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20(d) Explain the relationship between the applied-for gTLD string and the community identified in 20(a)

gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.spaAsia Spa and Wellness Promotion Council Limitedtld.asiaView
Following from #20b “Relationship and Appropriateness of the Selected TLD string with the Community”, the selected TLD string “spa” perfectly matches with the name as well as the philosophy of the spa and wellness community.

1. Name

“Spa” is the name for which the community is commonly known by others. Almost all the associations in the community uses the word “spa” as a distinctive element in its name. The activity or its facilities are sometimes known as “bath” or “springs” (more common in the past), but in the present day, the predominant trend is to use the name “spa”.

The community often identifies itself as the “spa and wellness” community. The Registry has studied the different possibilities for representing the community with a TLD string, including for example, .spa, .well, .wellness, .saw, etc. None of the alternatives come close to the choice of “.spa” as a short, representative and meaningful representation of a key distinctive spirit and cohesion describing the community.

2. Identify

The applied for string: “spa” closely describes the community and the community members. Almost all the associations in the community uses the word “spa” as a distinctive element in its name. Many members of the community, i.e. spa operators and providers include or integrate the word “spa” in its own company name, and almost all of them include the word “spa” in the description of their business.

Based on research conducted by the Registry, we are aware that the string “spa” is also used in three other contexts:
- the municipality of Spa in Belgium
- the short form of ʺSocietà Per Azioniʺ means “stock corporation” in Italy and is often denoted in the short form: ʺS.p.A.ʺ
- the short form of ʺSpondyloarthropathyʺ, a medical term for any joint disease of the vertebral column

While the municipality of Spa in Belgium was likely the inspiration of the use of the term “spa” in its present day meaning as a generic description, the .spa TLD is not intended to serve the town of Spa in Belgium. The registry is also aware of the use of the term “S.p.A.” to mean ʺSocietà Per Azioniʺ (i.e. stock corporation) in Italy, as well as a short form of the medical term “Spondyloarthropathy”. Neither of which is associated with the use of the term “spa” in its most accepted meaning and the meaning for which the .spa TLD intends. Furthermore their usage is significantly less prevalent than the use of the term “spa” in its present day generic descriptive meaning. As such, the registry does not believe that the use of the term over-reaches substantially beyond the community.

Further explanation is provided in 4. Uniqueness below and further policies to mitigate its use for other possible designations are further discussed in #20e, #22 and #29.

3. Nexus

Most people inside and outside the spa community refer to spas and the spa community with the word “spa” as a distinctive descriptor. The location for which a member of the community operates is called a spa; a member of the community is often called simply a spa or in a more industrial descriptor a spa operator; and, products and services of members of the community are described as spa products and spa services. All of which utilizes the word “spa” as a distinctive element.

The word “spa” is the noun that the typical community member would naturally be called in the context. The term “spa” is not excessively broad and relates to the primary community of about 40,000 spas around the world, along with the community organizations, whose members are generally these operational spas.

4. Uniqueness

According to historians, the word spa has been a generic description since at least 1596 or perhaps as early as in the 1300s. The global public in general would refer to the word “spa” in its meaning as offered by the Dictionary.com:
1. a mineral spring, or a locality in which such springs exist.
2. a luxurious resort or resort hotel.
3. health spa.
4. a hot tub or similar warm-water hydromassage facility, usually for more than one person.
5. New England . soda fountain.

And Wikipedia (http:⁄⁄en.wikipedia.org⁄wiki⁄Spa):
“The term spa is associated with water treatment which is also known as balneotherapy. Spa towns or spa resorts (including hot springs resorts) typically offer various health treatments.”

Understanding that the string “spa” is being used in other contexts, the Registry has done further research to assert that the word is predominantly used in a general point of view with the meaning as associated with the spa community.

