The general demand for new
Top-Level-Domains
Today’s Domain Name System is
characterized by an artificial scarcity based on the careful release
of new TLDs by the ICANN. One of the most important issues raised in
association with the discussion about the future on the Domain Name
System is the likely demand for additional names like regionalized
TLDs and whether their potential benefits will outweigh the
potential risks.
There’s a range of different views
among the Internet community, business users, governments, the civil
society, individuals and the domain name industry on the pros and
cons of the introduction of new TLDs. The advocates of new TLDs
state that these TLDs will lead to greater choice for current users
and open up options for users that have recently joined the Internet
community or will do so in the future. They also demonstrate that
new TLDs will lead to greater competition, allow the market to meet
the demand of the community, and that new services and businesses
can be facilitated by the introduction of new TLDs. On the other
side of the debate are the existing businesses and individuals
owning TLDs today. Their strongest argument against the release of
new TLDs are the cost of defensive registrations, to protect
intellectual property associated with their business from uses which
might range from abusive to fraudulent, outweighs the benefits which
might otherwise be available. But the opponents also belief that the
benefits of innovation in the name space might outweigh the costs at
the long-term. While many business users are opposed to the creation
of new TLDs where the cost of defensive registrations would outweigh
the potential benefits, there is also support amongst business for
new TLDs where new business opportunities are envisioned.
ICANN’s consideration of the
introduction of new TLDs are more of a technical and safety nature.
The creation of an open registry at the root-level of the Internet's
domain-name system is a complex and ambitious project. But it also
stated that this issue should be solvable within a few years.
Advantages of new
Top-Level-Domains
One of the strongest arguments for
opening the market to a greater number of new TLDs is for entities
wanting to create new services which they believe can be best
facilitated by using new TLDs. Regionalized domain names are a very
good example for this. In ICANN’s first round of new gTLDs the .info
and .biz were successful worldwide because of meeting the demand of
a great amount of users from individuals to multi-national
companies. Other special interest gTLDs haven’t been very successful
lacking a demand and acceptance of the public. Theoretically all
these services could seemingly be operated at the second/third level
(e.g. domain.london.co.uk) but it is strongly believed by marketing
experts that they would be best facilitated with a new TLD as they
appear to represent a superior marketing tool to second level domain
names. Importantly, many of the traditional opponents of new TLDs
may be among the largest beneficiaries of these services. It is also
be argued that by opening up a wider variety of new TLDs greater
competition will be provided to ccTLDs.
On the other hand new regional TLDs
such as .eu, .cat or .asia are seen as complementary rather than
competitive. Another good example of demand and acceptance of
regionalized TLDs is the .la (Laos) TLD which was original issued
for country of Laos, but since 2003 it is successfully marketed and
used also to identify businesses around Los Angeles (in March 2004
over 200.000 individuals and businesses in Los Angeles registered a
.la domain name). The same happens with the Romanian ccTLD .ro which
is also used by the small German city Rosenheim and the White
Russian ccTLD .by which finds friends in the well known German
region of Bavaria.
It is summarized that competition
within the domain name system by new TLDs will enhance and innovate
the Internet, opens a myriad of new opportunities and
functionalities to individuals and businesses and does not threaten
the technical and safety existence of ICANNs root system. Especially
regionalized TLDs seem to become well accepted TLDs in the future
and it is expected that city TLDs will follow this path and will
meet the Internet communities demand.
