Re: [NA-Discuss] Concerning the NeuStar ~ New York City "public hearing"
Thomas, While I don't see it as the NA RALO's duty to support new TLD efforts, I do see it as our duty to help members of NA with ICANN issues in the public interest. The non-transparency of contract negotiations are certainly an issue in the public interest. Would it be helpful if I demand on behalf of NA RALO access to the contract in the public interest, in accordance with the ICANN affirmation of commitments? Or has the horse already left the barn, so to speak? I don't know how much power the RALO has, but I am more than willing to test it on your behalf, as we have done with the .PR issue, with conflict of interest, and other topics. Beau Brendler -----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Lowenhaupt <toml@communisphere.com> Sent: Mar 27, 2012 1:52 AM To: joly@punkcast.com Cc: NA Discuss <na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Concerning the NeuStar ~ New York City "public hearing"
Joly,
I've posted my notes from my Thursday morning opportunity to view the proposed NeuStar contract here. <http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/blog/2012/03/23/first-ve...> They are quite incomplete. And that's really a sorry state of affairs, because your notes and mine are the totality of reporting on the portions of the contract that were made available to us. (As I've noted in the sidebar of the written comments page, the meat of he contract is not yet complete).
The viewing period is over and the city has said "Sorry folks, you missed it." That lack of transparency is my note #1. And the only one that counts. No transparency no contract. (At least that's my view.)
It's really quite amazing, sickening really. It's against the law in the city to sell a pair of sneakers with a purchasing contract as opaque as NeuStar's. But they'll get 15 years of revenue from our TLD, and we can't see the contract. Astounding.
Gale was as usual most clear. Thanks for getting her statement online. Her comments would have been far more interesting had she been able to see the contract.
My 3-minutes of comments are probably best left on the cutting room floor - was I foaming at the mouth? The written ones <http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/comments-to-doitt-on-pro...> make a few important points. At the hearing the one point I was trying to make was that DoITT should have been the last part of the acquisition process, not the one and only. Research, public education and outreach, city council hearings, and perhaps legislation preceding an IT purchasing process.
But I wasn't able to convince anyone here on NA Discuss that a city-TLD was more significant than .banjo, and it's beginning to look not in the city either.
Best,
Tom Lowenhaupt
On 3/26/2012 1:35 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:
While I support you in principle Tom, I did think at the hearing that your comments, rushed as they were in the three minutes available, were a little too philosophical when what was needed was sharp bullet points about shortcomings in the contract and process.
I thought Gale Brewer did a fair job of this which is why I have posted the video of her testimony. http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117&cpage=1#comment-8232 <http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117&cpage=1#comment-8232>
I will process the rest of the hearing so your comments can be seen and heard.
My limited understanding, from a cursory viewing of the contract,
* the City itself is nominally the applicant, but that Neustar will do the applying and pay the fees. * Neustar will pay the City something along the lines of 40% of revenue (gross? unclear) * there will be nexus requirements, and domains will be revocable if found not in compliance. * the city will spot check 50 domains a year for compliance. * there will be reserved names - as yet undetermined, for which the City will act as registrar.
j
On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 9:51 AM, Thomas Lowenhaupt <toml@communisphere.com <mailto:toml@communisphere.com>> wrote:
Evan,
Your concerns are heart warming.
New York City might be headed off a cliff with its application. The "public hearing" Joly announced about a NeuStar ~ New York City arrangement concerned a contract that is incomplete and therefore not available to the public - see http://blog.connectingnyc.org (don't care about the issue - see my friends BloomBORG for a giggle).
Moving forward, I hope to find segments of the Internet community that will join me in developing a plan / guidelines that will assist cities navigating the shark infested registry-registrar waters, creating best practices, and effectively governing their TLDs. I'll be announcing that early next week.
In the meantime, in preparing my comments for the faux-public hearing, I'm getting closer to answering your "What's so important about city-TLDs?" question. It might be too late to help my home city, and I'm not 100% there yet, but I hope the below begins to turn up the volume so that people will begin to hear the music to which I dance.
Best,
Tom Lowenhaupt
________________________________ From my comments to the faux-hearing:
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.
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.
________________________________
On 3/22/2012 4:45 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
On 22 March 2012 15:10, Joly MacFie <joly@punkcast.com <mailto:joly@punkcast.com>> wrote:
A public hearing on NYC's allocation of the .nyc contract to Neustar will be held tomorrow, Friday, in Brooklyn.
Looks like all of Thomas Lowenhaupt's multiple years of hard work advocating for a community-focused .nyc TLD for may turn out to have been blazing a rugged, obstacle-clearing trail through which Neustar may now drive its HumVee.
Thomas, I feel for ya. I was a vocal skeptic of your proposal but am even more critical of a direct government-Neustar registry (both in process and likely substance). I didn't expect that your project would seek out defensive domains but I can feel fairly confident that a pure generic play would consider defencives as part of their revenue mix.
