I may be missing something here, but as I see it, if New York willingly (or perhaps willfully in this case) enters into an agreement with a private company to provide services, I don't see how ICANN is even involved. ICANN has a duty to ensure that the TLD operator has the ability to operate the domain (which presumably Neustar can demonstrate), but not to judge whether the contract was a good deal or follows the rules of New York. In fact, although the application may list Neustar as the projected operator, New York is not bound (by the application) to actually use them. ICANN has made it clear that changing back-end operators for whatever reason is an applicant's right, so the details of the contract are not really linked to the application. Whether New York can actually back out or not would depend on the contract with Neustar, which I am pretty sure is not part of the application documentation. ICANN's prime involvement would be to verify that prior to actual insertion into the root, the back-end operator is capable. ALAC could comment or perhaps object if there were grounds indicating that .NYC TLD was a bad idea, or should not be managed by whoever submits the application, but I find it hard to stretch that to judging whether the city is sufficiently astute as to negotiate good (or perceived good) contracts. Alan At 27/03/2012 01:19 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

It certainly does seem -- at this point -- as if the opaqueness is happening between the city and Neustar. Until an application actually shows up in the pipeline, it's not yet an ICANN issue.

I believe the AG does allow cities to grant or bestow consent on whomever they wish, however they wish. At this stage it's very much a city politics issue more than an ICANN one.

Now... *here's* where things get interesting....

ALAC has the ICANN-given right and ability to launch public interest objections to applications, and some people in our community have worked extremely hard to develop the procedures to process such objections. If the case can be made that the ACTUAL .nyc application (not the current rumours and vagueness) is against the public interest, ALAC has legitimate grounds to object.

Perhaps even the threat of an ALAC objection might be enough to get the city and Neustar to open things up.

But before Thomas goes and suggests such threats, what do others here say? Is this a legitimate course of action?

- Evan