City TLDs offer significant
advantages
Since domain names where issued they
are used as a clear identification of individuals, projects or
businesses on a global (by gTLDs like .com or .info) or national (by
ccTLDs like .de or .co.uk) basis. Although the current Domain Name
System offers multiple options to individuals and small businesses
to feel as global player in almost ever country worldwide nearly all
people are living, working and acting locally for the most time in
their lives. The urban primacy plays a vital role in this fact since
a growing percentage of today’s population is living in cities. Only
a minority of individuals really need to register domain names to
create national (by ccTLDs) or international (by gTLDs) identities
which match their needs or support their identity online. Local and
regional requirements are not addressed by the current
Top-Level-Domain names:
- gTLDs are too generic, they are
an identifier of businesses and organsiations which act globally
- ccTLDs are an identifier of
businesses and organsiations which act nationally
- city TLDs could be the missing
link to millions of small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and
individuals which are acting locally
- city TLDs are also a chance to
give individuals a clear home and a relation to their city
Cities bring outstanding financial,
academic, management, technical, and organizational resources to the
operation of a sponsored TLD. By city TLDs (like .newyork, .berlin,
.london, .paris, .beijing, and .tokyo), cities can benefit in many
ways. Here's an idea how cities, might leverage the advantages of
city TLDs:
- New Name Space - A growing number
of domain name disputes have proven that ccTLDs and gTLDs are not
sufficient to differentiate between 6 billion individuals and some
hundred million businesses worldwide. The limited number of today’s
available domain name extensions has created weird competition
between entities with the same name. Also the name space for
artificial names is getting tight since a lot of companies register
many gTLDs and ccTLDs when launching a business or product. City
TLDs will calm this competition down, since an nearly infinite
number of new combinations will be available by them. In addition a
large demand for domain names based on city TLDs will arise from the
rapidly growing number of non-English-speaking users that use
Chinese, Indian or Arabic or other non-Roman scripts.
- Strategic location and competitive advantage - A city TLD will
provide a complementary domain to existing country code TLDs and
generic TLDs, and consequently will increase choice and competition
for the regional city community in an environment of national and
international competition on investments.
- Local community power – City TLDs will facilitate the organization
of the city's Internet resources and thereby ease the communication
of the city government and institutions to residents, organisations
and businesses. Websites like: mayor.berlin, authorities.nyc, and
police.paris will make a city's resources more readily available and
easier to locate by regional, national and international audience.
- Global marketing power - City TLDs will ease the marketing of a
city to prospective residents, tourists, and businesses. Websites
like jobs.berlin, hotels.nyc, and offices.london will make the
city's resources readily available to the world.
- Equality of opportunity - City TLDs will establish a focal point
for bringing the benefits of the information society to the city
community and help combat the rise of a digital divide within and
between communities.
- Local money machine - City TLDs will increase electronic commerce
in the city, especially for small, new portal and community
businesses and for businesses in which the revenue was based on an
national or international TLD (hotel.de vs. hotel.berlin).
Additionally a city TLD will provide the city with an opportunity to
raise revenue through the sale of domain names, public access
facilities and community content.
- Quality of search improvements - Imagine navigating the Internet
using an organized city domain extension. Wiki technology will help
to create a searchable city directory on domain name level. Each
domain name owner will have the possibility to place his domain name
in a variety of pre-offered or newly creatable horizontal and
vertical categories.
- Quality of usage improvements - Want a hotel room? Go to
hotel.berlin and find a directory of all hotels in Berlin and it
sub-urban area. Visit schools.nyc and link to schools, universities
and other educations resources. Due to reserved public interest
domain names local issues can be identified and vetted easily. And
you'll find local people, activities, and business far easier
searching in the city TLD directory than the global .com web.
- A secure place - City TLDs will enable the city to provide its
residents, businesses, and institutions with security and privacy
protections under the order of local laws. Security and
interoperability of the local networks will be improved by .berlin
name servers located in the city.
- Global learning curve – Through local academic, educational and
research organizations the city, other cities and the global
Internet community can learn to leverage the knowledge created by
observing city TLDs in a scientific environment. This information
can conduct an proof of concept on the efficacy of city TLDs, one
that will provide the ICANN with all necessary information upon
which to judge the validity of issuing additional city TLDs.
