­­­New York, December 29, 2009 - Adam Raff’s recent  New York Times Op-Ed Search, But You May Not Find paralleled an issue we have been concerned about for some time - search transparency. While Adam focused on the damage from corporate shenanigans, our concerns have centered more on the impact the Google search engine’s lack of transparency might have on civic affairs. For example, we’re likely to see Google confronting city zoning regula­tions for a variance to build inspirational office space for its expanding enterprises: How would Google rank the activities of organizations leading the opposition? Would individual opponents be able to locate the opposition? Or would the opposition be custom coded to screen land on page 13? Transparency = trust.

And imagine if Google “winner$” begin running for public office, how are we to trust its opaque search algorithm during the rough and tumble of an election campaign? Then we’d clearly see the relationship between link and ballot voting.

Transparent search - a far easier metric than Raff’s search neutrality - is vital to our city’s having level commercial and civic playing fields. We’re looking for resources that foster the creation and assessment of transparent search engines for the .nyc TLD. Follow developments on this via our Transparent Search wiki page. ­ ­(Commons photo courtesy of http://aiblsuki.blog122.fc2.com/blog-entry-95.html.)

Learn about .nyc on our wiki pages.

­­­­New York, December 1, 2009 - How we allocate and manage our digital infrastructure is perhaps the central question surrounding the development of the .nyc TLD. What is an effective, efficient, and equitable domain name distribution policy and how do we govern its implementation and oversight?

Our Governance Ecology page provides a number of thoughts on this and today we add two others - common pool resource and common pool regimes.   

Elinor Ostrom, an American political scientist and winner of the 2009 Noble Prize for economics, identifies eight “design principles” of stable local ­common pool resource (CPR) management. Typical common-pool resources include irrigation systems, fishing grounds, pastures, forests, water, and the atmosphere. A first reading of her work indicates many similarities between these resources and a TLD. What can we learn from these, her 8 principles?

• Clea­rly defined boundaries (effective exclusion of external unentitled parties);
• ­Rules regarding the appropriation and provision of common resources are adapted to local conditions;
• Collective-choice arrangements allow most resource appropriators to participate in the decision-making process;
• Effective monitoring by monitors who are part of or accountable to the appropriators;
• There is a scale of graduated sanctions for resource appropriators who violate community rules;
• Mechanisms of conflict resolution are cheap and of easy access;
• The self-determination of the community is recognized by higher-level authorities;
• In the case of larger common-pool resources: organization in the form of multiple layers of nested enterprises, with small local CPRs at the base level.­

­See our ­common pool resources wiki page for more on this “experience of the ages” addition to our governance considerations. (­Commons photo courtesy Sheila.)

Learn about .nyc on our wiki pages.

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. ­­­

­New York, June 30, 2009 - ­Th­e New York City Council is considering a legislative proposal, Intro. 991, that would improve public access to “raw data” held in city databases. Yesterday, in testimony before its Technology in Government Committee, headed by Council Member Gale Brewer, Connecting.nyc Inc. urged the use of the .nyc TLD in facilitating access and management of city databases.

In essence, we urged that the city think of a database as a thing, similar to a bench, a tree, a light post, or fire hydrant. And that a .nyc domain name be assigned to each database. The great thing about giving a domain name to each database (or other “thing”) is that you can then have a conversation about that database.

For example, think about the police department’s crimes database, and let’s take Mayor Bloomberg’s lead and call it “­crimes.data.nyc.” By giving it an intuitive name - http:/ /www.crimes.data.nyc - ­you facilitate the work of ­programmers, but you also create a market place for that database. So at the crimes.data.nyc­­ URL you would find: ­

• a detailed description of the data,
• a link to download the raw data,
• an ongoing conversation of how it “might” be used if only this or that was changed or added,
• comments and possibly a discussion by people who object to it containing too much information,
• a suggestion that a particular field should require privacy access­,

• notations and links to the different apps where the data has been used, and

• ­a civic advocate / entrepreneur match program for locating people with similar interests and a desire to jointly develop apps based on the crimes.data.nyc ­data set.

Learn more about this and see our council testimony.  (Commons Photo courtesy of equinoxefr.)­

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

­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.

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.

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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.

­

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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­­­New York, January 24, 2009 - How will the arrival of the .nyc TLD change civic communication and the governance structure in New York City? Since 1975 our official “divisioning” has been steady: 1 city, 5 boroughs, 51 council districts, and 59 community districts. To date, the Net has not had an impact. Will it? If so, how and when?

With Connecting.nyc Inc.’s .nyc initiative having evolved from Queens Community Board 3’s 2001 Internet Empowerment Resolution, thinking about the TLD’s role and impact on civic affairs has been a constant. Over the past few months, as the probability of the TLDs arrival has grown larger, we’ve begun to focus on the .nyc TLD’s impact on this now 35 year old structure.

Neighborhood domain names have always been seen as valuable civic resources, enabling those amorphous entities to better provide local identify, communication, and broker the effective sharing of local responsibilities and opportunities. We recently created a Traditional Neighborhood Names page to discuss the possibilities and ways we might allocate names such as astoria.nyc, bushwick.nyc, and greenwich-village.nyc, and how we might assure their operation in the interest of local residents.

In early November we submitted an application to the Knight Foundation outlining an entirely new civic structure, something we called Issue-Communities. Using mapping software and social networking tools, Issue-Communities will empower city residents to create narrow communities of interest - “Issue-Communities” - reflecting their concerns. These Issue-Communities can address longstanding local communications deficits and serve as organizing force to focus local concerns.

