Back

18(a) Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD

gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.buydot Buy Limitedfamousfourmedia.comView
Q18A
Mission and Purpose of .buy?
The Applicant’s mission and purpose is to create an environment where individuals and companies can interact and express themselves in ways never before seen on the Internet, in a more targeted, secure and stable environment. Its aim is to become the premier online destination for such creators and their wide range of users. The Applicant will create an Internet space whose central function is to provide a platform for creating, producing and disseminating informative, creative and innovative content that is easily recognizable as pertaining to its stakeholder group. The Applicant is acutely aware of the importance of ICANN’s mission in coordinating the global Internetʹs systems of unique identifiers and ensuring their secure and stable operation. The Applicant’s core focus is to create a secure, sustainable, and specialized gTLD, thus supporting ICANN’s primary goals for this program in promoting consumer trust, consumer choice, competition and innovation.

Why .buy?
Buying products or services online is very popular with internet users. There is a sense that shopping is something to look forward to, a treat or reward. Not only is this sense achieved through the goods themselves, but also the act of exploring and purchasing them. Therefore, the aim of .buy is to enhance and develop the consumer experiences of online shopping.

Since its inception the internet has revolutionized the way we communicate, empowered hundreds of millions with knowledge and created a platform where global commerce can thrive. However, access to the countless benefits and opportunities which the internet offers can often be hindered when navigating the ever-expanding sea of irrelevant and sometimes malicious content which also exists.

Thus, the aim of .buy is to create a blank canvas for the online shopping sector set within a secure environment. The Applicant will achieve this by creating a consolidated, versatile and dedicated space for the shopping sector. As the new space is dedicated to those within this affinity group the Applicant will ensure that consumer trust is promoted. Consequently consumer choice will be augmented as there will be a ready marketplace specifically for enterprises to provide their goods and services. All stakeholders within the sector will be able to sample reactions to new ideas, or gather thoughts on the improvements of established ones. This will drive innovation and competition within the shopping sector as there will be new channels available not yet fulfilled by current market offerings. This new environment will cause registrants to seek new ways to separate themselves from the competition.

How will .buy take shape?
The Applicant believes that the success of the gTLD will be determined largely by the sector’s key global stakeholders. These stakeholders will be interested in registering a domain and additionally be motivated to protect their sector from detrimental practices. The Applicant believes that stakeholders should have the opportunity to influence the gTLD and the way it is governed. Accordingly, the Applicant is establishing a Governance Council (“GC”), consisting of key stakeholders that will serve as an advisory body.

Why Applicant?
The Applicant has substantial combined experience amongst its team in managing global businesses from a financial, legal and operational perspective and an exceptionally strong financial position. The Applicant’s Team has previous experience with the entire gTLD life-cycle significantly lowering any launch and ongoing operational risks associated with this application. The Applicant has engaged a world-class Registry services provider to manage the technical infrastructure of the .buy gTLD. The Applicant is further advised by the leading sector experts in all other areas required to ensure a responsible and successful launch and ongoing management of the gTLD to the benefit of all stakeholders in the ICANN community.

Information for future studies and reviews
The Applicant recognizes the connection of the new gTLD application to the Affirmation of Commitments (“AoC”). To gauge the success of the new gTLD program, the Applicant recognizes that an AoC Review Team will be formed one year after the first delegation. To prepare for this, the ICANN Board resolved the creation of a Working Group to formulate definitions of competition, consumer trust and consumer choice and possible metrics for the future AoC team to consider in its gTLD review. The Applicant understands this effort has not been adopted by the ICANN Board, but many of the proposed metrics may be used to gauge the Applicant’s gTLD effectiveness and the gTLD program. The Applicant intends to track costs and benefit metrics to inform future studies and reviews. Proposed definitions are:
- Consumer Trust is defined as the confidence registrants and users have in the consistency of name resolution and the degree of confidence among registrants and users that a TLD Registry operator is fulfilling its proposed purpose and is complying with ICANN policies and applicable national laws.
- Consumer Choice is defined as the range of options available to registrants and users for domain scripts and languages, and for TLDs that offer choices as to the proposed purpose and integrity of their domain name registrants.
- Competition is defined as the quantity, diversity, and the potential for market rivalry of TLDs, TLD Registry operators, and Registrars.

