Mayor Michael Bloomberg today confirmed that ICANN, the agency responsible for assigning top level domains like “.com” and “.org,” had formally approved the new New York City Suffix, which will go on sale near the end of 2013 for a price yet to be announced.

In a release announcing the domain name, Bloomberg’s aspiring successor, Christine Quinn, said New York will now “also be the greatest city on the internet.” City officials boasted that the domain name will be a boon for small businesses and a revenue generator for the city.

But before other New Yorkers start patting themselves on the back, they may want to ask their leaders how the city will protect famous trademarks — Magnolia Bakery, Katz’s, FAO Schwartz and so on.

When ICANN has approved previous top level domains, the business community has vociferously opposed them — complaining they are forced to buy them or see them fall into the hands of domain squatters, who then demand more money for the real owners to buy them back. This is what occurred when ICANN launched the “.xxx” domain — businesses said it amounted to “domain extortion.” ICANN has also botched other parts of the new domain name process.

Bloomberg and other city officials have so far been silent about how it will protect its businesses from squatters, only noting that registrants must have a “bona fide presence” in New York City, but not explaining how they will verify that.

That person was Shashank Tripathia, a hedge fund analyst, who began issuing false and alarming news reports on Twitter at the height of the storm. As hospitals lost power and a major power station exploded, Tripathia contributed to the chaos by falsely claiming that all of Manhattan had gone black and that:

BREAKING:Confirmed flooding on NYSE.The trading floor is flooded under more than 3 feet of water.

— ComfortablySmug (@ComfortablySmug) October 30, 2012

The tweet — which said a pillar of the world economic infrastructure was in peril — was finally refuted by the stock exchange, but not before it had been repeated hundreds of times, including on CNN and the Weather Channel. In short, Tripathia used a media platform at the height of an emergency to promote panic and anxiety.

Everyone agrees that his behavior was reprehensible. But there is also the question of whether tweets like Tripathia’s are (or should be) illegal.

Keep in mind that Twitter is not just an online gab fest, it is also a newswire. During the hurricane, a phone-based Twitter feed was the last and best source of news for some of us who had lost access to TV and the internet. It was at this very time that Tripathia chose to make mischief with his fake news reports, knowing full well his lies would be picked up by other news sources. It’s as if the local TV channel began broadcasting fake hurricane news just for fun.

Criminal mischief or Free speech?

Should he be punished? As others have pointed out, the damage he caused is limited because Twitter operates much like a self-cleaning oven by disinfecting false news. And Tripathia himself is likely to face the wrath of angry New Yorkers and possibly lose his job, now that BuzzFeed exposed his identity.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the state or city shouldn’t consider criminal charges against Tripathia — or anyone else who uses a broadcast channel in an emergency to endanger or incite. But any government action would, of course, be subject to the law of free speech.

“Lies are constitutionally protected except in very rare exceptions. Someone recklessly tweeting is beyond the reach of the law except in rare exceptions,” said Ken Paulson, a lawyer and former USA Today editor at the First Amendment Center, in a phone interview.

Paulson added that Twitter is typically so much loose talk and that “anything you want to outlaw on Twitter, you’d have to outlaw in conversation.”

Paulson’s reasoning is appealing, especially to a journalist, but may be hard to square with situations in which a Twitter feed becomes a de facto emergency broadcast channel. After all, the government already regulates rumors related to the SEC and the stock market, and courts say they will draw a line at protecting speech that gives rise to “imminent lawless action.” Should there be limits on social network speech in emergencies too?

At GigaOM, we’re fond of highlighting Twitter’s role as a source of freedom and public media tool. For now, my instinct is to leave Twitter alone. But future emergencies may test that position.

Update: it looks like at least one city official in New York thinks Tripathia’s tweets amount to a criminal act:

City Councilman Peter Vallone says he’s going to DA over @comfortablysmug ‘s false tweets : bit.ly/W3ojOe #VALLONEZONE

— KateNocera (@KateNocera) October 30, 2012

Update 2: Tripathia has apologized for the tweets and resigned as campaign manager for a Republican candidate for Congress. Respected Reuters columnist Felix Salmon isn’t in a forgiving mood.