Recently we began seeing overlaps and parallels in the Traditional Neighborhoods and Issue-Communities projects, and today created a wiki page for thinking through the development of such New Civic Governance Layers. Join us.

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

­­New York, January 17, 2009 - Connecting.nyc Inc. added Michael Johnson to its board of directors at its January 3 meeting. Read about Mr. Johnson and our other board Members.

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

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Friday, October 17, 2008

Time: 10:00 AM Location:

Heari­ng Room - 250 Broadway, 14th Floor Chair:Gale A. Brewer

Brief: Res 1495 - By Council Members Brewer, Comrie, Jackson, James, Liu, Palma, Seabrook and White Jr.

Resolution supporting the local efforts to acquire the .nyc Top Level Domain and urging The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to approve the City’s application in order to meet the needs of city residents via the Internet. ­

See testimony by Connecting.nyc Inc., a partial transcript, and other hearing information ­­. (Commons photo courtesy of srokas)­. 

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

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.)

April 23, 2008 - Connecting.nyc Inc., a New York State not-for-profit corporation created to acquire and develop the .nyc TLD, is seeking two additional members for its board of directors.

If you’d feel comfortable in this picture (right), chances are we don’t want you. But if you’re knowledgeable about the Internet and what it can do for New York City, particularly communities, and if you’re willing to put in one Saturday morning per month meeting with fellow board members to hear about current issues and offer your considered opinions and direction, and if you’re willing on occasion to take on a special task , e.g., pick up the phone and make a call to that special person, you might be the type of member we’re looking for.

If you think you might be interested, see our governance page for more on our thinking and how to submit an application.

And about that picture. That’s not us. We’re going to have a board with a diversity of gender, cultural experiences, and backgrounds. Suits will be optional, other than at our Polar Bear Swim on New Year’s Eve (also optional).  Again, see our governance page for more. (Thanks to CharlesFred for this Creative Commons photo.)

On Monday, March 3, 2008 I presented comments before the New York City Broadband Advisory Committee. Created in 2006 at the behest of Council Member Gale Brewer, the Committee “shall review the ways and methods of using municipal resources to accelerate the build-out of current, emerging and any newly developed broadband technologies and other advanced telecommunications and information services…within the city of New York..”

The comments painted a dark future for our city if we don’t create a telecommunications system competitive with those operating in other major cities. In making these comments I outlined the complimentary role the .nyc TLD can play in providing domain names, identity, and networking for city’s residents and organizations.

Tom Lowenhaupt

Here’s a Washington Post story indicating it might be time to hasten the transition of the city’s official websites from the Federal .gov TLD to our locally controlled .nyc TLD. Note: Connecting.nyc Inc. has committed to reserve the gov.nyc domain for use by the city of New York, Inc. as part of The Civics Project.

House Lawmakers Question Privacy in Cyber-Security Plan

By Brian Krebs

Washingtonpost.com Staff Writer

Friday, February 29, 2008; Page D03

House lawmakers yesterday raised concerns about the privacy implications of a Bush administration effort to secure federal computer networks from hackers and foreign adversaries, as new details emerged about the largely classified program.

The unclassified portions of the project, known as the “cyber initiative,” focus on drastically reducing the number of connections between federal agency networks and the Internet, and more closely monitoring those networks for malicious activity. Slightly more than half of all agencies have deployed the Department of Homeland Security’s program.

But administration officials have not said how far monitoring would go, and whether oversight would extend to networks operated by state, local, and private sector entities, including government defense contractors… (See the full story from the February 29, 2008 Washington Post.)

The NTIA (the unit within the U.S. Department of Commerce that oversees the ICANN’s operation) issued a Notice of Inquiry concerning the readiness of ICANN for greater independence. Connecting.nyc Inc. responded on February 15, 2008.

We saw much progress by ICANN but thought more was required before it was granted greater independence, probably as an international organization. Relating to the .nyc TLD, we made two specific suggestions:

• TLD Acquisition & Operation Costs – With all indications from GNSO and the ICANN that demonstrated community support will be a criterion for evaluating new TLD applications, we have dedicated the preponderance of our resources to soliciting community needs and support. Previous TLD acquisition opportunities have required costly and time consuming application fees and processes. We proposed the ICANN shortcut the process and costs associated with acquiring the .nyc TLD (and other city-TLDs). With urban area now home to more than half of the world’s population, the lacuna in the original DNS (i.e., no city-TLDs) screams for repair . We seek a nominal application fee for what we see as our repair operation. Also, we proposed that for the initial 5 years of operation, the per-name new and renewal fees to ICANN should be eliminated.
• Priority on Application Processing – Creating a process for new TLDs has taken over a decade and indications are that many applications will be forthcoming when the application window opens. We expressed our concern that a plethora of product applications for new TLDs by Fortune 1000 firms might inundate the ICANN’s small staff and reduce the likelihood of city-TLDs being issued on a timely basis. We recommended that the ICANN make provision for the priority handling of applications for city-TLD applications, enabling a rapid application of Internet’s TLD medicine to long simmering city needs.

More broadly, we reviewed the “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 last November, and panelist Sebastian Bacholet’s preview of the internationalization study initiated by developers of the .nyc, .berlin, and .paris TLDs at the ICANN Los Angeles meeting. We indicated that this first research effort presages many similar opportunities and a role for coordination and sharing among cities. As well, it points to the need for a more formal position for cities in ICANN’s oversight processes. We noted that urban areas are now home to more than 50% of the world’s population and consume 75% of its resources and that the initiation of city-TLDs provides an opportunity to address the sustainability issue.

See the full comments. (Commons photo courtery of robertcz.)