Promoting Competition
Given the proposed definition for competition, the Applicant will attain this by contributing to the quantity and diversity within the Registry Operator space. The Applicant is a new entrant enhancing competition among the providers. The Applicant will promote competition for Registrants by amongst other things:
- Building a healthy growth trend of domain registrations
- Measure migration of content from other TLDs
- Maintain competitive pricing of domains

Promoting consumer trust
.buy will be developed with consumer trust and satisfaction in mind. After 2 years of operations, the Applicant will conduct a survey to measure consumer trust and consumer satisfaction. This will be used to improve the service. The Applicant will among other things measure the following:
- Service Availability of Critical Registry Systems
- Abuse and Takedown incidents
- Rights protection incidents
- WHOIS data accuracy

Promoting consumer choice
The Applicant intends to promote consumer choice by achieving the following:
- Display of registration requirements and restrictions in the gTLD
- Highly available and geographically diverse Registrar channel
- Effective sunrise and trademark services

Domain names will be available globally, although the Applicant’s initial marketing efforts will be predominately directed to potential Registrants represented by the six (6) official languages of the United Nations (“UN Languages”), Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, Russian and Spanish.
After the initial 2 years it is the Applicant’s aim that:
- Registrants globally should have access to Registrar services for the gTLD in at least the six UN Languages
- The gTLD is offered by Registrars covering at least 40 Countries and territories globally

Information on the effectiveness of safeguards
The Applicant takes rights protection and abuse prevention and mitigation very seriously and has developed policies accordingly. Amongst others, the Applicant will collect and evaluate data regarding:
- Effectiveness of the Sunrise process in limiting abusive registration practices
- Effectiveness of the additional Abuse Prevention and Mitigation (ʺAPMʺ)and Rights Protection Mechanisms (ʺRPMʺ)in limiting abusive registration practices
- Effectiveness of the mandatory APMs and RPMs
-end-
gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.shoppingSea Tigers, LLCdonuts.coView
Q18A CHAR: 7985

ABOUT DONUTS
Donuts Inc. is the parent applicant for this and multiple other TLDs. The company intends to increase competition and consumer choice at the top level. It will operate these carefully selected TLDs safely and securely in a shared resources business model. To achieve its objectives, Donuts has recruited seasoned executive management with proven track records of excellence in the industry. In addition to this business and operational experience, the Donuts team also has contributed broadly to industry policymaking and regulation, successfully launched TLDs, built industry-leading companies from the ground up, and brought innovation, value and choice to the domain name marketplace.

DONUTS’ PLACE WITHIN ICANN’S MISSION
ICANN and the new TLD program share the following purposes:
1. to make sure that the Internet remains as safe, stable and secure as possible, while
2. helping to ensure there is a vibrant competitive marketplace to efficiently bring the benefits of the namespace to registrants and users alike.

ICANN harnesses the power of private enterprise to bring forth these public benefits. While pursuing its interests, Donuts helps ICANN accomplish its objectives by:

1. Significantly widening competition and choice in Internet identities with hundreds of new top-level domain choices;
2. Providing innovative, robust, and easy-to-use new services, names and tools for users, registrants, registrars, and registries while at the same time safeguarding the rights of others;
3. Designing, launching, and securely operating carefully selected TLDs in multiple languages and character sets; and
4. Providing a financially robust corporate umbrella under which its new TLDs will be protected and can thrive.

ABOUT DONUTS’ RESOURCES
Donuts’ financial resources are extensive. The company has raised more than US$100 million from a number of capital sources including multiple multi-billion dollar venture capital and private equity funds, a top-tier bank, and other well-capitalized investors. Should circumstances warrant, Donuts is prepared to raise additional funding from current or new investors. Donuts also has in place pre-funded, Continued Operations Instruments to protect future registrants. These resource commitments mean Donuts has the capability and intent to launch, expand and operate its TLDs in a secure manner, and to properly protect Internet users and rights-holders from potential abuse.