In order to establish that the term “spa” is used on the Internet predominantly with the meaning for which is associated with spas as in places offering water treatment and holistic body, mind and spirit revitalization sessions, the following basic search exercise was conducted at the Google search engine:

Searching the keyword: “spa” minus “-belgium” in Google returned about 4,020,000,000 results;
Searching the keyword: “spa” minus “-italy” in Google returned about 3,880,000,000 results;
Searching the keywords: “spa” and “health” in Google returned about 537,000,000 results;
Searching the keywords: “spa” and “Belgium” in Google returned about 108,000,000 results;
Searching the keywords: “spa” and specifying “Italian” as the language in Google returned about 263,000,000 results;
Searching the keywords: “spa” and “Spondyloarthropathy” in Google returned about 168,000 results
Searching the keywords: “spa” and “soda fountain” in Google returned about 2,340,000 results

Based on the results, it can be seen that by taking away either “belgium” or “italy” as part of the search term, the total number of results returned (about 4 Billion) is significantly over the number if they were included as part of the search (about 100 Million). On further analysis of the results, for those even including the terms “belgium” or “italy” the results are predominantly related to spas as understood in general and as a designator identifying the community. Given that the town of Spa is relatively small with a total population of only around 10,000, and that the origins of the use of the word “spa” in its present day meaning relates to the town’s own spas, the Registry believes that it should not take away from the fact the only significant meaning of the term “spa” is the one for which the Registry intends to promote.

The use of “S.p.A.” as a short form for the Italian form of stock corporation: ʺSocietà Per Azioniʺ is also relatively much less prevalent than the word as intended for the spa community. Furthermore, a more proper and popular way of denoting the form of corporation is “S.p.A.” with the periods included. While this is an important usage of the string “SpA”, the Registry believes that it should not take away from the significant meaning of the word “spa” in its intended use for the spa community as a TLD. Furthermore, additional preventive measures can be put in place to mitigate against any concerns for abusive utilization of the TLD in this manner.

The use of “SpA” as a short form for the medical term “Spondyloarthropathy” is not popular among the general public (with only 168,000 results returned). As this is a very specialized use of the term for the medical profession, the Registry does not believe that it represents a significant over-reach.

Finally, the use of “spa” for soda fountains can be understood as an adaptation, from its popular meaning as intended by the Registry, i.e. the element of a water spring. Therefore again, the Registry believes that this meaning does not form a substantive usage of the word and therefore should not be considered a significant over-reach beyond the community.

In summary, none of the other uses of the string “spa” carries another significant meaning in the common language used in the community and in the global general public as a whole.
gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.kidsDotKids Foundation Limitedtld.asiaView
The selected TLD string “kids” matches perfectly with the community that the DotKids Foundation serves. Based on our research, “.kids” is the most appropriate TLD string to represent the community in the context of an identity for the Internet.

There are 3 major reasons that we think “kids” would be the best match for the community that we have defined:
1. Our community member’s using the same string to define themselves
2. Similarity of the same spelling in other languages
3. Prevalence of the term on the Internet

1. Community Member Organisations utilizing “Kids” as their Main Name

The string “Kids” is used by many organizations that comprise of our community. The following are just a few examples of the many kids⁄child-related organizations in the different continents, demonstrating the “Kids” is commonly known by others as the identification ⁄ name of the community:

Examples From Asia
- Kids’ dream (http:⁄⁄www.kidsdream.org.hk)
Hong Kong Child-led organization focus on children rights
- Street kids rescue (http:⁄⁄streetkidsrescue.org⁄)
The charity’s mission is to support orphaned, homeless and sick children in Southeast Asia.

Example from Europe
- Kids (http:⁄⁄www.kids.org.uk)
The national charity working with disabled children, young people and their families across England
- Kids of Africa (http:⁄⁄www.kids-of-africa.com⁄)
A charity based in Zurich, Switzerland whose mission is that the children will become a backbone of the next generation of Uganda’s society by strengthening the economic and socio-cultural development of Uganda

Examples From North America
- Queen Pen Backing New York Kidsʹ Organisation
Queen Pen, the rapper, lending her support to New York childrenʹs charity to reunite kids with their jailed parents.
- Caribbean Kids and Families Therapy Organisation (http:⁄⁄www.ckfto.org⁄)
Caribbean Kids and Families Therapy Organisation was founded in 2008 in Port of Spain, Trinidad by a mother of a child with special needs and an Occupational Therapist.

Examples from Australia
- Hug-Ur-Kids Organization (http:⁄⁄www.hugurkids.com⁄)
Australian organization, providing many supportive services, along with helping many Custodial Parents to be re-united with their ʹabducted childrenʹ
- Cure Kids (http:⁄⁄www.curekids.org.nz⁄)
Address the lack of research into life-threatening childhood illnesses in New Zealand

These are all organizations that the DotKids Foundation would invite as members of the organisation and are members of the community that we serve.