Personally, I've delighted that so few geoTLD proposals have come from North America. I expect .québec for historical reasons (much conceptually in common with .cat), and I consider the current plays for .nyc and .vegas to be almost defensive TLDs themselves, given those cities' own branding efforts.. The other two listed at http://www.citytld.com/ (for Ottawa and San Francisco) appear dead
Most of the others are proposed for Europe. What a massive waste of money and time. I feel truly sorry for all the small businesses that will be compelled to register defensively for those that roll out.
Maybe there are so few North American ones because people here already see what a bust ".us" is and figure that almost all the incumbents are Amercian anyway. But I'll appreciate the sanity wherever I can find it.
- Evan
*Information Technology and Telecommunications Public Hearing*
Notice is hereby given that a Contract Public Hearing will be held on Friday, March 23, 2012 at DoITT, 2 MetroTech Center, 4th Floor, Brooklyn NY 11209, commencing at 2:00 P.M. on the following:
In the matter of a proposed contract between the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications and Neustar located at 21575 Ridgetop Circle, Sterling, VA 20166, to apply for, and if obtained, operate, administer, manage and market nyc. The term of the contract shall be for five (5) years with two (2) five (5) year renewal options at the City’s discretion. The contract is a Revenue contract, PIN: 85812P0001.
*10/5/2009 City issues RFP for .nyc management <http://isoc-ny.org/?p=902>
* *
Comment <http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117#respond> See all comments<http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117#comments>
*Trouble clicking?* Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117
-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- - ------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
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-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -
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On 27 Mar 2012, at 16:58, Beau Brendler wrote:
Thomas,
While I don't see it as the NA RALO's duty to support new TLD efforts, I do see it as our duty to help members of NA with ICANN issues in the public interest. The non-transparency of contract negotiations are certainly an issue in the public interest.
Would it be helpful if I demand on behalf of NA RALO access to the contract in the public interest, in accordance with the ICANN affirmation of commitments? Or has the horse already left the barn, so to speak?
Beau Surely the contract in this case would be between the city and Neustar and not have anything to do with ICANN (directly)? Regards Michele
I don't know how much power the RALO has, but I am more than willing to test it on your behalf, as we have done with the .PR issue, with conflict of interest, and other topics.
Beau Brendler
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Lowenhaupt <toml@communisphere.com> Sent: Mar 27, 2012 1:52 AM To: joly@punkcast.com Cc: NA Discuss <na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Concerning the NeuStar ~ New York City "public hearing"
Joly,
I've posted my notes from my Thursday morning opportunity to view the proposed NeuStar contract here. <http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/blog/2012/03/23/first-ve...> They are quite incomplete. And that's really a sorry state of affairs, because your notes and mine are the totality of reporting on the portions of the contract that were made available to us. (As I've noted in the sidebar of the written comments page, the meat of he contract is not yet complete).
The viewing period is over and the city has said "Sorry folks, you missed it." That lack of transparency is my note #1. And the only one that counts. No transparency no contract. (At least that's my view.)
It's really quite amazing, sickening really. It's against the law in the city to sell a pair of sneakers with a purchasing contract as opaque as NeuStar's. But they'll get 15 years of revenue from our TLD, and we can't see the contract. Astounding.
Gale was as usual most clear. Thanks for getting her statement online. Her comments would have been far more interesting had she been able to see the contract.
My 3-minutes of comments are probably best left on the cutting room floor - was I foaming at the mouth? The written ones <http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/comments-to-doitt-on-pro...> make a few important points. At the hearing the one point I was trying to make was that DoITT should have been the last part of the acquisition process, not the one and only. Research, public education and outreach, city council hearings, and perhaps legislation preceding an IT purchasing process.
But I wasn't able to convince anyone here on NA Discuss that a city-TLD was more significant than .banjo, and it's beginning to look not in the city either.
Best,
Tom Lowenhaupt
On 3/26/2012 1:35 PM, Joly MacFie wrote:
While I support you in principle Tom, I did think at the hearing that your comments, rushed as they were in the three minutes available, were a little too philosophical when what was needed was sharp bullet points about shortcomings in the contract and process.
I thought Gale Brewer did a fair job of this which is why I have posted the video of her testimony. http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117&cpage=1#comment-8232 <http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117&cpage=1#comment-8232>
I will process the rest of the hearing so your comments can be seen and heard.
My limited understanding, from a cursory viewing of the contract,
* the City itself is nominally the applicant, but that Neustar will do the applying and pay the fees. * Neustar will pay the City something along the lines of 40% of revenue (gross? unclear) * there will be nexus requirements, and domains will be revocable if found not in compliance. * the city will spot check 50 domains a year for compliance. * there will be reserved names - as yet undetermined, for which the City will act as registrar.
j
On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 9:51 AM, Thomas Lowenhaupt <toml@communisphere.com <mailto:toml@communisphere.com>> wrote:
Evan,
Your concerns are heart warming.