City TLDs meet ICANNs criteria
The nature of city TLDs perfectly fits with the criteria ICANN
requests for new sponsored TLDs (sTLDs) concerning the nature of the
proposed sponsorship and its potential impact on the global Internet
community:
City TLDs meet the definition of a sponsored TLD community
The sponsoring TLD community of city TLDs is clearly defined and
broad one. Cities are commonly known as communities by the nature,
they are a classic role model how communities emerge and develop.
The community of a city TLD consists of its society which is
precisely defined by its residents and the organisations and
businesses they built in political, economic, social, scientific,
cultural and sportive respects. These persons and entities make up
the community of a city TLD.
City TLDs address the needs and interests of the people making up
the community
Basic needs of a city community are identity and prosperity. By
creating an unrestricted city TLD every member of the community of
the community will have the possibility to create its own regional
city identity based on its name (e.g. www.name.tom-smith.london).
City TLDs also open a myriad of options for increasing prosperity of
the city society as shown above.
City TLDs are clearly differentiated from existing TLDs
The city community is one of the oldest and longest-lasting fields
of human, institutional and social endeavor. The city name both
signifies and symbolizes this endeavor from both the perspective of
the city community and Internet at large. Additionally any TLD of a
worldwide known city will be a highly recognisable phrase that is
short, easy to remember, versatile but specific and focused on the
respective city identity. It captures the essence of the community
served and is a sustainable phrase that will will establish clear
and lasting value and not easily become obsolete.
But there is also significant name value in the city TLDs.The city
name string is appropriate to the scope of the community since it
describes exactly what it stands for and it exactly identifies the
city. Through it descriptive, conceptional and understandable nature
the string is similarly easy to spell, which will still further
prolong its value. Additionally the city name string is clearly
differentiated from existing TLD’s. On a character level, each city
TLD is significant and no other TLD has the same string. On a
conceptual level, no current TLD serves the same purpose. Through
their local focus the needs and interests of a city community are
also differentiated from those of the general global Internet
community.
The sponsored TLD community and users will benefit from the
establishment of a TLD policy
To launch a new domain extension it is critical to create a positive
feedback circle of awareness, usage, desire, usefulness and
intuition use. These major success factors could already be
mentioned in the city TLD policies to avoid increasing opportunities
for bad faith entities who wish to defraud users.
The policies will avoid names that have the potential to confuse
Internet users because they are typographically similar to, variants
of, or derived words from, existing TLDs. Equally, confusion with
popular marketing terminology or brand names will be avoided unless
a bona fide rationale for the similarity and a means to address
confusion were apparent.
By a multi-stage placement procedure it will be possible to built a
rationale TLD basis which serves both, the interests of the
community and their members in particular. The policies for this
procedure should take into account:
- Reserved period with terms for various parties (see below)
- Sunrise period for owners of various intellectual property rights
(geographical, trade marks, service marks, company and product
names, …) to minimize cyber-squatting
- Auction on value generic terms to maximize revenues for the city
and at the same time to minimize domain grabbing and increases the
immediate usage of the domains
- Unrestricted free registrations to serve a larger user community
and tol attract a greater number of registrants
Especially the reserved terms could be placed and distributed by the
following premise:
- Terms which represent sovereign interest of city and its
institutions (e.g. senate, government)
- Generic terms which represent economic interests of city (e.g.
hotel, tourism)
- Generic terms which serve known community interests (e.g. weather,
health)
- Terms for marketing purposes of the sponsoring organisation (e.g.
I love .nyc)
Due to an independently audited validation interests of various
parties are represented and it will be avoided that legal entities
and private registrants use opportunities for bad faith
registrations who defraud legitimate users. A suitable and ICANN
conform UDRP policy will support these efforts. Citizens will be
involved in defining the reserved terms by a voting system. An
independent committee creates honesty by mediating in difficult
placement cases of reserved terms.
