ans “Step by Step,” as the folks from CORE are calling the concept of facilitating a path for less controversial TLDs to proceed sooner. The cultural entities and cities are within this “easier to process” group. 

I also sat in on the debate on Registrar-Registry separation. Seemed like a no-brainer: keep the roles separate.

This evening I’m having dinner with representatives from Bangkok who are interested in the BKK TLD (an airport code). More later..

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­Seoul, October 25, 2009 - I woke at 2:11 AM with my body thinking it was morning. First thing I did was to go out to round up some tea bags. A simple Tetley or the like was not available from several stores in the neighborhood. I’ve had a Sulloc Brown Rice Green Tea and am now brewing a Korean One Ginsing Granule Tea. Both had their charm. But change of habit is tough.

Today I’m focusing on the city’s RFP requirement that two proposals, one Open one Closed be submitted.

“The City is considering the options of having .nyc as either an Open TLD or a community-based (“Closed”) TLD. Therefore, we are asking proposers to submit two separate proposals: one (1) proposal for an Open TLD and one (1) proposal for a Closed TLD. An Open TLD permits individuals and entities to obtain a second-level domain (“SLD”) without showing a nexus to the City. A Closed TLD will require individuals and entities to prove a nexus to the City to be eligible to obtain an SLD.”

This poses a conundrum for us as Connecting.nyc Inc.’s basic reason to exist is to advance to concept of a community TLD, and when the RFP states “NOTE: Proposers must submit separate Proposed Approach sections for their Open TLD and Closed TLD proposals” I’m left perplexed. Making it especially difficult for us is the Basis for Contract Award which states “If a contract is awarded, it will be awarded to the responsible technically viable proposer in the competitive range offering the highest amount of revenue to the City.” (We’ve asked the city for clarification on this.)

So early this morning I’m thinking through the options available to us and trying to figure out how I can address them over the next few days here in Seoul. As I see it we have four options:

• Submit only a Community (Closed) proposal?
• Submit two identical community proposals labeling one Open and the other Community (Closed)?
• Submit a Community (Closed) plan that presents those features that will serve the needs of city residents and a modified Open version that incorporates some subset of the community features?
  
• Or do we look for a different position from which to accomplish our mission, for example, commenting on the quality of Community plans submitted by the various bidders?
  

If this is like a typical ICANN meeting, there will be 800 or so clever Internet bureaucrats, engineers, entrepreneurs, government officials, lawyers, and public interest advocates of different shades with which I can discuss these options. [Post 5:57 AM - Seoul.]

That RealTime heading should probably be removed on this post as It’s 27 hours later, but I thought I’d report on the big news from Sunday’s ICANN meetings. I attended two: ALAC and joint GAC/GNSO. (See ICANN Glossary.) ALAC was refreshing as they seem to have been far better organized than in previous years. At the GAC / GNSO meeting there was much talk of problems with the New TLD program by the GAC members. With the GAC’s role having risen with the recent AoC with the U.S. Government, observers came away thinking more of the usual - delay. But several GAC members spoke positively of the Airport Scenario presented by the French: As planes become ready let them take off, no need to wait for everyone (every detail) before the first starts down the runway. With several GAC members chiming in that this seemed an appropriate measure for the less controversial applicants - cities and cultural groups - there was a tad of positive news for .nyc.  

New York, July 22, 2009 - ­When Queens Community Board 3 first considered recommending the development of the .nyc TLD as a public interest resource in 1999, the ICANN was engaged in a fierce debate as to its internal governance structure, with a key issue being the role of Internet users in selecting members to its board of directors.

Over the ensuing decade the ICANN tested the direct election by Internet users to 5 regional seats on its board (in 2000) and, since 2005, it has been responding to global pressure for a more independent and effective operation centered around the United Nations initiated Internet Governance Forum.

One of the more difficult tasks before Connecting.nyc Inc. (or more broadly, the people of New York) is establishing a governance structure for the .nyc TLD. Perusing our wiki pages one will find a dozen or so pages dealing with different aspects of the governance issue - a work in progress.

Today, with ICANN supportive of city TLDs and the city administration supportive of .nyc, its time to start a conversation toward a governance structure that’s acceptable to ICANN and to the people of New York City. As an initial step, we’ve begun organizing and consolidating the wiki pages under the concept of a Governance Ecology.

The Governance Ecology - NYC Element page describes the above graphic and presents 1/3 of the story, with links to the other 2/3’s of the puzzle available via our Governce Ecology - Home Page. It’s a work in progress, but with your help we hope to complete a governance ecology for a .nyc operated in the public interest by summer’s end.

Learn more about .nyc on our wiki pages. ­­­

Mexico City, March 3, 2009 - Connecting.nyc Inc. participated at a gathering of the “dotCities movement” at the 34th Meeting of ICANN, March 2 - 6, in Mexico City.

