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NEW YORK — Is it time for New York City to corner a piece of the Internet? A growing grassroots movement says yes, and is trying to create an ".nyc" domain name to go alongside the .coms and .orgs of the World Wide Web. "When Ford introduced their first car 100 years ago, no one thought to start building roads for it," said Tom Lowenhaupt, an interactive marketing consultant who heads Connecting.nyc, a group he formed to lead the effort. "So we ended up having to tear down miles of the Bronx to build freeways to start accommodating them all. It's the same thing now. We have the opportunity now to plan for the future and start organizing ourselves and our resources in a responsible way." Backers say that .nyc would allow the city's small businesses to distinguish themselves in the crowded online marketplace and foster better community cohesion and social activism. "The Internet is great at global things, but it isn't very good at local things," Lowenhaupt said. "There are 60 million .com names out there. When all 6 billion of us are on the Internet, New York is going to be forgotten." To get a top-level domain, interested parties must apply to ICANN, the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers. In 2008, it will for the first time take applications from cities for domain names. Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service