I wish to offer the people of New York a sincere, humble and unconditional apology. twitter.com/ComfortablySmu…

— ComfortablySmug (@ComfortablySmug) October 31, 2012

.@comfortablysmug if your apology is so sincere, why didn’t you put your name to it?

— felix salmon (@felixsalmon) October 31, 2012

And if you have any sympathy for @comfortablysmug at all, Google “I’m satisfied by the thought this will probably leave her with bruises.”

— felix salmon (@felixsalmon) October 31, 2012

(Images by Benjamin Simeneta and Zacarias Pereira da Mata via Shutterstock)

Through the month of September, readers will be able to use, courtesy of the Journal, 1300 hotspots blanketing large swathes Manhattan, including high traffic neighborhoods like Times Square and West Village. The service is also available in parts of three other boroughs. In San Francisco, the Wi-Fi will be available in places like Nob Hill and Fisherman’s Wharf.

• See also Why free Wi-Fi marketing is smart and Google, Boingo bring their free Wi-Fi experiment to mall rats

So why is the conservative Journal giving out free internet service to all comers? According to a spokesperson, “We’re always looking for ways to give people the opportunity to sample The Wall Street Journal. This is the latest in a long history of those efforts.”

This is one of the paper’s more novel initiatives but it may prove effective. While it’s unlikely that an iPad-touting tourist in Central Park is going to whip out a credit card and subscribe, the free Wi-Fi could be a terrific way for the Journal to let new users encounter its homepage (provided the service doesn’t have the janky qualities of some other free Wi-Fi initiatives).

The paper will also garner valuable customer data since non-subscribers must register to access the WiFi. Existing subscribers can simply log-in using their accounts; this too promises to deliver a trove of marketing data about the places that Journal readers frequent.

Here’s a screenshot from the Journal page promoting the service (sorry Uptown, no Wi-Fi for you!)

(Image by phloxii via Shutterstock)

Residents of the Big Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) learned this week that their city could be the first to have its own domain name — a fancy new “.nyc” instead of boring old “.com”.

New Yorkers so far have greeted the news as further proof that the world is indeed about them but, this time, they should be careful about what they wish for.

History shows that new domain names arrive as a digital novelty but then become little more than a tax on business owners.

That’s because a company only needs one domain to host their website but must also purchase other ones to protect themselves from scammers and cyber-squatters.

The only ones who win are the scammers and the registry operators who line their pockets by forcing companies to buy names they don’t want or need.

New York City landmarks like Katz’s Deli and Magnolia cupcakes are doing just fine with their existing websites but may grudgingly buy the new name so they don’t have to pay a ransom to free “Katz.nyc” or “Magnolia.nyc” from a cyber-squatter.

This not a hypothetical problem — Verizon recently filed a lawsuit to reclaim 660 different fake website names. Each new domain name, including gems like “.biz,” “.travel” and “.mobi” just makes it more expensive for companies to stamp out the squatters. The problem is likely to get bigger as ICANN staffers, in a brazen act of self-dealing, are leaving the non-profit web overseer to run their own domain name companies.

New York City’s Digital Officer, Rachel Stearne, suggests an unnamed company in Virginia is likely to be the registry operator for “.NYC”

There is already a website called NYCdomains.org that is taking orders for “.NYC” names.

Update: Nick Sbordone, a city official, says the website is misleading and that New York City has not authorized it to reserve names.

Sbordone also said that people and businesses will have to be able to show a nexus to New York — like a residence or a business — to be eligible to use “.nyc”

The city has yet to determine, however, if a “.nyc” buyer will have to show they are eligible before they buy the name. If not, places like Magnolia Bakery could use the rules to reclaim the name but would still have to spend money to enforce them against a cyber-squatter (in many cases, it could prove cheaper to just pay the ransom).

Sbordone added that the sale of “.nyc” names are at least a year away and that the city would consult local stakeholders in coming months.

Carole Post, the Commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, offered the following comment:

“We view the .nyc TLD as a unique opportunity, at a unique time, to ride the digital wave and keep New York City at the leading edge of innovation.”