.nyc is a
top level domain (TLD) for
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
. It was delegated to the root zone by ICANN on March 20, 2014.
In May 2018, the .nyc registry updated its WHOIS access policy to protect personally identifiable information of domain registrants. Under the new policy, personally identifiable information is no longer publicly available through an initial WHOIS search.
Background
New York-based company name.space, founded by
Paul Garrin, began operating its own alternative
root zone system in 1997 including a .nyc top level domain. name.space applied for inclusion of its .nyc, along with a number of other
strings, as TLDs in the
IANA
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Internet P ...
root during the 2000 ICANN application round. Its application was refused. Another company, Names@Work, also put in an application in 2000 but withdrew for lack of funding.
The first municipal support for the .nyc TLD was the
Internet Empowerment Resolution passed by
Queens Community Board 3, a local planning unit of the
City of New York, on April 19, 2001. The Resolution called for the city's Commission on Public Information and Communication or a public interest organization to acquire and develop the TLD.
By the mid-2000s interest in gaining local TLDs had arisen in other cities, notably Paris and Berlin. Some of those proponents contacted Thomas Lowenhaupt, the former Community Board member who had introduced the Queens Resolution. In 2007, with the Bloomberg Administration having indicated that it did not intend to apply for the .nyc TLD, Lowenhaupt formed a non-profit 'Connecting .nyc' to acquire and develop the .nyc TLD for community use. On June 6, 2008 Council Member
Gale Brewer led the introduction of Resolution 1495-2008 supporting "the local efforts to acquire the .nyc Top Level Domain and urging The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to approve the City's application in order to meet the needs of city residents via the Internet."
At the ICANN meeting in Paris in July 2008 a green light was given for the development of a new TLD application round, including cities.
On October 17, 2008, Brewer held a public hearing in support of her bill. Witnesses included Lowenhaupt, Antony Van Couvering of Names@Work, and Paul Garrin.
Van Couvering proposed that .nyc be run by his company as a purely commercial enterprise, with a portion of the revenue dedicated to benefiting the community. He testified that he was willing to work with Lowenhaupt on community interests. The bill itself would eventually be
shelved at the end of 2009.
In her February 12, 2009 State of the City address City Council Speaker
Christine Quinn proposed the .nyc TLD as a public-private partnership. names@work, now under the name DotNYC, opened a new dedicated website which reported on Quinn's speech. "The crowd, made up of elected politicians and dignitaries, literally chanted "Dot N – Y – C" at the end of her description of it". Further press reports were confidently quoted by DotNYC. These included details that they expected to pay the city a third of all revenue, $3 million per year initially, rising to $10 million a year. In June 2009, DotNYC released a testimonial video of former Mayor
Ed Koch
Edward Irving Koch ( ; December 12, 1924February 1, 2013) was an American politician. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977 and was mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989.
Koch was a lifelong Democrat who ...
saying "DotNYC is the best real estate opportunity since the Dutch bought Manhattan".
Wheels had been put in motion and, on April 15, 2009, the
New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) issued a
Request for Information
A request for information (RFI) is a common business process whose purpose is to collect written information about the capabilities of various suppliers. Normally it follows a format that can be used for comparative purposes.
An RFI is primarily ...
(RFI). Connecting.nyc published its response, which called for many names (
second level domains) to be reserved for community use. On October 5, 2009 a Request for Proposals (RFP) was issued by the City of New York seeking "services to obtain, manage, administer, maintain and market the geographic Top Domain name .nyc." Notably, conditions included that proposals include a system of ensuring nexus with the city, and also a preliminary list of reserved names including all city precincts, schools, districts, and neighborhoods.
Creation of .nyc
In March 2012, name.space reported it had filed for trademark protection on a number of its TLDs, including .nyc.
In April 2012 the city announced that
NeuStar, Inc., a Virginia-based firm, had been selected from the RFP submissions and on June 12, 2012 the City of New York submitted an application to
ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is a global multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization headquartered in the United States responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several dat ...
for the .nyc TLD. Neustar paid the $185,000 application fee.
In May 2012 Garrin wrote to local dignitaries protesting the Neustar contract, and asserting name.space's rights to the .nyc TLD.
The application on behalf of the city passed initial evaluation at
ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is a global multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization headquartered in the United States responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several dat ...
on May 24, 2013.
ICANN delegated .nyc to the
DNS root zone
The DNS root zone is the top-level DNS zone in the hierarchical namespace of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet.
Before October 1, 2016, the root zone had been overseen by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ...
on March 20, 2014.
Advisory board
On March 22, 2013
the .NYC Community Advisory Board was formed. Members include Thomas Lowenhaupt, former ICANN Chair
Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson (born 14 July 1951) is a Swiss-born American investor, journalist, author, commentator and philanthropist. She is the executive founder of Wellville, a nonprofit project focused on improving equitable wellbeing. Dyson is also an ang ...
, and representatives of the local tech and academic community.
It was later disbanded.
References
External links
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Connecting.nyc Inc. non-profit promoting public interest in .nyc
name.spacealternative root system registrar
.nycregistration statistics a
nTLDStats.nycat th
ICANN Wiki
Video
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Nyc
Top-level domains
Culture of New York City
Domain names in the United States
Internet properties established in 2014