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

Sun Apr 11 13:42:05 EDT 2010

Olivier,

The DNS was developed within a scope that saw surfboards, suburbia, and California sunshine as the desired future. Today, it's cities (or perhaps more accurately, urban areas) that are ascendant. Two points in that regard: U.N. stats indicate more than half of us now live in cities with the prediction of 66% by 2050; and planetary sustainability seems to lean toward the comparative efficiency of cities.

But yes, you are absolutely correct, name conflicts could be contentious in most instances and will be in some. However, I'd think the various Springfield's could support a disambiguation page, and perhaps index.paris could have a "Not looking for Paris France?" button. (For fun,  take this "One Name, Many Places" trivia quiz - http://www.funtrivia.com/submitquiz.cfm?quiz=35186 - I got a 5 of 10.) 

But having spent decades addressing civic issues here in New York City, it's quite clear that the local communication and administrative benefits offered by a thoughtfully developed DNS far outweigh contention tension. However, in most instances cities remain unaware of the DNS' utility beyond tourism and are not aware of its potential in developments like the Internet of Things, the semantic web, and using the DNS to reduce government redundancies as a force for regional consolidation (I'm advocating for reserving Hoboken.nyc).  

Olivier, as you point out, contention is a difficult issue, but let's find a way to bring the opportunities to light and weight the options in a public forum. Moving cities to a place where they recognize their common interest in developing the DNS is the City-TLD Workshop's goal, and the Vilnius IGF provides the opportunity to begin a long overdue multi-stakeholder policy dialogue. I hope to see you there.

Best,

Tom Lowenhaupt
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond 
  To: governance at lists.cpsr.org ; Thomas Lowenhaupt 
  Cc: Roland Perry 
  Sent: Sunday, April 11, 2010 4:16 AM
  Subject: Re: [governance] Workshop Proposal for Vilnius - City-TLDs: Impact, Best Practices, Governance

  Hello Thomas,

  On 11/04/2010 09:37, Thomas Lowenhaupt wrote : 
    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.

  I agree with you although I wonder whether you wish to open such a can of worms. Your aim appears to be to have an informational session about city TLDs - perhaps working with others to write a set of best practices?
  You'll then have to answer questions of the type:
  If there is a Paris in France and a Paris in US, why don't they use paris.fr and paris.tx.us ?
  Admittedly, how does .nyc relate to the already existing .nyc.ny.us ?
  Roland's questions will also come up.

  Are you ready to have a potentially heated session on this?

  BTW, I'm completely neutral on the matter these days. If some organisations wish to try their hand at new gTLDs, let them go ahead. If I was to attend, I'd probably enjoy listening to a good debate.

  Kind regards,

  Olivier

-- 
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
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