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March 28, 2012 By Noelle Knell
A decision last year from the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) makes it possible for cities to apply for their own top-level domain (TLD) extension. The application fee is $185,000, with ongoing costs of $25,000 annually. The approval process can take 18 months, with controls in place to keep branded “dot-city” extensions out of the hands of cybersquatters hoping to profit from a city’s notoriety.
It’s been widely reported that New York City is applying for its own TLD, called “.nyc,” seeing revenue generating potential from reselling sites within that domain to New York City businesses. A joint statement issued March 21 by Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and Councilmembers Gale Brewer and Fernando Cabrera explained: “From the bodega down the block to the pizza parlor around the corner, soon every New York City business will have the opportunity to register its own dot-NYC domain.”
But what works for New York City won’t necessarily work for the rest of the country. Experts agree that most U.S. cities simply don’t have a large enough base of potential local customers to support an endeavor of this magnitude.
New York City has at least one built-in advantage. It has contracted with Sterling, Va.-based Neustar, for a five-year period, during which the city is guaranteed at least $3.6 million in revenue. Neustar handles several other top-level domains, including dot-us, dot-biz and dot-co.
“No city government is going to have the cash and the resources to make this happen themselves,” said Kristy Fifelski, founder and CEO of Digital Gov Group, in a recent interview with Government Technology. Fifelski offers additional perspective as the former webmaster for Reno, Nev. “It would be pretty hard to refuse a third party that promises to pay those upfront costs and promises a return in the millions.”
Matt Harrington, a graphic and Web specialist with Albany, Ore., also serves as president of the National Association of Government Webmasters, made up of Web staff from small to medium-sized cities across the country. “In terms of our membership and our demographic, I don't see this being a viable or relevant option for them. I just don't think there's the critical mass in a smaller market to gain traction with a new top-level domain.”
What then is the threshold above which a U.S. city could make a new top-level domain a success? Are other large cities contemplating a new dot-city site of their own?
Vijay Sammeta, acting CIO of San Jose, Calif., recalls early conversations between IT and city marketing staff around the possibility of pursuing a city-branded TLD. With concerns about costs and the viability of yet another domain in the marketplace, officials adopted a wait-and-see approach.
“The average Internet consumer is used to dot-coms, dot-orgs and dot-nets. There have been other TLDs released, but they just aren't really prevalent,” Sammeta told Government Technology.
Marketplace competition offering domains for as little as $10 per year put the onus on cities to generate significant interest in branded domains just to recoup their initial investment.
That said, Sammeta doesn’t dismiss the idea entirely, but rather sees potential for a city-branded top-level domain if the local government backed the effort with marketing dollars. “Cities would have to not just resell the service, but actually take an active lead in marketing those businesses that buy those domain names.”
There seems to be consensus that the likelihood for success increases if the branded city domain is part of a broader city-backed marketing effort, as is the case with New York City.
“All eyes are on New York City right now to see if they will be successful. If they are, then I think other cities may try to model that approach,” Fifelski added. “But they're going to need that local business base to purchase those domains.”
A “dot-la” Web extension long predated the current ICANN rules. Operated by CentralNic Ltd. out of London, the site markets domains with a dot-la extension, billing itself as “the domain for Los Angeles.” While many prominent domains within .la remain available, the company appears to have made some progress within the local market. The site isn’t affiliated with the city of Los Angeles itself.
The long-range viability of the current dot-la domain, however, is unclear. The “la” abbreviation is also the official code for the country of Laos in southeast Asia. Last year, the nation mounted an effort to reclaim the dot-la domain name.