On the opening day, several dotCity developers met to discuss their goals for the week of meetings. Those attending were Kim Jaeyoun, Seoul, South Korea, Marta Téllez i Domingo, project director of .bcn (Barcelona), Oliver Sume, .HAMBURG, Werner Staub, from CORE, Dirk Krischenowski, .berlin, Amadeau Abril i Abril, initiator, .cat, and Thomas Lowenhaupt, the.nyc TLD.

Monday’s meeting focused on the role of cities within the ICANN, the entity that oversees the Internet’s domain name structure. Current thinking is that cities will express their voice at ICANN through the Registries Constituency of the GNSO. In February 2009 promoters of the .nyc, .berlin, .bcn, and .paris submitted a petition to the GNSO, a deliberative body of the ICANN, indicating their intention to form the City Top-Level Domain Constituency and participate in the ICANN governance process from within that entity.

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

­­December 20, 2008, New York City - Connecting.nyc Inc. submitted comments to ICANN on the draft RFP (Request for Proposals) for new TLDs on December 15th. While we compliment ICANN for the many positive steps it has taken toward enabling cities to have TLDs, we took issue with several points in the 100+ page draft RFP. Our most significant concern is with the financial requirements suggested in the draft RFP:

• One-time Application Fee - $185,000
• Annual Registry Operator Fee - $75,000
• Financial Stability Assurance - $40,000 surety bond per year (est.)
  
• Per-name Fee - $.25
  

The first three of these will alter the nature of our operation and the type of financing we seek. (And they will have a huge negative impact on small registries, for example, should the Iroquois nation seek a TLD.)

But for New York City the per-name fee is the most troubling. Our comments present several scenarios where per-name fees will crush DNS innovation. Here are a few examples from those comments: 

By way of example consider the way per-name fees will inhibit our experimenting with the DNS’s role in advancing city life. For example, some are suggesting that civic discourse might be enhanced by issuing a second level name to each registered voter. Will we be able to consider such a project with the proposed fees? With 3,944,000 registered voters, and a $.25 fee per name, we’d need an additional $1,000,000 in ICANN fees to explore this possibility.

There are several ways to remedy this, one being that fees for names identifying things, locations, and foundation civic needs - education and health - ­ be excluded from the per-name charges. We will be discussing this alternative with ICANN.

We had several other concerns and suggestions with our full comments available here. (Commons photo courtesy of sam.)

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.

­September 8, 2008, New York - We never received a response to our requests for context information on the Economic Case for Auctions in New gTLDs paper ICANN posted on August 6 despite our Point of Information post, emails, and phone calls. The paper, written by ICANN staff and its “auctions partner” PowerAuctions LLC, concluded that an auction, not comparative evaluation, was the best means for allocating a contested city TLD.

The prevailing view has been that a comparative evaluation would discern a winner between  contesting applicants for a city TLD. And while there’s been no indication of a formal shift in ICANN policy, without an indication from the ICANN as to the paper’s purpose or status, we thought it prudent to post our thoughts on the issue prior to the September 7 posting deadline. The post presented a bleak assessment of the result of an auction between a community focused, slow growth applicant (Connecting.nyc Inc.) and a financial value bidder:

My concern is absolutely fundamental. For if the recipient of
the .nyc TLD is to be decided by auction, we will loose. And
our hope of finally having the opportunity to put the full
capabilities of the Internet - and that includes the DNS - to
address the cities current needs and future growth opportunities,
will be lost.

I concluded my comments with the following suggestions:

What the ICANN needs to do is acknowledge that there are entities
called cities. That the DNS's historic neglect of these
environmentally efficient locals, where more than ½ the earth's
population now live, must end. The ICANN needs to recognize that
cities have special needs that can be addressed by TLDs. And the
ICANN needs to establish criteria and processes for judging the
best application for this important civic resource.

This is a critical issue. And while it’s difficult to imagine that a shift of this magnitude would happen without public input - I’m still hoping the ICANN’s apparent lean toward auctions is just a vacation time, slip-through-the-cracks oversight by staff - we may need to send some enlightenment mojo to ICANN on this. So keep alert. (Commons photo courtesy of Jeremy Becker.)

Read the full comments here.    Learn more about The Campaign on our wiki pages.

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August 9, 2008, New York - Several days ago in our “Update” post, I portrayed us as 95% of the way toward creating a landscape that will allow us to apply for the .nyc TLD. Last night I received an email from ICANN entitled “Updates to New gTLD Program Implementation” that leads me to think that last 5% might not be as easy to achieve as I’d expected.

The email linked to a paper prepared by ICANN and its “auction design consultant” and discusses the options for selecting TLD developers in situations where there’s more than one interested party. The paper, Economic Case for Auctions in New gTLDs, written by PowerAuctions LLC, an auction manager, purports to make the economic case for auctions as the preferred tie-breaking mechanism for resolving contention among identical or confusingly similar applications for new TLDs. I use the word “purports” because of the seeming self-interest of an auction company providing an “authoritative” paper on the efficacy of its core business. I’ve contacted ICANN to determine the status of the paper, whether there will be others reviewing such alternatives as comparative analysis and the lottery methodologies. See my Point of Information message to ICANN.