The word “kids” clearly identifies and describes the community and the community members and do not over-reach beyond the community. As described, the DotKids Foundation adopts the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child (UNCRC) as its fundamental guiding principle. The UNCRC clearly defines the community as children under the age of 18, and the general use of the word “kids” is not normally used for persons beyond such boundaries of the community.

2. Similarity of the same spelling in other languages

In selecting and researching the appropriateness of the string to represent the community, we also looked into the similarity of the concept in different languages. Our findings indicated that many languages use similar word origins for the same meaning as “kids” in English:
1. Afrikaans: kinders
2. Basque: kids
3. Dutch: kinderen
4. German: Kinder
5. Norweigian: Kids

As for the word “kids” in English, the definition offered by the Merriam-Webster dictionary is as follows:
1. A young goat
2. The flesh, fur or skin of a kid
3. A young person, especially child

While only the last definition is the same with our intended meaning, the most common understanding of the string “kids” is the same as our intended meaning. Kid as defined as “a young goat” has no significant meaning to a broad base of the Internet users. To establish that “kids” have a much broader understanding and relation to our community in the context of a TLD, we further observe that:

Searching: kids goat
In Google returned about 65,700,000 results;

Whereas searching: kids children
In Google returned about 1,290,000,000 results.

This demonstrates a significantly greater correlation between the string “kids” and the community we serve.

3. Prevalence of the term “kids” on the Internet

In determining whether “kids” is a well known term for the community, we also looked in the thesaurus of the word “kids” and found the following relevant synonyms:

kids ⁄ kid; youngster; youth; lad; teenager; child; tot; children

To further establish the prevalence of the term “kids” on the Internet versus the other forms, we looked at the search results from 3 different search engines and compared the results returned for each keyword:

Kids
Google (in mm) 2580
Yahoo (in mm) 58.9
Bing (in mm) 1420
Total (in mm) 4058.9

Children
Google (in mm) 2560
Yahoo (in mm) 54.4
Bing (in mm) 1360
Total (in mm) 3874.4

Child
Google (in mm) 1630
Yahoo (in mm) 270
Bing (in mm) 1780
Total (in mm) 3680

Youth
Google (in mm) 796
Yahoo (in mm) 785

Bing (in mm) 354
Total (in mm) 1935

Tot
Google (in mm) 785
Yahoo (in mm) 437
Bing (in mm) 213
Total (in mm) 1435

Teenager
Google (in mm) 153
Yahoo (in mm) 166
Bing (in mm) 1110
Total (in mm) 1429

Lad
Google (in mm) 107
Yahoo (in mm) 183
Bing (in mm) 27.1
Total (in mm) 317.1

Youngster
Google (in mm) 30.4
Yahoo (in mm) 27.5
Bing (in mm) 15.6
Total (in mm) 73.5

Moreover, comparing on the Global Monthly Searches using the Google Adwords tool, kids has the most searches, with 124 mm searches while children only have 83 mm and child 83.1 mm.

The string “kids” is also short, succinct and especially appropriate for use as a TLD over the other options.

Based on the above, we believe that “kids” is the most prevalent form used on the Internet to describe our community.

To further add to this, we have also found similar initiatives or previous usage of the same string: “kids” in domain names. This serves as a strong reason for the significance of this string and why it best represents the community we look to serve.

- Kids.us
The Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002 was designed to create a kid friendly domain .kids.us. This act was signed into law on December 4, 2002 (P.L. 107-317) by the US government. It authorizes the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to require the .us registry operator to establish, operate, and maintain a second level domain within the .us TLD that is restricted to material suitable for minors.

- Kids.net.au
The search engine for Kids, Parents and Teachers. it includes a Directory of kids safe websites, Dictionary and Thesaurus including over 100,000 words, Encyclopedia with 1 million articles and a Language Translator.

- kids.yahoo.com
Yahoo Kids! is described as “the ultimate web guide for kids”. It features fun and educational resources for kids with games, animals, music, jokes, movies, news, astrology etc.,

In summary, with the prevalence of its use in children’s rights initiatives and on the Internet, we believe “kids” is the string that best matches the identity of the community, and that given the context of a TLD, “.kids” has no other significant meaning beyond identifying the community described in our application.