Wampum

Yesterday, shortly after 9:30am EST, CORE's response to the City of New York's DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS (DOITT), RFP for "TITLE: SERVICES TO OBTAIN, OPERATE, MANAGE, ADMINISTER, MAINTAIN AND MARKET THE GEOGRAPHIC TOP LEVEL DOMAIN NAME .NYC " was delivered to the Contract Manager, 75 Park Place, 9th Floor New York, NY 10007. The bid was due by 3pm EST, and it was produced as part of a series of RFP responses we made in December, in Europe, the Americas, and Africa.

The City, (mis)informed by NeuStar, which operates .US (I wrote that bid's technical content, back in 2001), sought two proposals from each tender respondent, one for a "community-based" application, and one for a "standard" application. The terms of art are ICANN's, from the DAGv3. Naturally, NeuStar's application is the presumptive winner, and naturally, if NeuStar looses the Big Apple, its next renewal of the .US contract, incompetently competed last by GoDaddy/Afilias in 2007, will be much more competitive in 2012.

I expect the DOITT also took delivery of applications from Verisign, NeuStar, and Afilias, the other three gTLD registries, as well.

Hmm. Back in 1998 I came up with the idea of a TLD policied by, and for, Indians. I couldn't come up with the $40k to risk in a 7-of-40 gamble, and knowing Mike Roberts and Ester Dyson as I did, I didn't risk Indian money on something in which the weakest players would prove to be a group with millions in circa-2000 risk capital, the Getty Foundation, and the Airline Industry. That idea became sponsored TLDs, that is, things that had more "policy" than $6. And that in turn became, through the hands of Dirk Krischenowski, the idea of Cities as sponsors, starting with Berlin.

From an Indian with policy but no cash, through Berlin, then Barcelona, then Paris, to Manhattan. All that is missing is $24 worth of mirrors and beads.

Our advantage is technical competency, which is the least interesting part of the problem, speaking as CORE's CTO, and we've more time on target thinking through policy intending to make a City's name space something other than a domainer zoo, populated by pay-per-clicks and blogspam exploits.

Of course, the NeuStar informed City is likely to be "informed" that policy other than $6 will result in a couple of hippies forming the entire registrant base for .NYC, loosing the City $illions in lost revenues.

So from that starting point, what is the delta between "community-based" NYC and "standard" NYC?

Assuming that only those trademarks who's products aren't sold in NYC {are really going to go out of their way to avoid / are not qualified to participate in} the community-based NYC Sunrise phase, the delta is composed of ... Mongolian registered trademarks. Polar umbrella vendors. Australian trademarked time-share packages. So the delta for the rights-of-others policied mechanisms, the Sunrise and Landrush phase(es) for "community-based" NYC vs "standard" NYC is zero. So it really comes down to ... domainers. The "value" of a "standard" with just $6 as policy is all the domainers registering typos and squats and ...

Our proposal is no domainers, and yes meaning, as we did in Catalan, so that what one clicks is ... real. We think that in the long run, that (a) is more useful to the City's users, and (b) domainers, like swine in a shellfish bed, ruin the fishery. We believe that zoning increases the total use value of land, and name space mandates increase the value of name spaces.

So now, now that the applications are in the DOITT's hands, the real contest, the contest to inform the bloggers of the City of New York, and through them, the users who's first clicks are "in" the City of New York, that a moment of choice is upon them. The easy money of the domainers, followed by ... life west of the Pecos, or the money of, and the interests of, residents.

Anyone have suggestions for NYC bloggers to buy ad placements with?