New York City might be headed off a cliff with its application. The "public hearing" Joly announced about a NeuStar ~ New York City arrangement concerned a contract that is incomplete and therefore not available to the public - see http://blog.connectingnyc.org (don't care about the issue - see my friends BloomBORG for a giggle).
Moving forward, I hope to find segments of the Internet community that will join me in developing a plan / guidelines that will assist cities navigating the shark infested registry-registrar waters, creating best practices, and effectively governing their TLDs. I'll be announcing that early next week.
In the meantime, in preparing my comments for the faux-public hearing, I'm getting closer to answering your "What's so important about city-TLDs?" question. It might be too late to help my home city, and I'm not 100% there yet, but I hope the below begins to turn up the volume so that people will begin to hear the music to which I dance.
Best,
Tom Lowenhaupt
________________________________ From my comments to the faux-hearing:
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.
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.
________________________________
On 3/22/2012 4:45 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
On 22 March 2012 15:10, Joly MacFie <joly@punkcast.com <mailto:joly@punkcast.com>> wrote:
A public hearing on NYC's allocation of the .nyc contract to Neustar will be held tomorrow, Friday, in Brooklyn.
Looks like all of Thomas Lowenhaupt's multiple years of hard work advocating for a community-focused .nyc TLD for may turn out to have been blazing a rugged, obstacle-clearing trail through which Neustar may now drive its HumVee.
Thomas, I feel for ya. I was a vocal skeptic of your proposal but am even more critical of a direct government-Neustar registry (both in process and likely substance). I didn't expect that your project would seek out defensive domains but I can feel fairly confident that a pure generic play would consider defencives as part of their revenue mix.
Personally, I've delighted that so few geoTLD proposals have come from North America. I expect .québec for historical reasons (much conceptually in common with .cat), and I consider the current plays for .nyc and .vegas to be almost defensive TLDs themselves, given those cities' own branding efforts.. The other two listed at http://www.citytld.com/ (for Ottawa and San Francisco) appear dead
Most of the others are proposed for Europe. What a massive waste of money and time. I feel truly sorry for all the small businesses that will be compelled to register defensively for those that roll out.
Maybe there are so few North American ones because people here already see what a bust ".us" is and figure that almost all the incumbents are Amercian anyway. But I'll appreciate the sanity wherever I can find it.
- Evan
*Information Technology and Telecommunications Public Hearing*
Notice is hereby given that a Contract Public Hearing will be held on Friday, March 23, 2012 at DoITT, 2 MetroTech Center, 4th Floor, Brooklyn NY 11209, commencing at 2:00 P.M. on the following:
In the matter of a proposed contract between the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications and Neustar located at 21575 Ridgetop Circle, Sterling, VA 20166, to apply for, and if obtained, operate, administer, manage and market nyc. The term of the contract shall be for five (5) years with two (2) five (5) year renewal options at the City’s discretion. The contract is a Revenue contract, PIN: 85812P0001.
*10/5/2009 City issues RFP for .nyc management <http://isoc-ny.org/?p=902>
* *
Comment <http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117#respond> See all comments<http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117#comments>
*Trouble clicking?* Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=3117
-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- - ------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------
------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org <mailto:NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------
-- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -
NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------
------ NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------
Mr Michele Neylon Blacknight Solutions ♞ Hosting & Colocation, Brand Protection ICANN Accredited Registrar http://www.blacknight.com/ http://blog.blacknight.com/ http://blacknight.biz http://mneylon.tel Intl. +353 (0) 59 9183072 US: 213-233-1612 Locall: 1850 929 929 Direct Dial: +353 (0)59 9183090 Facebook: http://fb.me/blacknight Twitter: http://twitter.com/mneylon ------------------------------- Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd, Unit 12A,Barrowside Business Park,Sleaty Road,Graiguecullen,Carlow,Ireland Company No.: 370845
Surely the contract in this case would be between the city and Neustar and not have anything to do with ICANN (directly)?
Regards
Michele
Yep, I'd imagine so. What we do know,like, for example. in the case of the recent IANA contract situation, where the NTIA were duty-bound to not give any indication that they were going to dump the RFP before they did, is that these contract types do make a point of acting within the letter of the law. This was a competitive bid via a RFP in 2009. As it was the agreement was just 8 or so pages, the rest of it was about 1k pages of boilerplate appendixes, including GAC statements, whatever, whatever. There is no way in hell anyone could get through that stuff in the 3 days allotted for public scrutiny, let alone the fact that one wasn't allowed to a)make a copy, 2) make written notes. Furthermore the list of reserved names was t.b.d. The manner of its award, and its content, could be material in the objection process. j -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -
participants (3)
-
Beau Brendler -
Joly MacFie -
Michele Neylon :: Blacknight