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20(c) Provide a description of the community-based purpose of the applied-for gTLD

gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.islamAsia Green IT System Bilgisayar San. ve Tic. Ltd. Sti.nsline.comView
• Intended registrants in the TLD.

The .Islam gTLD is intended for Muslim faithful who wish to promote, participate or learn about Islam and its various facets, its affect on the daily life of the people around the word, its history, its law and jurisprudence and the rich and diverse culture that surrounds it. Thus, any well-intentioned Muslim who wants to supply such content, or do business based around it, will be able to operate a domain under the .ISLAM gTLD.

• Intended end-users of the TLD.


For a fifth of the worldʹs population, Islam is both a religion and a complete way of life. Muslims follow a religion of peace, mercy, and forgiveness - and the majority have nothing to do with the extremely grave events which have come to be associated with their faith. Every Muslim, and indeed a great many non-Muslims, in the world can benefit from .ISLAM websites and the wealth of information and services that it is anticipated will offered by them. The diversity of the .ISLAM gTLD’s offering would be wide enough to cover almost all audiences and their Islam-related needs, considering that all .ISLAM websites will be promoting Islam in some form.

Within all of these populations, the specific intended end users of the .ISLAM gTLD are manifold, and include:

People with ties to Islamic heritage: This includes a significant percentage of both the population of Muslim countries and also with other nations.
Individual Muslims: As demonstrated above, this includes hundreds of millions of individuals around the world.
Students: Those learning about different aspects of Islam, its concepts, its laws, its culture and heritage and its many other facets would benefit from increased resources online that would help them to learn and develop.
Islamic businesses: as in every community, Muslims undertake a great deal of business both within their community and also with external groups. The ability to link their business to the word Islam will therefore be of significant importance to Muslim businesses, both to denote a Muslim-based business and also as a source of pride in being known as such. Indeed, the word Islam is already exceptionally popular within online business – and the word alone yields more than 500 million hits when searched.
All sects: As described above, the main two sects of the Muslim community are Sunnis and Shias – both of whom will be welcome to operate under the .ISLAM gTLD, alongside all other Muslim sects.

It is hoped that not only will these intended users derive individual benefit from the existence of a .ISLAM community, but that they will also contribute in turn. This should create a group benefit, which will in turn feed back in to individual benefits – establishing a beneficial cycle.


• Related activities the applicant has carried out or intends to carry out in service of this purpose.

Anticipating the diversification of TLDs now being realized, and the consequent introduction of an Islamic-specific online space, AGITSys has been working with a wide variety of related parties for several years in preparation, and will continue to do so going forward. A key element for the success of the .ISLAM gTLD is a strong and interactive community, which Muslims around the world are proud to associate with and keen to contribute to. To ensure this, AGITSys will sponsor community outreach and marketing, in order to raise awareness of the forthcoming possibilities. These possibilities are also highly appealing for Islamic businesses, and as such AGITSys will engage in dialogue with those businesses, and industry chiefs, regarding their ideas for how the .ISLAM gTLD will take shape, and what they intend to subsequently give back to it.
Quality content will also be fundamental to a thriving .ISLAM community, especially because AGITSys is committed to ensuring that .ISLAM is populated by quality second-level domain offerings. With this in mind, AGITSys will be talking with those most likely to contribute quality content, from news and media agencies to academics and libraries (who will be able to digitize Islamic materials and then distribute them online comprehensively for the first time) about how they can and will contribute, and what AGITSys can do to facilitate this process.
Ultimately, however, religion will always be the most important element for a successful .ISLAM community online. The entire gTLD concept is designed as a place of online respect; almost worship, for those of Islamic faith. As such, the involvement, blessing and feedback of the Islamic religious community is fundamentally important. Aware of this, AGITSys has been in prolonged and continued contact with important religious figures – asking them what they want to see and how they would like to see it done, whilst also encouraging them to spread the word and prepare themselves. This should mean that when the .ISLAM gTLD comes online, there will be a large swathe of information posted almost immediately – therefore instantly creating a rewarding user experience.

