FAQs on City TLDs
Workspace for FAQs on City TLDs
[edit] Why city-TLDs?
2005 will be remembered as first year in which the majority of humans lived in cities. Large cities are amongst the most complex entities on the planet and would benefit from using TLDs in several ways.
- Cities can better market themselves globally, e.g., hotels.nyc or tours.berlin.
- Quality of life will improve with an intuitive net, e.g., schools.nyc, weather.berlin, or mayor.london.
- Local identity and corporate feeling enhance citizenship and business.
- By their nature, cities are innovation drivers and their focused communities can better communicate within a consolidating TLD.
- City TLDs create new opportunities for local business.
- City TLDs make the Internet effective and efficient: search and find locally.
- Name space within existing TLDs is unfocused and/or congested.
- City TLDs support the local Internet imperative: traffic, search and e-commerce are becoming more local. Google, Yahoo, Ebay, and Microsoft are fostering this movement by offering local services/portals.
[edit] An advantage of city-TLDs is they will provide a more "Intuitive Net." What is that?
Today's Internet might be thought of as somewhat cubist with powerful search engines required to make sense of it. Cities were once like that with Greenwich Village in New York City being a good example. Walk a little west of 6th Avenue on Waverly Place and after about 100 yards you'll run into Waverly Place. (No error there, Waverly crosses Waverly.)
But most of New York City is built according to the 1811 Grid Plan that guided and fostered its spectacular development. An Intuitive city-TLD would create a new pattern upon which we might record and build the city's Internet presence. Think of it as a grid for the Internet.
[edit] Sounds interesting. How about an example?
Let's say you're being transferred to New York City and you want to learn about schools for you children. You could turn to the cubist net, search "NYC schools" and hone in on a quality school from the 18,400,000 results. With the intuitive net you'd enter schools.nyc and be guided by a grid providing access to a managed directory and reviews of school possiblities. The choice still won't be simple, but more manageable. And the schools.nyc starting point is intuitive. More examples.
[edit] Will a myriad of TLD applicants apply for a city-TLD?
dotBERLIN: We think that only bigger cities with, let's say, at least 1 Millions inhabitants will apply for their own TLD in the next several years. It will be a moderate and evolutionary process with a couple of applicants each year. This doesn't threaten the security and stability of the DNS and will not overstrain ICANNs capability to review the applications.
Why this? First of all a city-TLD has to be valid business model. Even in developed countries in terms of Internet usage and economic strenght the penetration of domains hardly reaches 100 domains per 1,000 inhabitants. To run a TLD is an expensive business and it is not believed that a TLD of a city with less than 100,000 inhabitants is a self-supporting business model. Secondly the costs for a TLD application at ICANN are estimated at $1-2 Million nowadays.
But even if all cities with 100,000 inhabitants or more apply, there are only around 4,000 of them worldwide.
[edit] What do you do when many cities have the same name?
dotBERLIN: First of all we have to find a common sense which locations with the name BERLIN to talk about. We think that only local or regional authorities (cities, townships, towns, villages or boroughs) with the name BERLIN should be incorporated in the application process. Today we count around 40 different BERLINs worldwide. 98% of the inhabitants in the various BERLINs live in Germanys capital Berlin, 2% in the remaining BERLINs.
There are populated places, haciendas, hotels or even mountains with the name BERLIN, but they don't have a legal deputy. We would count them to the extended BERLIN community.
Entities from the local or regional authorities should have the possibility to participate in the application process and should have an equal possibility to register their individual .berlin domain name.
[edit] Is everyone eligable to apply for a city's TLD?
With a key basis for city-TLDs being a desire to create community, allowing anyone or business to participate, regardless of location, would be counterproductive. Perhaps Singapore provides some helpful guidance with this question. While not a city, Singapore's .sg TLD is open for all with a valid Singapore postal address. A foreign applicant may apply for a .sg domain name provided that it appoints a local agent having a valid Singapore postal address as the Administrative Contact. This limits access without excluding and might provide a useful prescedent for city-TLDs.
