http://Home.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. ­­­

On November 14, 2007 Connecting.nyc participated on a Broadening the Domain Name Space: Adding TLDs for Cities and Regions panel at the U.N. sponsored Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Rio De Janeiro. The panel first heard about the positive experiences of three recently issued TLDs: .cat (for the Catalonia cultural), .asia (for use in the continent of Asia), and .eu (for use in the European Union).

The focus then turned to prospective TLDs with .nyc leading off the presentations. Panelist Thomas Lowenhaupt reviewed the basis for city-TLDs and recent organizing activities in support of Connecting.nyc’s application, including a recent favorable meeting with the city’s IT department. He also reiterated his concern, first raised at the ICANN meeting in Los Angeles, that a plethora of applications by Fortune 1000 firms for new TLDs might inundate the ICANN’s small staff and reduce the likelihood of city-TLDs being issued on a timely basis.

Panelist Sebastian Bacholet, appearing on behalf of the .paris TLD, reviewed the internationalization study initiated by developers of the .nyc, .berlin, and .paris TLDs at the ICANN Los Angeles meeting. He provided three instances where second level domain names might be developed in various languages - www.taxi.nyc, www.hotels.paris, and www.hospital.berlin. By way of example, he explained that when in need of health care, German or French speaking visitors to New York City might enter www.krankenhaus.nyc or www.hôpital.nyc in their respective languages and receive pages with the needed information.