Group in New York wants a .nyc domain.
A non-profit organization in New York City — connecting.nyc — wants to secure a new top level domain (TLD) for the city. The TLD, .nyc, would allow the city, its businesses, and residents to brand themselves as part of the city.
The idea of a TLD for a city is not new. A group in Germany is well-known for trying to get a .berlin domain.
.nyc’s goal is to get the domain during 2008. Connecting.nyc cites a number of benefits to a .nyc domain:
More Livable City – Daily life in the city will improve as we begin to use the Internet to organize the city’s resources. For example, when searching for a school, begin at www.schools.nyc.
Economic Development – Additional, short, descriptive, and easy to remember domain names will be available to those seeking to start small businesses, especially among the young and immigrant communities. Domain name revenue will remain in the city. The .nyc TLD says “Made in New York City.”
Identity, Trust, Community, Justice, and Civic Pride – Residents and businesses can more easily locate and network with one another within a managed .nyc top level domain. Civic awareness, community pride, and self empowerment will follow.
Tourism / Marketing – The city can better market itself globally as a tourist destination and business center by setting aside and managing names like www.hotels.nyc.
Internet Access & Training – Funds raised through name sales and other revenue opportunities will be used to provide Internet access, technical training, and educate New Yorkers about opportunities that arise from a networked world.
Preparing for Global Competition – New York City will be better able to compete as a corporate headquarters-city with Singapore (.sg) and Hong Kong (.hk), which have TLDs.
.nyc would be similar to a country code domain, in that it would not be fully managed by ICANN. The organization that runs .nyc would retain control on who can register the domain, which domains will be reserved for government or other use, etc. For example, .EU is a country code domain. Registrars for .EU do not have to be ICANN-accredited.
Jim Fleming says
The New DNS software, that runs in UNIX (Linux) CPE devices, allows new TLDs to come and go based on market data.
The legacy .COM zone is used. For a NYC TLD the *-NYC.com names are used as anchor tenants.
The .COM zone is also being cloned or re-launched with the lower-case version. The *-COM.com format is used.
Some of the changes will help to reduce the theft of .COM and .NET names. The Registry-Registrar system was based on naive academic non-profit QUANGO models. That does not work with Registrars operating as sharks.
The address allocation and routing system also does not work when based on naive QUANGO models. Fortunately, the U.S. FCC and the telco/cableco duopoly are stepping in to provide a stable base. Many IPv4 address blocks will become available when people realize they are no longer routed.