• Explanation of how the purpose is of a lasting nature.

The community that will be served by .ISLAM--growing as it has out of the Muslims community--has thrived and grown for more than a millennium. Remarkably, it has done so largely without the level of connection online found within Western cultures. This existing community interconnection speaks to the cultural staying power of the Islamic community and the many ways it enriches world culture.

With the adoption of a .ISLAM community, this robust group will be further empowered to interconnect and grow, allowing it to take its equal place on the Internet stage. The community thrives now, but will reach new heights through the .ISLAM gTLD.

The growth of the .ISLAM gTLD will be driven by what economists refer to as the network effect. A network effect occurs when a service becomes more popular as more individuals adopt it. A significant portion of the serviceʹs value stems directly from the increased adoption and usage of the service. Historically the network effect is most powerful in tools of interconnection. The telegraph and telephone were technologies that grew exponentially due to the network effect. The Internet itself is an example of that phenomenon, as seen by the rapid upward growth curve of Internet penetration, broadband speeds, and web site creation. ICANNʹs data on the growth of .COM is an example of the network effect, and now it is seen in social-media platforms atop the Internet, such as Facebook and Twitter.

As more sites offer information, services, and opportunities for interconnection to the .ISLAM community as a whole, more members of the community will navigate to those sites. Many of those will provide their own content, and their activity there will spark further growth of second-level .ISLAM domains. At some point, information and service providers currently not offering sites will see the demand for .ISLAM-related content and will migrate their offerings to .ISLAM sites as well, furthering the offerings to the community and further driving community members to .ISLAM sites. The future benefits of interlinking this diverse and global community are incalculable but immense.
gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.spaAsia Spa and Wellness Promotion Council Limitedtld.asiaView
As a community-based TLD, the .spa TLD will concern itself especially with supporting the development of the spa and wellness community. The Registry believes that, beyond providing a domain of choice for the community aligned with the spirit and way of life of spas, the .spa TLD itself can be a beacon and cause in driving the awareness of holistic health and wellness that spas and the spa and wellness community strives towards. In turn, this is a philosophy that the community believes in and advocates to humanity at large.

Distilling and advancing from the mission of the Registry (as expressed in 18a), the community purposes of the .spa TLD are:

A. To support the spa and wellness community, especially to extend the spa experience on the Internet;

B. To advocate a spa mentality towards sustainable holistic body, mind and spiritual wellness; and,

C. To transcend the spa philosophy in promoting the natural curative revitalisation of the society and the environment.

The Registry also believes that it is important for the .spa TLD to be a community-based TLD in order to best serve the spa and wellness community. While, given the high percentage of spas already having a website, the spa and wellness community may already be quite connected; their awareness and participation on Internet governance is very limited. As a community-based TLD dedicated to the community, the Registry also aims to bring the participation from the spa and wellness community to the international Internet governance discussions, including those at ICANN. This in turn contributes to the further broadening and advocacy of the multi-stakeholder model for Internet governance which the Registry believes would be beneficial to the Internet community at large.

Furthermore, the purpose of the .spa community-based TLD is consistent and aligned with the credos and purpose and the 3 pillars of the Asia Spa and Wellness Promotion Council (ASWPC):

1. Capacity Building
To deliver world-class, industry-leading educational programs that address current, pressing issues and fundamental learning milestones of spa and wellness professionals at all levels of the learning curve,

2. Sustaining Awareness: Collective and Co-operative Marketing
To promote better understanding of the spa and wellness market; create, build and sustain relationships with major stakeholders and enable continued awareness for spas and wellness centers through collaborative promotional efforts, and

3. Creating Value: Industry Standards and Feedback Mechanism
To enable industry suppliers to reach decision makers across the region whilst recognising outstanding achievements within the industry in promoting excellence and unlocking the value of the industry.

and the credos of the Asia Spa and Wellness Promotion Council (ASWPC):
- To uphold the professionalism of the spa and wellness industry
- To promote sustainability and respect for the environment
- To treat all practitioners and stakeholders equitably

Of course, the Registry understands that the .spa domain is just a TLD registry, and its contribution may be limited in scope. Nevertheless, the Registry truly believes in the value and power of a name and what it stands for, and believe that, however much it may be able to achieve, as a community-TLD it can make a difference for the spa community and inspire the betterment of the society at large.