[edit] Why not berlin.city or nyc.city?
At first view .city offers some appeal. But at best, its appeal is only to English-speaking cities. To other language communities .city would not offer a specific meaning and would be just another TLD. It also distances one from the simplicity and intuitiveness city-TLDs offer.
[edit] Why .berlin and not berlin.de?
dotBERLIN: Indeed, the URL www.city.cctld is often owned by the city itself. In Berlin we have http://www.berlin.de. This website is owned by the city government and used as portal for governmental issues, administration and webspace for offical institution.
The idea of using subdomains makes sense and would be an easy way to broaden the namespace, but there are several reasons why subdomain.city.cctld are used very seldom. It may be conceivable that institutions and organizations related to the city use third-level-domains like police.berlin.de, but for economy, culture, private households and others it seems hard to visualise. Why this?
First of all it seems to be hard to imagine that the city government would allow a free registration of subdomains. That would mean that URLs like sexy.berlin.de, i-hate-the-mayor.berlin.de or even more disgusting URLs would be available. By this the city governments image could be damaged and there would be a broad loss of credibility in the city portal.
Secondly the are legal issues to be taken into account with 3rd-level-domains in Germany and I think in some other countries as well: - Competition laws (who should get certain generic subdomains?) - Trademark laws ("first-come, first-serve” or “age of trademark” or “size of company”?) - Content responsibility (e.g. laws in Germany make the owner of the 2nd-level-domain responsible for all content also on their respective 3rd-level-domains)
Furthermore 3rd-level-domains are not appropriate to serve the demand of businesses and individuals. Subdomains are
- not intuitively learned and remembered by users (www.xyz.com-centred Internet)
- not accepted as an ideal communication tool for everyone
- not accepted by the economy for security and reliability issues
Finally and most important a .berlin top-level-domain creates a unique local identity for citizens, companies, organisations and institutions which a 3rd-level-domain would never be able to.
We would like to close our comment with the clue that TLDs are in several countries like Germany not subject to any governmental regulation. TLDs are born in the Internet community and managed by organisations based on this community. Giving city governments the power to decide which entity could register which subdomain.city.cctld would thwart the Internets bottom-up principle.
[edit] What happens today if someone enters a .nyc or .berlin address?
Today, someone entering an intuitive address like hotels.berlin, gov.paris, or schools.nyc doesn't receive a civil "Sorry. There is No Such Address." Nor even a 404 or other such technical notification that the TLD has not been issued. Instead, one frequently receives a directory provided by an entity not affiliated or authorized in any way by the cities of Berlin, Paris, or New York. Some say these city-TLDs have been hijacked.
[edit] How many TLDs can a city expect to get?
Big Apple, Empire State, Gotham, NYC, New York City. The Windy City, Second City, Chicago. San-Francisco, San_Fran, Golden Gate, San Francisco.
Cities often have cognomen, diminutives, nicknames, etc., that beg the question, Which and/or how many TLDs can a city expect to receive?
First a word in support of spaces. Like zero in the pre-Sumerian world, the space remains unfathomable to much of the Internet world. In the DNS for example, the simple space is verboten. So pity the poor cities with a space or two in their names like San Diego, El Paso, or New York City. (With the DNS having been developed in the "San" section of the U.S., perhaps the 'space' difficulty explains why they were left out of the original DNS schema.)
But the answer to "How Many" seems clear: just one name per city. As a general rule the TLD should be the city's official name, or its initials for 'spaced' cities: For example, .nyc for New York City or .sf for San Francisco.
This might not solve the needs of all cities, for example should San Diego one day seek a TLD it will find that the Sudan has already been issued the obvious TLD. But the vast majority of cities, spaced or not, will find them available.
Visit the City TLDs home page or learn some Silly FAQs about city-TLDs.
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