gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.islam	Asia Green IT System Bilgisayar San. ve Tic. Ltd. Sti.	nsline.com	View

• 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.

gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.MERCK	Merck Registry Holdings, Inc.	fairwindspartners.com	View

I. Intended Registrants in the gTLD
As stated above and in the response to Question 18 of this application, the .MERCK gTLD community will be clearly defined. Registrations within the community may be made by the following for-profit and not-for-profit businesses or organizations:

(a) Qualified subsidiaries and affiliates
(b) Merck foundations and related parties
(c) Approved licensees

II. Intended End-Users of the gTLD
End-users will not only include the registrants of domain names within the gTLD but also potentially millions of consumers who may visit the .MERCK gTLDʹs websites. Once the .MERCK gTLD is established as a trusted gTLD for all matters related to the Merck community, consumers will know and trust websites in the gTLD as being more secure and stable than any other similar, but generic, websites. See the response to Question 18 of this application for more details.

III. Related Activities the Applicant has Carried Out or Intends to Carry Out in Service of this Purpose
MRH is submitting this application on behalf of the Merck community to ensure that the .MERCK gTLD shall serve as a trusted, hierarchical, and intuitive namespace for this community and the consumers that they serve. All registrants within this gTLD will be vetted prior to registration to ensure their identity and their contractual commitment to industry best-practice standards developed by Merck and MRH, before being able to register in the .MERCK namespace (see 20(e), below). In addition, the registry will employ a network of both active and passive safeguards in the operation of the registry to ensure that these registrants continue to abide by the terms and conditions set forth in their registration agreements.

Promotion of the .MERCK gTLD will be conducted on an ongoing basis to ensure acceptance, familiarity, and trust among members of the community. Consumers quickly will become familiar with .MERCK and will see that its use is limited to trusted, regulated organizations. This dedication to relationship management will be carried over into MRH’s operation of the .MERCK gTLD.

IV. Explanation of How the Purpose is of a Lasting Nature
Merck is one of the largest healthcare companies in the world. Merck has been in operation since as early as 1920 and is a Fortune 100 company.

The .MERCK gTLD will ensure that Internet users know that a .MERCK site is one of the few locations on the Internet providing trustworthy and authoritative information about Merckʹs goods and services. A simple search limited to .MERCK second-level registrants will provide the Internet user with results completely culled of the undesirable and unscrupulous. The beauty of the .MERCK gTLD is that it shifts the burden of confirming authenticity from the consumer to the registry, or the registryʹs designated third-party service provider. Registrant and site authenticity ensure value.

Merck’s continued provision of relevant health and medical information to both providers and patients through dedicated websites illustrates the company’s longstanding commitment to improve healthcare. Websites that are based on the Merck family of marks draw over four million visitors per year from the United States and Canada.

As stated in 20(b), above, the continued success of .MERCK is centered on its role as a trusted and safe environment. Internet users increasingly find themselves challenged by opportunists and charlatans online who present themselves as legitimate businesses. This is a particular challenge in the healthcare industry, where consumers are entrusting sensitive information – and, ultimately, their heath – to uncertified parties.

These rogue online operators register domain names in a variety of top-level domains that look similar to the names of legitimate members of the healthcare community, who also register second-level names within the same generally-available extension. Consumers are lured into ʺphishingʺ attacks by emails that either promise them unrealistic deals or pose as healthcare providers.

The proliferation of healthcare-related information on the Internet in the form of home health websites, patient blogs, and social media communities has created a need for companies in the industry to be innovative in their information distribution strategies. Several key industry trends have been observed:

According to Compete.com, online healthcare information networks have seen a ten percent growth thus far in 2012, largely driven by increased traffic to sites such as WebMD.com.

According to a 2011 joint effort from the Pew Internet Project and California Healthcare Foundation:
-One in four Internet users has watched an online video about health.
-One in four Internet users has tracked their weight, diet, exercise routine, or other health indicator online.
-One in four Internet users has consulted online reviews of drugs or medical treatments (but very few post such reviews).

The .MERCK gTLD would allow community members to reach end-users through the newest available medium and to help improve healthcare.

Because of the strict vetting that will occur before a second-level .MERCK domain will be awarded, phishing attacks will be minimized within the .MERCK gTLD. The Merck community, operating through the .MERCK gTLD, could minimize many Internet risks for millions of consumers.