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 govern its implementation and oversight?

More Thoughts on the Common Pool

Our Governance Ecology page provides a number of thoughts on these questions. Here we focus on two related thoughts: common pool resource and common pool regimes, that provide one possible direction. The thought leader in this area is Elinor Ostrom, an American political scientist and winner of the 2009 Noble Prize for economics, who has identified 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 with 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.­

From Wikipedia...

Common property regimes arise in situations where appropriators acting independently in relationship to a common-pool resource generating scarce resource units would obtain a lower total net benefit than what is achieved if they coordinate their strategies in some way, maintaining the resource system as common property instead of dividing it up into bits of private property. Common property regimes typically protect the core resource and allocate the fringe through complex community norms of consensus decision-making. Common resource management has to face the difficult task of devising rules that limit the amount, timing, and technology used to withdraw various resource units from the resource system. Setting the limits too high would lead to overuse and eventually to the destruction of the core resource, while setting the limits too low would unnecessarily reduce the benefits obtained by the users.

In common property regimes, access to the resource is not free, and common-pool resources are not public goods. While there is relatively free but monitored access to the resource system for community members, there are mechanisms in place which allow the community to exclude outsiders from using its resource. Thus, in a common property regime, a common-pool resource appears as a private good to an outsider and as a common good to an insider of the community. The resource units withdrawn from the system are typically owned individually by the appropriators. A common property good is rivaled in consumption.

Common property regimes typically function at a local level to prevent the overexploitation of a resource system from which fringe units can be extracted. There are no examples of common property regimes which solve problems of overuse on a larger scale, such as air pollution. In some cases, government regulations combined with tradable environmental allowances (TEAs) are used successfully to prevent excessive pollution, whereas in other cases — especially in the absence of a unique government being able to set limits and monitor economic activities — excessive use or pollution continue.