Fellow NARALO Members,

ICANN granted the city of New York the right to issue domain names using the .nyc TLD in January 2014. As of May 1, 2016, 76,682 names had been issued to individuals and organizations.

Connecting.nyc Inc. is an At-Large Structure associated with the ICANN and an active participant in its multistakeholder governance process. With our focus on the development of the .nyc TLD as a public interest resource, I recently reviewed the .nyc Registry Agreement page on ICANN's website <https://www.icann.org/resources/agreement/nyc-2014-01-23-en>, and noted that four changes to the original agreement had been recorded there. Three were under the heading "Authorization(s) for Release of Reserved Names," as follows:

The fourth was listed under "Amendment No.1 (31 March 2016)":

The existence of these changes came as a complete surprise to me. As Chair of Connecting.nyc Inc., a NYS nonprofit created in 2007 to engage and educate New Yorkers about the use of the .nyc TLD, and as an active participant in ICANN's governance processes through our association as an At-Large Structure, I had presumed we would have been consulted about changes to the registry agreement.

My desire for inclusion of individual Internet users in consultations about future registry changes provides the basis for this message.

Note: An earlier email on this general subject led some to think I was challenging the 4 registry changes as being out of compliance with approved ICANN procedures. This is not the case. And based on my perusal of precedent references kindly provided by a fellow ALSer (see them below), I’d say that ICANN and the city followed the “letter of the law.” However...

However, I do question the efficacy of a process that allows changes to a registry agreement without taking full advantage of the existing machinery of governance, i.e., the multistakeholder model and the extant At-Large Structures (ISOC-NY is also a NYC based ALS). With the Internet community having settled on a multistakeholder governance model, one would imagine that our ALS would be involved in changing the basic agreement that guides the operation of the .nyc TLD.

But perhaps we were excluded from the review process for good reason, for example, that the city’s governance structure more effectively represents the needs of the various stakeholders than the Internet’s multistakeholder model. After all, New York City does have a democratic governance system, and a general election was held in November 2013. Perhaps it's thought the people thereby approved or acquiesced to the registry agreement, and thus, in the eyes of ICANN, a city-based ALS should not have a formal role. If this is the situation, I would appreciate someone pointing me to the relevant guidelines. For indeed...

At this point, the city is acting as if there is no role for its residents in a traditional multistakeholder model. While there was a 20 month period during which the city acknowledged the role of the residents and users through a .NYC Community Advisory Board (May 2013 - December 2014), the city unilaterally decided that entity should cease to exist on January 1, 2015. And to my dismay, it followed this decision by eliminating all reference to the .NYC Community Advisory Board’s very existence from the city’s website.

NOTE: To my knowledge city government has not been provided with any requirement or guideline about the operation of an inclusive, multistakeholder governance process for the .nyc TLD. So I’m not faulting the city administration for the current state of affairs. To do so would be to assume greater awareness and concomitant responsibility about this new resource than is seemingly warranted.  

What’s to be done?

This email seeks the assistance or NARALO in learning if Connecting.nyc Inc. should be provided with an opportunity to consult and consent to future registry agreement changes. We see precedent for this with the .us TLD.

The .us TLD is currently governed with the assistance of a .usTLD Stakeholder Council: http://www.neustar.us/ustld-stakeholder-council/structure-and-history/. The council has a charter,  operating procedures, a membership (which is appointed by the contractor!), and  operational parameters (see usTLD Administrative Component graphic below).


If it is the consensus that we are inappropriately outside the extant "consultation loop" I suggest that NARALO initiate a review to determine if the current process should be changed to more closely align with the tenets of the multistakeholder governance system that underpins the operation of ICANN and the Internet.

Sincerely,

Thomas Lowenhaupt



Basis for ICANN approval of 4 .nyc TLD registry agreement changes