In response to the specific notes in the Applicant Guidebook:

A. Intended registrants in the TLD

Intended registrants are primarily members of the spa and wellness community. Consistent with the purpose of the .spa TLD to promote the mind, body and spiritual wellness of the society at large, the .spa TLD also welcomes individuals and organisations who aspire to this vision and philosophy to utilize and expand the reach of the .spa TLD to health conscious people around the world.

Priority is provided to members of the community through the Sunrise and startup processes (see #20e and #29) to build a positive foundation of usage for the .spa TLD. Special consideration is also provided to incidental implicated communities for which the string “spa” may be used in another context (see also #20e and #29).

Upon Go Live of the .spa TLD, the registry will accept registrations on a first-come-first-served basis. Given well defined meaning of the word “spa” and its tight relationship with the spa and wellness community, the Registry believes that registrants will mainly come from the intended community. Nevertheless, the Registry believes in the spirit of the Internet in being an open platform supporting innovation and therefore will take an approach that allows for an open adoption of the .spa TLD with strong measures to mitigate against abuse (rather than to restrict usage).

B. Intended end-users of the TLD

Primary end-users are registrants and their immediate users (e.g. staff ⁄ team of the registrant organization). Primary users are expected to be mainly from the spa and wellness community, including spa operators, professional practitioners, spa associations and spa products and services manufacturers and distributors. The .spa TLD intends to provide primary users a domain of choice that aligns well with their businesses and philosophies towards wellness. Primary users also include staff of .spa domain registrants, such as technical, legal and marketing departments of registrants. The .spa TLD provides a domain that is consistent with the line of business and approach to wellness that could permeate through the organisation as it is being used in emails, correspondences, internal and external communications.

Secondary end-users are Internet users at large. Secondary users are Internet users seeking information about spa and wellness. The .spa domain begins the spa experience for users around the world at the very moment they enter the domain through their keyboard to navigate to their destination. The Registry believes that words evoke emotional response and that the .spa domain provides an enhanced user experience by its name alone above other existing gTLDs.

C. Related activities the applicant has carried out or intends to carry out in service of this purpose

As explained in #20b above, Asia Spa & Wellness Promotion Council (ASWPC) is the regional coordinating body for the promotion of spa and wellness centres. It assist national and regional organisations in promoting spa and wellness centres both inter- and intra-regionally to an audience of wellness tourists, health practitioners and other stakeholders.

ASWPC is deeply involved in the spa and wellness community. Connected with over 400 licensed spas across Asia and over 2000 spa professionals participating in and attending its events, the ASWPC is committed to supporting a vibrant, self-sustaining spa and wellness industry.

Furthermore, for the .spa TLD initiative specifically, ASWPC intends to operate the registry as an open global platform for spas around the world (not just for Asia), and will formalize a dedicated .Spa Registry Community Advisory Council to support the governance, policy development, community engagement and outreach for the global .spa TLD.

D. Explanation of how the purpose is of a lasting nature

The core purposes of the .spa TLD to:
- promote the development of the spa and wellness community; and
- advocate the spa approach: the sustainable holistic mind, body and spiritual wellness, to the society at large

are both meaningful and of a lasting nature. Spas have been used as a curative water treatment since prehistoric times and have been popular around the world throughout history. With the growing global consciousness for health and wellness, along with the revival and boom of the spa lifestyle, the Registry believes that its purpose is of a lasting nature.