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The bums rush of the registry-registrar industry caught New York City unprepared to review its options with regard to the operation of a TLD. Is it first a TLD a revenue generator or it a form of infrastructure for a digital age? The registry-registrar industry has a simple measure of a TLDs success - name sales, with the more names sold the more successful the TLD. Since our formation in 2005 we've advocated for measuring the success of a city-TLD based on its improvement to the quality of life. In our comments to the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, concerning the proposed contract, we offered some perspective that we hope will begin to move cities to understand the role a TLD can play in their future. As follows: What is a City-TLD? 3 Views Let's think back to the early 1800's when work began on what's now called the Commissioners Plan of 1811. The Plan set out the city's street grid - 1st to 155th Streets and 1st to 12th Avenues. It took 4 years and even then they left out a few parts – like Central Park. And late in the process they said “Let's put in Lexington Avenue.” Not by name mind you – but conceptually. The Commissioners' Plan wasn't about names. And this city-TLD is not, in its essence, about names. Names are part of both. But the core elements are structure, order, and accountability. My view is that a .nyc is a scaffold for our culture and our treasures. Think for a second about the New York Yankees. Yes, all the star players have names. But its the combination of players, coaches, trainers, owners, fans, and concessionaires selling hotdogs and beer that make the New York Yankees a success. Each and every person in this list of what might be called the “Yankees Network” has a name. But it's an effective organizational structure and culture that makes the Yankees win. From my perspective our city's TLD is a culture making tool. A scaffold for organizing our resources. [[[ see part 2 ]]]
[[[ part 2 ]]] Let me tell you another view, one I'll call The Grand View (I'm thankful to David Bollier's Viral Spiral for this.) – It involves the legendary Adam Smith. Everyone is familiar with the impact of his The Wealth of Nations. To some this 1776 economics treaties is their constitution and bible. In it Smith wrote about people's penchant for what he called “truck, barter, and exchange” - markets and capitalism. Today his thoughts serve as a basis for our global economy. In another work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith wrote about “deep impulses of human sympathy and morality” that included the most important of human traits – sharing, loving, caring, sympathy, empathy. The Grand View holds that the .nyc TLD is a organizing force for digitizing these most important human impulses. At first glance, to an old timer like me, this sounded like crazy talk. But when I look at developments like Wikipedia and the Open Source movement, I see Smith's “deep impulses of human sympathy and morality” played out on a daily basis. Projects like these are all about people sharing to help one another. So 250 years later Adam Smith's sympathetic half may reach fruition through Internet resources like the .nyc TLD. Because now we have a tool to more effectively identify, count, track, and value the good. Imagine our city with a 1,000 Wikipedia scale projects. Efforts like: JacksonHeights.nyc GreenwichVillage.nyc Harlem.nyc Voters.nyc CivicIssues.nyc CandidatesForMayor.nyc So what's a city-TLD? It's a powerful planning and organizing tool that can improve our city and our lives during the foreseeable future.
There's a scam embedded in this article; the link that claims to be a web site set up by "the city" for pre-registration. That URL is owned by some outfit called "Wild West Domains" in Utah. How much you want to bet they're phishing around for domains to squat on? If you're smart, you'll hold off until the city annouces the actual registration schedule and procedure. Out.
This would also permit these cities to bypass some of the rules/restrictions that come with .gov domains.
That link has been deleted from this story. Thanks for heads-up, and we apologize for the erroneous information.
.NYC NO Yellow Crayons New Years Celebration With the new Peer-2-Peer DNS (P2P) one starts with Digital Wallets and Currency. Then the gTLDs emerge when people have BitCoins and NameCoins to pay for them. ICANN is over 10 years behind in leading-edge technology. It is surprising New Yorkers have not demanded more modern solutions.
By the way, it is sort of ironic that .US and .BIZ will be two of the TLDs most likely to be RE-LAUNCHED with the new P2P DNS (using BitCoin NameCoin technology). Other TLDs will likely skip the ICANN Market Trial stage. That is the phase where some level of interest in a TLD is measured. With the new P2P DNS there are 4096 slots for the Trending TLDs. New Yorkers may want to move to that and skip the long and expensive road of the "ICANN Process". P2P DNS requires some clue (i.e. expertise) most governments don't have and can not afford. Moving .COM and ,NET to P2P DNS is of course the top priority, or what some call the low-hanging-fruit. .INC will also go direct to the P2P DNS. http://www.icann.org/en/news/correspondence/chapman-to-beckstrom-30mar12-en