Current Problems with the .city TLD process

[Sam Lanfranco]

Amr,

Thanks for the comments and especially your opinion that "…initiating a 
multistakeholder discussion aimed at giving priority to applicants on a 
"public interest" basis is both difficult and unnecessary."It is not 
clear if you feel that the multistakeholder discussion or the priority 
but I assume you mean giving priority to applicants on a public interest 
basis is both difficult and unnecessary. My concerns are two, one at the 
macro level of the notion of the "public interest" and the other at the 
micro level around the details of the ICANN processes and what they 
cover or don't cover.

At the macro level, should there be a public interest component in the 
assessment of gTLDs, or the operation of gTLDs, both as to existence and 
to ownership? In time both answers will be yes, but not the way it is 
done now. ICANN's gTLD governance processes face the same challenges in 
cyber space that city governments face around planning and zoning 
issues. If ICANN decides not to recognize that responsibility, someone 
else will. That may be good or bad for the Internet and good or bad for 
ICANN. To illustrate, I can make living raising and selling chickens 
from my back year. The community may want chickens, but the public 
interest may say that it is the wrong space for that activity and the 
wrong activity for that space. The city government will make zoning 
decisions and bad decisions may toss the incumbent crew out of office 
(here: marginalize ICANN).

Using the .health gTLD as an example, the ICANN approval process gives 
no role to health systems expertise in examining the merits of the what, 
why, and how of the .health business plan. Doing so would be difficult 
but if ICANN does not confront the challenge, possibly in collaboration 
with others, the responsibility for that part of DNS Internet governance 
will grow elsewhere.

The creation of gTLD, and the consequent second level TLDs, is a zoning 
approval process and the governance around that will have to rise to the 
occasion. Where this resides, ICANN or elsewhere, is less important than 
that it is done well. It is not done well within existing ICANN 
practice. Adding a public interest field in an assessment check list, 
and some sort of priority process leaves too many holes and smells like 
"Okay, done that, let's just get on with (our) business here.". ICANN 
can elect to be in the game or out of the game, but there will be 
governance process, with or without ICANN. In the long run global health 
systems expertise will trump whatever business plan .health starts with. 
Also, just as city planning is seldom used to trample human rights, this 
process will not be a Trojan Horse for censorship.

At the micro level I will just re-state what the applicant for the 
MentalHealth.nyc .city domain name has said. If ICANN gTLD auctions and 
its private gTLD auctions involve transparency, scope for collaboration 
among applicants. If this is good at the gTLD level why is this not also 
part of the ICANN contract language in the awarding of .city TLD? Many 
of the .city TLD second level applications involve civil society 
organizations and the above zoning and planning issues exist at this 
micro level. With municipal ownership of the .city TLDs city planning 
will no doubt expand into cyber space planning as well. This is an area 
where someone will take leadership, and that is unlikely to be ICANN, 
although ICANN could help by improving the .city contract language to 
provide fairer and more consistent playing fields for applicants at both 
top and secondary levels, at least during the landrush phase.

I hope that helps tease out the core issues here.

Sam L.
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