[governance] Workshop Proposal for Vilnius - City-TLDs: Impact, Best Practices, Governance

[Thomas Lowenhaupt]

Roland,

Here's something I wrote a while ago that sought to put the Net (and ICANN) into an historic perspective with regard to cities. 
  Imagine that in 1983 Vint Cerf had visited a global city like New York, climbed the steps to City Hall and said to Mayor Koch that he and Jon Postel had begun thinking about an Internet enhancement that would make it easier to find the cities digital resources. That they were thinking of calling it the Domain Name System (DNS) and using names such as .com, .org and .edu. 

  And imagine Vint explaining his vision about this new technology's prospect for addressing the multiplicity of city needs; concluding with a plea that the mayor gather the world's smartest minds in New York City, help detail a desired DNS's feature-set and in the process develop a model that other cities might follow.

  But as we all know, no one knocked on that City Hall door and the DNS was created without considering its impact on cities. And when it escaped from the lab, the technology spread like a virus and changed the world for better and for worse. 

  Remarkably, the DNS opportunity is again at hand. ICANN will deliver on its key mission in 2010 and we'll soon see cities sporting new TLDs such as .nyc, .berlin, and .paris.
Let me note that this was not written with the intent of criticizing these Internet pioneers, merely to highlight an area where, with omnipotent 20/20 hindsight, one might observe Net imperfections needing attention.

Roland, with all due respect, I've never heard ICANN dealing with any of the issues I've proposed for the IGF Workshop. Yes, they have encouraged the development of "Perfect Sunrise" guidelines that warrant consideration, and they uncovered that there's a Paris in France as well as Texas. And to its credit, ICANN has agreed that cities should have access to TLDs. But city-TLD governance, best practices, and a primer for city-TLDs - it's just not in their scope. ICANN's concern is commerce not cities. City-TLDs are (IMHO) perfect for an IGF workshop.

Tom Lowenhaupt


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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roland Perry" <roland at internetpolicyagency.com>
To: <governance at lists.cpsr.org>
Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2010 2:15 AM
Subject: Re: [governance] Workshop Proposal for Vilnius - City-TLDs: Impact, Best Practices, Governance


...

It sounds interesting, but if (and this is a serious IGF Governance 
point) the IGF is supposed to be non-duplicative, then the discussion 
above would normally be an extremely close fit with an ICANN meeting. 
Indeed I have sat through a couple of very similar sessions there.

If you consider going ahead at the IGF, you might want to include a 
discussion of how you handle the sunrise period (there are several 
different models been tried out in the past) as this is possibly the 
most challenging aspect[1].

But that's only after you've successfully got your City-tld. The part 
which fascinates me the most (just a personal interest of course, I have 
long collected interesting telephone numbers, car licence plates, and 
yes even domain names) is how competing claims will be assessed.

For example, the City of Perry with the best Google ranking is in 
Georgia[2], USA, closely followed by others in Michigan, Utah, Oklahoma 
and Florida. Which would have the "best claim"?

[1] For example, what would it take for Air Berlin not to be a shoe-in 
for air.berlin, and would a decision like that be based on the prior 
registration of trademarks, a community policy, or something else (first 
to apply, winner of an auction, etc)?

[2] With three different domain names already: perry-ga.gov, perryga.com 
and perry.georgia.gov, so maybe they won't want a fourth.
-- 
Roland Perry
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