Re: [NA-Discuss] Concerning the NeuStar ~ New York City "public hearing"
Well, truth be told I don't know. Thomas? Can you help us out here? -----Original Message-----
From: "Michele Neylon :: Blacknight" <michele@blacknight.ie> Sent: Mar 27, 2012 12:03 PM To: Beau Brendler <beaubrendler@earthlink.net> Cc: NA Discuss <na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Concerning the NeuStar ~ New York City "public hearing"
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
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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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Visit the NARALO online at http://www.naralo.org ------
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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
Beau, Since the proposed contract is not available, I do not know the parties. But opacity on a matter of this sort does not serve the public interest. I'm not sure if you've seen them, but below are my experiences with the city's "transparency opportunity." Best, Tom Lowenhaupt ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A friendly bird tweeted to me at 3 PM on Tuesday, March 20th, that there was to be a hearing on a city contract relating to .nyc on Friday at 2 PM. Having been promised by DoITT prompt notification of action on the .nyc TLD, I was dubious, and emailed the official contact there. At 10 PM the next day, on Wednesday, I was informed that the birdie was correct and that there was a notice of the meeting in the City Record, with a link provided.(He was very busy and was sorry he couldn't get to me earlier.) *[ Fun Break: The below is the formal notice placed in the City Record. The CR is "where transparency ends." See if you can find it online, start here <http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcas/html/vendors/cityrecord.shtml>. ]* City-Record-Notice-by-DoITT-3-22-2012.jpg When I arrived at the prescribed office the next morning - Thursday, March 22, at 10 AM - I was told the contract was not ready. And the one page document that placed the ad in the City Record was the only information available to me. When I pulled out my phone to take a picture of the document, I was told "no cameras" only hand notes. Flabbergasted, and with my camera out, I turned it on the city official and clicked his picture. He promptly picked up the paper and left the room. I sat alone in the room for about 5 minutes. Did he go for a cop? Was I in trouble? Would they seek to confiscate my camera? Getting paranoid, I emailed the official's picture to a friend - "if I'm missing look for this guy." But a few minutes later he returned with one portion of the proposed contract. With the meat in the Appendix documents, I requested a few of them - F, G. and H. He returned a few minutes later (another official was brought in to watch me read the first document and make sure that I did not photo or steal document pages) and said they were not yet completed. *[Fun Fact: He offered me a copy of Appendix I dealing with the 7 Dirty Words. These are from George Carlin's 1972 skit <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_dirty_words> about the 7 words the FCC said were not to be uttered over the public airwaves. There were 127 spellings of Mother*ucker - hilarious.] * I asked when F, G, and H would be completed. He shrugged his shoulders and responded "I don't know." (My little android listens.) Then I sought his opinion as to how I was to effectively participate in the public hearing the next day, more shrugs. I did take some notes that showed this to be devastating to the creation of a community TLD that will serve our city for the long term (see them here <http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/blog/2012/03/23/first-ve...>). But preparing for the hearing did get me to better crystallize my thoughts on the benefits of a city-TLD. See them at left: "What is A City-TLD? 3 Views." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ On 3/27/2012 12:08 PM, Beau Brendler wrote:
Well, truth be told I don't know. Thomas? Can you help us out here?
-----Original Message-----
From: "Michele Neylon :: Blacknight"<michele@blacknight.ie> Sent: Mar 27, 2012 12:03 PM To: Beau Brendler<beaubrendler@earthlink.net> Cc: NA Discuss<na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Concerning the NeuStar ~ New York City "public hearing"
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
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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 -------------------------------------------------------------- -
NA-Discuss mailing list NA-Discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/na-discuss
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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
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On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Thomas Lowenhaupt <toml@communisphere.com>wrote:
I did take some notes
When Nancy Scola and I were in there we were forbidden to even put pen to paper. They did genrously extend the deadline to 4.15 since we couldn't get in there til 4pm since we chose to wait until Jay Sulzberger and Robert Pollard had finished (there was only one copy available.) 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 -------------------------------------------------------------- -
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 On 27 March 2012 12:08, Beau Brendler <beaubrendler@earthlink.net> wrote:
Well, truth be told I don't know. Thomas? Can you help us out here?
-----Original Message-----
From: "Michele Neylon :: Blacknight" <michele@blacknight.ie> Sent: Mar 27, 2012 12:03 PM To: Beau Brendler <beaubrendler@earthlink.net> Cc: NA Discuss <na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Concerning the NeuStar ~ New York City "public hearing"
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
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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
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participants (4)
-
Beau Brendler -
Evan Leibovitch -
Joly MacFie -
Thomas Lowenhaupt