Whatever the status of this “Auctions” paper, this is an enormously important issue to us for two reasons: The first is the impact it might have on our ability to acquire the .nyc TLD. The paper begins with the premise that names should go to those who can generate the most income from their operation - more is better. And when there is a name dispute between Apple Computer, Apple Records, and the Apple Pie Bakers Association for the .apple TLD, perhaps more is better.

But with the basis for cities acquiring TLDs being their capacity to help deal with far deeper needs - including the social, economic and cultural life of the cities and their people - it becomes apparent that the Economic Case for Auctions’ fundamental premise does not apply in all instances. But we’ll withhold judgment until we hear from ICANN on our Point of Information request .

The second reason the issues discussed in the paper are important to us is that we too need to develop conflict solutions. In our case it’s about second level names: Who gets potentially important names such as astoria, finance, news, and sports .nyc?

We’ve placed resources for examining this issue on our Domain Name Allocation Plan page and look forward to hearing from New Yorkers on the issue. This Fall, as part of our Names for a Livable City project, we’ll be visiting the city’s community boards to gain a greater public perspective on this question. You’ll see a post on this here soon. (Commons photo courtesy of vernhart.)

Learn more about The Campaign on our wiki pages.

August 6, 2008, New York - With the ICANN having approved a New TLD Policy in June, we thought it helpful that we issue a Key Task Completion Report showing the progress made and the road ahead. This chart summarizes the status of The Campaign’s major tasks with brief explanations following. To learn how you can become part of our effort, see The Acquisition Campaign wiki page.

1. Gain ICANN Support for City-TLDs - Seven years after the Internet Empowerment Resolution and a four year development effort, the ICANN has approved a New TLD Policy that allows cities to apply for TLDs. The remaining task for ICANN is to issue a RFP, expected in early 2009.
2. Generate Community Support - This is the primary focus of our efforts these days. In the Fall we will be continuing our outreach to city entities - people and organizations - for their thoughts on how we might best develop this vital Internet resource.
3. Develop ICANN Application - The ICANN has spent over $15 million creating its New TLD Policy and the application process. It promises to be an online filing with significant thought and preparation required. And then there’s the application fee, estimated to be “in the low 6 figures” at this point.
4. Gain ICANN Application Approval - If we’ve done our community outreach in a comprehensive manner and presented the community’s will in a detailed and responsive application, approval should be nearly automatic. Getting that approval implemented, i.e., making .nyc a live TLD, could prove challenging if many applications are offered.

June 30, 2008, New York - A resolution supportive of the .nyc TLD was introduced into the city council on June 29. The Reso. reads:

June 26, 2008, Paris - After nearly a decade of planning, the ICANN approved a New TLD Policy today. Here is a clip from the ICANN’s press release:

Paris, France: The Board of ICANN today approved a recommendation that could see a whole range of new names introduced to the Internet’s addressing system.

“The Board today accepted a recommendation from its global stakeholders that it is possible to implement many new names to the Internet, paving the way for an expansion of domain name choice and opportunity” said Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN.

A final version of the implementation plan must be approved by the ICANN Board before the new process is launched. It is intended that the final version will be published in early 2009.

“The potential here is huge. It represents a whole new way for people to express themselves on the Net,” said Dr Twomey. “It’s a massive increase in the ‘real estate’ of the Internet.”

Presently, users have a limited range of 21 top level domains to choose from — names that we are all familiar with like .com, .org, .info.

This proposal allows applicants for new names to self-select their domain name so that choices are most appropriate for their customers or potentially the most marketable. It is expected that applicants will apply for targeted community strings such as (the existing) .travel for the travel industry and .cat for the Catalan community (as well as generic strings like .brandname or .yournamehere). There are already interested consortiums wanting to establish city-based top level domain, like .nyc (for New York City), .berlin and .paris.

“One of the most exciting prospect before us is that the expanding system is also being planned to support extensions in the languages of the world,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN’s Chairman. “This is going to be very important for the future of the Internet in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia.” The present system only supports 37 Roman characters.

Upon approval of the implementation plan, it is planned that applications for new names will be available in the second quarter of 2009.

Connecting.nyc was represented at the historic event with some of our thoughts noted in the International Herald Tribune, New York Times, and USA Today articles. (Commons photo courtesy of flappingwings.)

June 10, 2008 - The New York Times published an informative article about the campaign in yesterday’s paper. The article was partially based on writer Jenny 8. Lee’s attendance at Connecting.nyc Inc.’s May 13th public meeting. Be sure to read the 25+ comments posted about the article.