­ ­­ ­­Good Names for a Great City

How Many .nyc Names?

First Draft: ­­City of New York 
­­­­­­Reserved Names

Shift Day

Other TLDs

Which Good?

Developing a Domain Name Allocation Plan that serves the long term interest of the New York City community requires difficult choices. There is a body of experien­ce to draw upon, e.g., the methodology used by .com, .org, the .eu, .asia, and other TLDs; and community standards developed by the FCC and others. Ultimately of course, we will be guided in deciding the appropriate role for our city's TLD by the values of the New York City community. Here are some example of the tough choices we face.

Think about a name without an obvious owner such as music.nyc. Under our public interest umbrella, there are two evident allocation alternatives:

• Sell It - Hold an auction with the revenue from the high bidder going into civic education; or
  
• Community Evaluation - We might develop guidelines for identifying the public interest and deciding which names, such as music.nyc, to set aside to further the development of important communities. These are of at least two types, historic geographic communities such as Astoria, Harlem, and Soho, and communities of interest: music, news, shoes.... So we might conclude that music.nyc would be best developed by the city's music community and offer Astoria.nyc to the highest bidder. See the Rugby vs. Rugby page for a discussion on this.
  

Name Categories 

An ontology and taxonomy for different types of relationships and names is an important early step in identifying name distribution policies. One view sees different "bands": trademark, local trademark, exclusive, shared, community...

An early question arises as to what are appropriate community or public interest names? What process do we use to identify "civic" and "public interest" domain names. Some seem obvious: gov.nyc, mayor.nyc, and council.nyc for government; for the tourism industry, hotels.nyc; and for the general public names like www.directory.nyc and www.index.nyc.

Reserved Names

Required as per ICANN Contract

We will comport with ICANN recommendations on reserved names for technical and public policy reasons. The ICANN will likely require that the following second level names be reserved: 0, 1, 2, 3,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, a, AFRINIC, APNIC, ARIN, ASO, b, c, ccNSO, d, e, Example, f, g, GNSO, gtld-servers, h, i, IAB, IANA, iana-servers, ICANN, IESG, IETF, Internic, IRTF, ISTF, j, k, l, LACNIC, LATNIC, m, n, NIC*, o, p, q, r, rfc-editor, RIPE, root-servers, s, t, test, u, v, w, Whois*, www*, x, y, z.. The * names are reserved for use by registry operators only.

Reserved to Facilitate the Operation of the .nyc TLD

• index.nyc
• portal.nyc
• help.nyc
• connecting.nyc

Reserved for Intellectual Property Holders

"Sunrise" periods provide existing trademark and other intellectual property (IP) holders with the opportunity to reserve names in the .nyc space.

• Trademark Sunrise Period - National and international trademark holders might seek names such as: www.siemens.nyc, www.hyatt.nyc, www.porsche.nyc, www.lufthansa.nyc, www.ebay.nyc, www.google.nyc, www.newyorkpost.nyc, www.ibm.nyc, www.nytimes.nyc, www.coke.nyc. Traditionally a 1-2 month period is set aside for such trademark holders.

• Local Sunrise Period - We are considering having NYC based companies and organizations provided with the opportunity to reserve familiar names such as www.cuny.nyc, www.nypl.nyc, www.nyu.nyc, and www.queenscollege.nyc.
  

Reserved for the Future

How do we reserve names for future generations? A vexing problem. Year names provide a good example of name set-asides: 2010.nyc, 2011.nyc, 2012.nyc, etc. What other names should be set aside for future use? See our Sustainable City-TLD page for a discussion.

Held in Trust for Local New York City Government Units

The .nyc TLD will facilitate the interaction and operation of city governance and service delivery with institutions, residents, community organizations, and businesses. Intuitive URLs like council.nyc, mayor.nyc, and police.nyc will make a city’s resources readily available and easier to locate. As well, city government can develop micro sites like parkingregs.gov.nyc and cityholidays.gov.nyc.

• gov.nyc (as redirect, mirror, or home (if the USA is forced to abandon its use of .gov) for New York City's government website.
  

• police.nyc

• NYPD.nyc
  
• fire.nyc
  

• 911.nyc

• council.nyc

• mayor.nyc

• copic.nyc

• 311.nyc

• 211.nyc

• The cb##.borough.gov.nyc (currently used is cb##.borough.nyc.gov) series for the city's 59 community boards.
  

On June 9, 2008, Connecting.nyc volunteers reached out to public employees through our "Names for a Livable City" effort. On June 29, 2009, speaking at the Personal Democracy Forum, Mayor Bloomberg suggested using data.nyc for the NYC Apps initiative. It sounds like the mayor has been reading our wiki.

Name Categories

Business Improvement Districts

Civic Names

See the Civic Names page and the set-aside project. 

Commons.nyc

Many .nyc names might be considered part of a commons, to be developed for the benefit of residents. 

Dictionary Names

There are tens of thousands of English dictionary names.

Geographic Names

Some geographic names are legal entities, others are real estate names coined to sell property in specific geographic areas. New York City has hundreds of  "neighborhoods" and other places, some of which have name value. See the Cyber Land Use Plan for more on this.

• Boroughs: queens.nyc, manhattan.nyc, brooklyn.nyc (kings.county.ny.us), bronx.nyc, thebronx.nyc, staten-island.nyc
  
• Neighborhoods: jackson-heights.nyc, astoria.nyc, greenwich-village.nyc, uppereastside.nyc, upper-east-side.nyc, bensonhurst.nyc.
• Park Names: central-park.nyc, centralpark.nyc

Internet of Things

Nationality Names

New York City is perhaps the world's  most culturally diverse city. See the plan for reserving Nationality Names. 

