Fellow Members of the At-Large: I hope you all will share my delight in last week's resolution by the the New York Internet Society calling for the city of New York to hold public hearings before renewing its contract with Neustar Inc. for the operation of the .nyc TLD. The resolution stated: *“The Internet Society’s New York Chapter urges the city of New York to provide robust outreach and engagement opportunities for the city’s Internet stakeholder community prior to renewing the contract that will guide the operation of the .nyc TLD registry for the next 5 years.”* The resolution was sent to Mayor Bill deBlasio and other city officials with oversight of the city’s digital resources. It cited 14 areas of concern and called upon the city to undertake a three stage review before renewing the contract: 1. The City institute a public comment process. 2. The City convene a town hall event where all stakeholders may make their views known. 3. That the City review these comments and, as it sees fit, make appropriate adjustments. The Internet Society’s New York Chapter (ISOC-NY) is a NYS non-profit founded in 1997 and also a fellow At-Large Structure. As is touched on in the ISOC-NY letter, there is minuscule opportunity for meaningful public engagement in setting our city's Internet policy by New York City's individual Internet users. This stems, in part, from our city charter having been written pre-Internet. An Internet era rewrite is long overdue. And while there was once a .NYC Community Advisory Board, it was abolished more than two years ago. Now the city has indicated that it plans to renew the Neustar contract without any public consultation. (The city administration is seemingly unfamiliar with the concept of multistakeholder governance.) We would appreciate your thoughts and efforts on achieving our goal of a more responsive, transparent, and accountable governance of the .nyc TLD. Please take a couple of minutes to send a short note to the mayor. This form <http://www.nyc.gov/html/static/pages/officeofthemayor/contact.shtml> will allow that. You'll need to select a topic, I suggest we channel them through the "Ideas or Suggestions" drop down. Sincerely, Thomas Lowenhaupt, Director, Connecting.nyc Inc. Secretary, New York Internet Society P.S. The full Internet Society resolution is copied below with a .pdf attached. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 6 2017 The Internet Society Chapter of the Greater New York Metropolitan Area To: Mayor Bill deBlasio, Cc: Letitia James, Gale Brewer, Melissa Mark-Viverito, James Vacca, Sree Srinivasan, Miguel Gamiño, Jeff Merritt, info@ownit.nyc Dear Sirs & Madams, On March 31 2012 New York City signed a 5 year contract with Neustar Inc, to manage the .nyc Top Level Domain (TLD).[1] The domain was delegated by ICANN on March 20, 2014 [2], and went into operation on May 5 2014 [3]. According to tldstats, as of February 6, 2016, 72,919 domains are registered.[4] The Internet Society’s New York Chapter (ISOC-NY) is a New York State registered non-profit founded in 1997 with the mission “to assure the beneficial, open evolution of the global Internet, and to promote local initiatives, maximize the societal benefits which the Internet can bring to the New York area.” As such we have taken a keen interest in .nyc as a public resource. This has included promoting, recording, webcasting, (and, on occasion, hosting) any and all public events where the development of the .nyc TLD has been discussed. Noting that the Neustar contract is imminently due for renewal, on January 31, 2017, the ISOC-NY Board of Directors passed the following resolution: *“The Internet Society’s New York Chapter urges the city of New York to** **provide robust outreach and engagement opportunities for the city’s Internet** **stakeholder community prior to renewing the contract that will guide the** **operation of the .nyc TLD registry for the next 5 years.”* I therefore ask that, before the contract be renewed. * The City institute a public comment process. * The City convene a town hall event where all stakeholders may make their views known. * That the City review those comments and views and, as it sees fit, make appropriate adjustments. Sincerely, Joly MacFie, President, Internet Society New York Chapter 218 565 9365 president@isoc-ny.org [1] http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/forward/documents/dotnyc/Neustar-TLD-Signed%20Agr... [2] https://www.iana.org/reports/c.2.9.2.d/20140314-nyc [3] https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/sunrise-claims-periods/nyc [4] https://ntldstats.com/tld/nyc [5] http://bit.ly/2kiAozP [6] http://bit.ly/2kAci22 [7] http://bit.ly/2kA9mma [8] http://www.ownit.nyc/faq [9] http://www.ownit.nyc/restricted-reserved [10] http://www1.nyc.gov/site/forward/initiatives/dotnyc/dotnycdocs.page [11] https://youtu.be/yH0clLwPEfo ----- Appendix 1 - Observations & Nitpicks * Since a December 2015 high of 87,960 the number of registrations has been in steady decline - down approximately 16% [4] * 60% of registered domains are parked. [4] * According to connecting.nyc many auctioned premium names are non-functional/up for resale. [5] * Neustar Inc.itself is being sold [6] * The Community Advisory Board set up by the City [7] never had public meetings or published minutes, and appears to have been summarily disbanded. * The FAQ on the ownit.nyc website appears not to have been updated since the launch.[8] * Also the ownit.nyc site does not include a list of reserved names (link is RGP list). [9] * However, in 2015, the Mayor’s Office did make a proper info page. [10] * The contract says: “Neustar shall publish the website in English and the top six non-English languages spoken by City residents, as set forth by Executive Order 120 (dated July 22, 2008) (“E.O. 120”). This is only done using google translate, thus not checked for accuracy. * After outreach “community webinars” were held in just 2 of the 5 boroughs. The rollout of ‘neighborhood names’ seems stalled.[11] * The neighborhoods.nyc template only includes modules from the City’s vendor with no open API or process to include 3rd parties e.g. BetaNYC. * Clause 6(g) of the contract calls on Neustar to conduct 50 nexus spot checks/week. There is no documentation that this has been done. * The nexus requirement, while desirable, may inhibit personal use of .nyc because of privacy concerns, as all info is available via whois. The City might want to instigate a proxy mechanism for individuals. * ownit.nyc is not available via IPv6. And also the IPv6 nameserver appears to give a different result to the IPv4 nameservers. If so, this is not kosher. ...end...