The Financial Capital, World-Renowned Tourist Attraction, Historical Landmarks, Modeling and Acting Industry of New York City, is about to propel into an unprecedented Technological outburst. On the 23rd January 2014, a Registry Agreement between The Internet Committee for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication, entered a registry agreement assigning the City with its first unique top-level-domain (TLD). Having a unique top-level-domain (TLD), gives New York City precedence in the digital landscape and technological development, a platform that’ll spur opportunity for small businesses and aggregate investors, entrepreneurs, startups, community based organizations and job seekers.
New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, unvelied the Digital.NYC to the public as a one-stop collaborative platform between a public-private partnership, where people can have a hands-on connection with the tech scene. Digital.NYC is a comprehensive platform that connects entrepreneurs with investors, New Yorkers with technology and information, an Internet Hub covering all service and facilities in a technological ecosystem. The platform engages user with information and resources to materialize ideas into sustainable businesses; the extensive database offers search portals with profiles of tech based company’s and investors, a curated system allowing investors and entrepreneurs to narrow their searches to fit their criteria. The platform perpetually updates the listings of digital employments, technology openings, events, courses, work spaces, start-ups, incubators etc—
The digital ecosystem is accessible to all New Yorkers, from venture capitalist seeking start-ups, to skilled entrepreneurs and graduated students in search of employment opportunities. There’s been an influx of city-based tech and organizations joining the digital platform, including the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). The platform was built by the Venture Capital software firm “GUST,” a global start-up investment platform, where startups and entrepreneurs can connect with accredited investors. IBM was exclusively selected to power the digital platform using their IBM’s Bluemix cloud development technology.
The inception of Digital.NYC’s ecosystem is a laudable technology with prolific and repercussive implications, primarily “the elephant in the room,” idiom; such as the trademark and cyber security issues centered around the debut of top-level-domains. Large corporations with domain portfolios asked for special trademark protections from ICANN, to prevent rogue cybersquatting and other deceptive domain practices, this sort of influential leverage my not be applicable to small business and individuals. Planting your picket fence in the virtual land rush could also mark a period of digital history repeating itself.
The dot-com bubble had a profound impact on Internet commerce, and immeasurably altered every facet of consumer goods and service during the late 20th century. Internet companies were launched with overly optimistic expectations, from investors, individuals, institutions and major corporations registering domains with unrealistic hopes that the value of online operated companies would achieve huge financial gains. The euphoric anticipation precipitated during the collapse of Internet stocks during the stock-market plummet in 2001. The era dot-coms pervaded, where everyone was pursuing dot-coms infatuated with becoming millionaires.
State designated domain extension registrations could spiral a replicative bubble, primarily in states where entrepreneurial energy pervade. It can change the dynamics of cyber squatting, the practice of registering brand names, large companies, and generic words that identify product names and services, or the obscure name of a celebrity offspring. Cybersquatting is an abusive registration in an attempt to capitalize on a reselling profit; to prevent domain exploitation by cybersquatters you can purchase domains similar in spelling, purchase typographical error domains, “errors made in typing,” and purchase the “Top Level Domain” (TLD), extensions such as; .COM, NET, ORG etc—
During the late 90s search-engines promulgated the airwaves; Hotbot, AskJeeves, Alltheweb, Lycos, Webcrawler, Infoseek and Altavista, and although Google’s dominance reined subsequently, “Goggle,” inadvertently gained millions of monthly traffic due to typo-error, “typing mistakes.” It’s imperative to fence your domain by securing typos to avoid indirect loss of traffic. There’s a myriad of registrars and resellers offering .nyc domains, but ownit.nyc curate retailers in an alphabetical order as an alternative to manual research. .NYC domain extensions are exclusively reserved for residence only, and registrants cannot license, transfer or delegate domains to anyone who fails to meet the requirements.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a landmark case, equated domain names to “land-ownership” regardless of their virtual nature, this is victorious for registrants, meaning traditional property protections can legally apply to virtual domain ownership. Top-Level-Domains (TLD), especially generic names have an intrinsic resale value that appreciates with time; business.com sold for $7.500.000, and loan.com sold for $3,000,000. Ironically, Google’s is ranked as the worlds most valuable domain and perceived as a generic verb based on users understanding of the term “googling.” Domain names investments are considered an intangible property and should be protected against liabilities.
When ICANN approved top-level-domains the business communities vehemently opposed the idea, and for economical reasons, they’re subjugated into purchasing the new extensions to avoid cybersquatting extortions, which inevitably domain squatters bank on. However, the domain registrations are reserved exclusively for residence in NYC, also attached are other legal requirements, but how cybersquatters will circumvent these legal constrictions is a major contention for businesses trying to protect the City’s famous trademarks.
Digital.NYC’s will have an immeasurable impact on the City’s economic development, urban diversity and technology—a groundbreaking resource where members of the City’s industry, such as; finance, fashion, art and research can seamlessly connect to training opportunities and tech hubs. A remarkable private-public corporation that’ll empower every facet of the community, creating a synergy between investors, entrepreneurs, startups, visitors, and bringing the dynamics of technological culture into a virtual medium that would unleash new designs and spawn innovations. This would inevitably entrench New York City not only as the leading technological hub in the world, but the pioneers of ingenuity, an inimitable status that cannot be duplicated.