Neighborhood Names - dotNeighborhoods

New York is a city of neighborhoods. Criteria are being developed for distributing these dotNeighborhood Names.

Portal Pages

See the discussion about the portals and portal pages. Possible portal pages include: hotels.nyc | pharmacys.nyc | real-estate.nyc | hairdressers.nyc  | craftsmen.nyc | yellowpages.nyc  | fashion.nyc

Water Resource Names

New York is a port city composed of many islands with less than 10% part of the mainland. In recent years the city has started opening access to formerly severely polluted waters. We are collecting the historic and current names of the city's water resources for possible reservation and allocation to responsible entities. See City of Water Names for details.

Auction  Names

Auctioning names provide a rich opportunity to raise immediate revenue and diminish name hoarding. An August 2008 paper published by ICANN and its "auction partner" PowerAuctions LLCSee The Economic Case for Auctions in New TLDs, sheds some light on the matter .

• sports.nyc, news.nyc and names of this sort have no obvious "owners" with prior claim on them. They can be auctioned early on to fund the start-up efforts, later to raise larger funds for our education efforts, or operated as part of a .nyc commons.

• com.nyc - Using TLDs as second level domains is currently prohibited by ICANN. As there are intuitive and taxonomic benefits from such usages, we will petition for their use. If successful, these "TLD" names will be made available.
  

• a.nyc, b.nyc, c.nyc..., 1.nyc, 2.nyc... - Issuing single character, second level domain names ( 1, 2, 3... and a, b, c...) is currently prohibited by ICANN. This policy is under review by the ICANN and should it change, we would place these up for auction.

• and portal selections might also be held by the commons or auctioned.
  

Disambiguation Pages­

While not frequently encountered on the web, disambiguation offers one means for resolving disputes over names. It is the process of resolving ambiguity when a single name can be associated with more than one entity. In many cases, this word or phrase is the same natural title of more than one organization. In other words, disambiguations are paths leading to different domain pages that share essentially the same characters in their title. Apple Records and Apple Computer provide a classic example of an early conflict over the www.apple.com domain name.

Shared, Temporary Names

It is expected that we will develop a pool of civic names for use on a temporary basis, for example, SaveTheTree.nyc might facilitate civic goals of many different projects.

Undesirable Names

This is an area of great sensitivity for many people. Four letter words are frequently the first to draw children to search a dictionary. What policy is appropriate for these words? What about their counterparts in foreign languages? A study of the FCC's community standards might provide a start on this and George Carlin's 7 dirty words. Others have suggested caution around certain words with a sexual connotation.

Names to Facilitate International Travel

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. Panelist Sébastien Bachollet, appearing on behalf of the .paris TLD, previewed the internationalization study initiated by developers of the .nyc, .berlin, and .paris TLDs at an earlier ICANN meeting in Los Angeles. 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, in some instances vital, information. We are continuing a dialog on this innovation.

Hording / Speculation / Typosquatting / Name Clouds

• What lessons are to be learned from the .com, .biz, and .eu experiences?

• For an excellent article on name clouds, see Bret Fausett's article on the Namesbriefs blog.
  
• See report on typosquatting: http://us.mcafee.com/root/identitytheft.asp?id=safe_typo&cid=38296.
  

Nexus

Connecting.nyc will limit those who can purchase a .nyc domain to those with a strong New York City nexus or connection. The criteria for establishing nexus will include property ownership, business license, and voter registration.

For examples of nexus requirements see:

• Singapore - Domain Name Registration Agreement

• The .us Requirement - http://www.neustar.us/policies/docs/ustld_nexus_requirements.pdf
  
• The .asia Nexus - http://www.dotasia.org/draft/DotAsia-Charter-Eligibility--FINALDRAFT-v-1-5.pdf
• The .cat (Catalonia) Nexus - http://www.domini.cat/media/upload/arxius/charter.pdf

Most knowledgeable people indicate that there's a slippery slope here that will inevitable lead .nyc to be as open as the .com TLD. We hope "most knowledgeable people" are wrong in this instance. See our Nexus Policy page.

Miscellany

• Proximity - Geographic locations are an important element of the .nyc TLD's intuitive design. See the "namespace and GIS" page for other geographic relationships.
• DNS - Is it possible to present this wiki process within an existing domain name server? 
• Sustainable City TLDs - When .nyc comes online it will provide a seemingly endless set of names to draw upon. But if we take a "city view" of domain names, imagining how the .nyc TLD will serve us 10, 20, and 100 years from now, one enters the realm of sustainability.
  

Registration Policy

Relevant Links

• Ebay's takedown process.
  

• The Economic Case for Auctions in New TLDs - A paper published by ICANN and its "auction partner" PowerAuctions LLC.
  
• Who owns Hillary? - A proposal for more trademark-like protections for political names. See this SSRN paper.
  

• The .eu Domain Name Distribution Process
• First-Come First-Served Paper
• The Perfect Sunrise? - A booklet on designing a sunrise period by the IPC. 

• History of the DNS in a Thousand Emails 
  

Key .nyc Pages

• The .nyc Wiki Home Page
  
• Governance Ecology
• Common Pool Resources
  
• Cyber Land-Use Plan
  
• The Portals
  

• Portal Page Development
  

• Portal Page Content Guidelines
  
• Ten Names You Don't Want To See Within .nyc  (a fun page)
  
• The Operating Environment
• The Development Environment
• Connecting.nyc Inc.'s Home Page
• Our Blog