City TLDs will have a broad-based support from the community the
sTLD they intended to represent
The city TLD itself and its sponsor should represent and strongly be
supported by a large variety and diversity of stakeholders. City
TLDs will serve a larger user community and will attract a greater
number of registrants. Entities which both support and represent the
sponsoring organisation should be:
- Mayor of the city representing the leader of the community
- Government of the city representing the political forces and
decision making bodies of the community
- Authorities such as police, courts, administrative institutions
representing the community working body
- Chamber of Commerce and industry representing companies, commerce
and the economic interests of the community
- Societies, associations, clubs, unions and other organisations
representing major interest groups of the community such as academic
institutions, cultural organisations, social and non-profit
organisations, sport clubs.
- Other cities with the same name and their residents worldwide
- Citizens living abroad
- Residents and its organisations
City TLDs add new value to the Internet name space and enhance
diversity of the Internet name space
The addition of city TLDs to the Domain Name System will enhance
diversity and positively affect the topology of the Internet by
establishing an Internet presence with global recognition and
regional significance. Besides the added value to the Internet
naming system through the city's pioneering investment, the main
value of city TLDs provide are precisely diversity regarding the
type of community, diversity regarding the services provided, and
diversity regarding the eligible policies created.
The city TLDs will deliver a dedicated choice to users and are
likely to enhance options by that information can be found on the
Internet. If a user is searching for information regarding the city
or city resources he might simply enter the URL of the term of
interest intuitively at the browser. At hotel.berlin he will find
hotels in Berlin and at cinema.london all cinemas, their weekly
programs and a reservation service. This will result in at least new
websites, as ease, simplicity and intuition of access generally
increase use. By this the purpose of introducing new names to make
the domain name system more useful and more accessible to broader
communities of interest and to more end users is served.
City TLDs satisfy community needs that cannot be readily met through
the existing TLDs
Community needs regarding marketing and other uses regarding their
city cannot be met by current TLD’s at the second level. Either
multiple levels of domains are required (e.g., www.company.paris.fr)
or extended URL’s are necessary (e.g.
www.paris.fr/administration/fincancial.htm). Beside legal hurdles to
delegate other levels there is no consistency, which leads to
inefficiencies both within the community and through the Internet at
large. Such inconsistency and convoluted nature of current URL fixes
complicates the community’s task to market their city. Such
inconsistency confuses the general Internet community and is
inefficient (e.g., bandwidth waste as seekers must go through
several entry pages until the desired website is reached). The city
TLDs will also deliver additional e-mail functionality to the
community and the Internet at large which is not possible with
existing TLDs (e.g. smith@company.paris).
City TLDs offer certainty and meaning to the Internet community
City TLDs give the user confidence that they stand for what they
purports to stand for. By naming the purpose of the TLD in the TLD
name itself the city TLD gives the user confidence that it stands
for what it is supposed to stand for. City TLDs assist the Internet
end-user to determine the relationship of the name and its stated
purpose. Other TLDs are just abbreviations of the meaning and users
might be confused what for .com stands (e.g. commercial or company).
Another examples are .net (network or just the net) or .info. For
instance .berlin does exactly stand for a website which is related
to a business, organisation or an individual connected with
Germany’s capital Berlin. Since among the top 1,000 cities worldwide
(by population) there are no doublers in the city name, the city TLD
is precise by its meaning, at least for worldwide acknowledged
metropolis like New York, Dehli, Sao Paulo or Cairo.
City TLDs enhance competition in registry and registrar services
It is believed that city TLDs will enhance competition in the domain
name registration services at least as such relates to competition
among the registrars and TLD registries. It is anticipated that city
TLD registrations will not take away many current ccTLD or gTLD
registrations. The city TLDs will have a broad geographic and
demographic impact. The awareness and pursuit of cities is truly
global and generally spans all demographics. The knowledge about
city TLDs will permeate the knowledge of the general community of
the Internet, users will associate city TLDs with the cities. They
will come to expect that they will find a wide range of services and
information related with the respective city and the sub-urban area.
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