.NYC Domain Names Coming? Petition & Fundraiser

From the New York Times Blog comes this story of a campaign to launch a .NYC domain name! While it sounds as though the organizers of the non-profit organization at ConnectingNYC.org want a city name TLD to host city government, educational, and public works types of domains - there are some mentions of other city name TLD's on the official NYC campaign Wiki as well.

.HK is mentioned as one example, although after last weeks report on .hk as the most dangerous of all ccTLD's (is this a country or a city?) tarnishes that as an example to aspire to. There is also mention of Paris and Berlin seeking city name TLD's on a site that documents other city names seeking domain name extensions.

There is another domain that LOOKS like a city name, but actually isn't ... Here is the Wikipedia account of the .LA name.

The LA Names Corporation, based in Guernsey, has gained the rights to market .la registrations, and they had used the registry services of Afilias and, formerly, the registrar services of DreamHost. However, DreamHost has discontinued registrar services as of May, 2006, and CentralNic now provides these services. CentralNic is based in the United Kingdom, while the .la domain is allocated to Laos, but the registrar site claims it to be the "official domain of the city of Los Angeles", a city that is known by the "L.A." initials. It is also often used as an unofficial domain for Liverpool, because Scousers used to call each other 'La'. As registrations are taken directly at the second level, and many English words end with -la, this presents an opportunity for domain hacks.

The New York Times Blog Post by Jennifer 8. Lee which discusses the .NYC domain campaign is funny and has more than a few one-liners going for it.

So last year, Icann announced a process in which groups could essentially propose their own dot-whatevers if they had both the financing and technical ability to handle the registration. Imagine: .radio to go along with .tv (which is actually the country domain for the country of Tuvalu), and .dog to go along with .cat (which is actually for Catalan), .con to go with .pro. (If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress? Joke.)

Separately, the blog post covers the organizer of the .NYC domain campaign,

The .nyc effort is led by Mr. Lowenhaupt, a 61-year-old civic-minded Jackson Heights resident. “The role of .nyc is to reconnect the city,” he said. Mr. Lowenhaupt was on Community Board 3 in Queens — which includes Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst and Corona — when the board passed a resolution in support of .nyc in 2001. “A year and a half ago, I decided that no one else as been really doing it,” he said. So he set aside his consulting work and has been more or less working full-time on the project since then. “I think it’s important to the city,” he said. He has enlisted a small group of volunteers and essentially goes around lobbying for support of the idea.