Donuts firmly believes a capable and skilled organization will operate multiple TLDs and benefit Internet users by:

1. Providing the operational and financial stability necessary for TLDs of all sizes, but particularly for those with smaller volume (which are more likely to succeed within a shared resources and shared services model);
2. Competing more powerfully against incumbent gTLDs; and
3. More thoroughly and uniformly executing consumer and rights holder protections.

THIS TLD
This TLD is attractive and useful to end-users as it better facilitates search, self-expression, information sharing and the provision of legitimate goods and services. Along with the other TLDs in the Donuts family, this TLD will provide Internet users with opportunities for online identities and expression that do not currently exist. In doing so, the TLD will introduce significant consumer choice and competition to the Internet namespace – the very purpose of ICANN’s new TLD program.

This TLD is a generic term and its second level names will be attractive to a variety of Internet users. Making this TLD available to a broad audience of registrants is consistent with the competition goals of the New TLD expansion program, and consistent with ICANN’s objective of maximizing Internet participation. Donuts believes in an open Internet and, accordingly, we will encourage inclusiveness in the registration policies for this TLD. In order to avoid harm to legitimate registrants, Donuts will not artificially deny access, on the basis of identity alone (without legal cause), to a TLD that represents a generic form of activity and expression.

DONUTS’ APPROACH TO PROTECTIONS
No entity, or group of entities, has exclusive rights to own or register second level names in this TLD. There are superior ways to minimize the potential abuse of second level names, and in this application Donuts will describe and commit to an extensive array of protections against abuse, including protections against the abuse of trademark rights.

We recognize some applicants seek to address harms by constraining access to the registration of second level names. However, we believe attempts to limit abuse by limiting registrant eligibility is unnecessarily restrictive and harms users by denying access to many legitimate registrants. Restrictions on second level domain eligibility would prevent law-abiding individuals and organizations from participating in a space to which they are legitimately connected, and would inhibit the sort of positive innovation we intend to see in this TLD. As detailed throughout this application, we have struck the correct balance between consumer and business safety, and open access to second level names.

By applying our array of protection mechanisms, Donuts will make this TLD a place for Internet users that is far safer than existing TLDs. Donuts will strive to operate this TLD with fewer incidences of fraud and abuse than occur in incumbent TLDs. In addition, Donuts commits to work toward a downward trend in such incidents.

OUR PROTECTIONS
Donuts has consulted with and evaluated the ideas of international law enforcement, consumer privacy advocacy organizations, intellectual property interests and other Internet industry groups to create a set of protections that far exceed those in existing TLDs, and bring to the Internet namespace nearly two dozen new rights and protection mechanisms to raise user safety and protection to a new level.

These include eight, innovative and forceful mechanisms and resources that far exceed the already powerful protections in the applicant guidebook. These are:

1. Periodic audit of WhoIs data for accuracy;
2. Remediation of inaccurate Whois data, including takedown, if warranted;
3. A new Domain Protected Marks List (DPML) product for trademark protection;
4. A new Claims Plus product for trademark protection;
5. Terms of use that prohibit illegal or abusive activity;
6. Limitations on domain proxy and privacy service;
7. Published policies and procedures that define abusive activity; and
8. Proper resourcing for all of the functions above.

They also include fourteen new measures that were developed specifically by ICANN for the new TLD process. These are:

1. Controls to ensure proper access to domain management functions;
2. 24⁄7⁄365 abuse point of contact at registry;
3. Procedures for handling complaints of illegal or abusive activity, including remediation and takedown processes;
4. Thick WhoIs;
5. Use of the Trademark Clearinghouse;
6. A Sunrise process;
7. A Trademark Claims process;
8. Adherence to the Uniform Rapid Suspension system;
9. Adherence to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy;
10. Adherence to the Post Delegation Dispute Resolution Policy;
11. Detailed security policies and procedures;
12. Strong security controls for access, threat analysis and audit;
13. Implementation DNSSEC; and
14. Measures for the prevention of orphan glue records.

DONUTS’ INTENTION FOR THIS TLD
As a senior government authority has recently said, “a successful applicant is entrusted with operating a critical piece of global Internet infrastructure.” Donuts’ plan and intent is for this TLD to serve the international community by bringing new users online through opportunities for economic growth, increased productivity, the exchange of ideas and information and greater self-expression.