Things I Want For My Neighborhood.nyc

Posted by:

November 30, 2015, Jackson Hts., NYC - My neighborhood is the place where most all my needs are me. It’s where I live, I eat, I work, I sleep, and I play. Not all the time - my work and vacations draw me away, and Manhattan’s wonders tempt me all too often - but most of the time. And as I’m getting up there in years, I’m beginning to think (hope?) that it’s the place where I’ll end my days (more on this below).

Next to my health, my family and my friends, my neighborhood is probably the most important thing in my life. And I’m blessed to live in a wonderful one - Jackson Heights.

In two days (now passed) I’m heading to a meeting at Queens Borough Hall to discuss what could be an important addition to my neighborhood, JacksonHeights.nyc and the vast potential it offers. It’s something I’ve thought about for 15 yeas, and now it’s just around the corner. Here’s what “I want” to happen to my neighborhood as a consequence of the development of the neighborhood domain name.

  • I want JacksonHeights.nyc to add more community to my neighborhood. (For background, a neighborhood is a geographic area and a community is connections, friendships, shared interests, and support. It can be local or global.)
  • I want “adding more community” to be a priority requirement for any entity that’s given the license to run JacksonHeights.nyc.
  • I want JacksonHeights.nyc to help create a more collaborative and caring neighborhood - on and offline.
  • I want it to expose and highlight needs.
  • I want it to empower residents to organize and address these needs.
  • I want it to facilitate the creation of caring communities that focus on the needy.
  • I want it to highlight opportunities.
  • I want it to facilitate collaborations.
  • I want it to offer a great decision-making tool, one that helps form a majority without crushing minorities.
  • I want a JacksonHeights.nyc that’s organized and governed as a commons, with collaborative decision making by all the neighborhood’s stakeholders.
  • I want JacksonHeights.nyc to help existing organizations (for and nonprofits) achieve their missions.
  • I want JacksonHeights.nyc to pay its way and create a local job or two.
  • I want JacksonHeights.nyc to be the first choice for local businesses online advertising dollars.
  • I want JacksonHeights.nyc to be the place where residents turn for recommendations from their neighbors for dentists, doctors, electricians, plumbers, restaurants…
  • I want JacksonHeights.nyc to be the first place people turn to learn about what goes on in the neighborhood - a neighborhood calendar to plan you life around.
  • I want a JacksonHeights.nyc to be a local as we want it to be, with the calendar having a check box that allows me to say “Invite the world” or “Just for the neighborhood.”
  • I want it to show all the 311 and 911 calls. (Respecting privacy of course.)
  • I want it to help organize residents to resolve issues raised by 311 and 911 calls.
  • I want Jackson Heights.nyc to enable neighborhood based processes of adaptation, response, and management to climate change.
  • I want JacksonHeights.nyc to be a safe place to conduct my online life. That means it must have DNSSEC and DANE (technical protocols) and be part of a citywide security and privacy effort.
  • I want JacksonHeights.nyc to present all the information about the neighborhood that I or any visitor might want. This is information that we all know collectively and should be presented by wiki-style.
  • I want the operator of JacksonHeights.nyc to serve residents via desktops, phones, tablets, etc.
  • I want all the software used on JacksonHeights.nyc to be open source.
  • I want JacksonHeights.nyc to share its riches with other city neighborhoods.
  • And I want our neighborhood’s residents and institutions to join to train everyone interested in effectively using JacksonHeights.nyc.

The city’s extensive and well thought out application for the neighborhood domain names leads me to think the administration shares these thoughts. But it will surely take the engagement and support of many to make them a reality. I hope many of you will be in Borough Hall, Room 200 on Wednesday morning at 9:30 (see invite post here) to add your Wants to this list.

Best,

Tom Lowenhaupt

30
NOV
0

Civic Commons, dotNeighborhoods, Governance, Neighborhood, Planning, Privacy, Public Interest Commitments (PICs), Security

FOILing the WHOIS Data for the .nyc TLD

Posted by:

Jackson Hts., New York, June 1, 2015 - A few of months back, when preparing our 6 month review of the .nyc TLD’s operation - see here, we grew curious about who had purchased the initial 75,000 .nyc domain names: Was this new resource being allocated in an equitable manner? For example, we wondered if the name purchasers were spread evenly over the city or concentrated in a particular neighborhood or borough. And if they were from a particular social or economic strata.

After considering the options for assessing the situation we concluded that the most effective way to envision the situation would be to plot the home addresses of registrants (aka owners) of .nyc domain names on a map. We’d seen something similar done with housing foreclosures resulting from the 2009 financial crisis. So we requested the WHOIS data from the city.

Over a 10 week period we exchanged a number of emails with city officials requesting the WHOIS data, which details who owns the .nyc domain names. After several back and forths with the city’s data keepers we concluded that it was unlikely that the data would be provided, and on May 27 we filed a data request under the NYS Freedom Of Information Law. We’ll keep you posted.

  • Update #1 - On June 5 I received acknowledgement that DoITT had received the FOIL request. As the law states that a response should have been received within 5 business days, we’re facing a lag of a few days. Also, the notification did not provide an estimated date when we might expect to receive the requested data, as required by FOIL. We’re following up.
  • Update #2 - Clarification resulted in the following: “Thank you for your email. If possible, DoITT will grant or deny your request by July 6, 2015, which marks the 20th business day from the date of acknowledgement. I am looking to locate the records that you have requested. At this time, I am unsure as to whether DoITT maintains WHOIS data of registrants of .nyc domain names.” While this seem outside the guidelines, activities here make it acceptable.
  • Update #3 - On July 6 we received notice that our request for location data (zip codes) for .nyc registrants was denied, as follows “Your request sought the following information: domain name, registrants name, contact postal code, administrative contact postal code, billing contact postal code, technical contact postal code, domain name registration date, and if registrant is a business or an individual. The Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (“DoITT”) has completed research and found the attached list of domains with their registration date and whether the registrant is a business or individual. Pursuant to the .nyc End User Privacy Policy, DoITT is unable to release any personal information regarding domain registrants, including names or locations of registrants of .nyc domains. Therefore, the portion of your request seeking names and location information is denied.” We’ll soon post the data provided on a Beta-NY site and again seek the zip code location information.
  • Update #4 - On July 27 we received notification from DoITT’s General Counsel that our appeal of the July 6 decision had been rejected. An Article 78 filing is our next step. See more on this latest decision here.
1
JUN
4

Equity, Governance, Name Allocation Policy, Privacy