18(b) How do you expect that your proposed gTLD will benefit registrants, Internet users, and others?

Prototypical answer:

There is currently a great deal of confusion among consumers as to where tickets can be purchased for legitimate forms of arts and entertainment. Our goal is for .TICKETS to serve as a central market place where the content on the associated web sites is affiliated with the Arts & Entertainment and Ticketing Services Communities and where all tickets sold on .TICKETS sites are through approved and legitimate channels. The Arts & Entertainment Community will benefit by the availability of an effective, efficient and centralized market place for communicating directly to consumers and for the buying and selling of tickets to various forms of arts and entertainment; consumers will benefit from greater transparency in the ticket distribution process, and enhanced reliability regarding the source and legitimacy of their online ticket purchases. In order to educate the consumer, .TICKETS will be marketed via social media, digital campaigns, and other media as the source for tickets to arts and entertainment; and news and information about the Arts & Entertainment Community and the Ticketing Services Community.

To protect .TICKETS’s reputation and the associational benefits it offers registrants and Internet users, we will actively promote and enforce our Acceptable Use and Abuse Prevention and Naming policies and procedures, which we believe will effectively combat improper or unlawful unprotected speech and online conduct. We believe that these mechanisms will be effective in assuring the reputation of the .TICKETS top-level domain and its registrants, and will foster greater confidence among Internet users with respect to internet services and, in particular, the provision of online ticketing services.

The .TICKETS top-level domain will be marketed to potential registrants who want to associate themselves, their products, services, thoughts, ideas or anything else in a positive way with .TICKETS and the Arts & Entertainment Community, as well as to those who want to communicate with them in an easily identifiable way. Therefore, we believe that the great majority of potential registrants who apply for a .TICKETS domain name will do so because of its association with legitimate purveyors of arts and entertainment and related service industries or because they want to reach those who do, and not for other reasons. In these ways, the .TICKETS top-level domain will bring a special association with arts and entertainment and the Ticketing Services Community to the top-level domain name space.

We believe that the .TICKETS top-level domain will add significantly to competition and differentiation in the top-level domain space, both for registrants and Internet consumers. Registrants are presently extremely limited in their choice of domain names that allow them to efficiently and effectively associate themselves with the Arts & Entertainment Community and the distribution of tickets. The availability of useful, effective, straight-forward domain names on existing top-level domains, such as .com, .net and .org, are few and far between, or may be for sale at prices that are out of reach for most. Moreover, existing leading generic top-level domains names, such as .com, .net and .org no longer require and no longer represent any real differentiation in association, purpose or content.

The .TICKETS gTLD will allow registrants to obtain useful, effective, straight-forward domain names rather than be forced to purchase, for example, their fifth, sixth or even later choice .com or .net name, which may well barely relate to the registrant’s purpose or use of the domain name and⁄or may be confusingly similar with numerous other .com or .net domain names. In addition, some existing generic top-level domain names, though newer, such as .xxx, would be inappropriate for most registrants for content associational reasons, while country-code top-level domains, though numerous, are not useful or appropriate for many registrants for geographical associational reasons. Registrants will benefit for a central market place that clearly, effectively and efficiently associates their domain name with ticketing services for arts and entertainment; Internet users will benefit from greater transparency and choice in a single market place dedicated to ticketing services and the Arts & Entertainment Community. Internet users will also benefit from this new market place and increase in competition, as less confusing and clearly-associated .TICKETS domain names will make it easier for them to obtain information about the Arts & Entertainment Community and how to buy tickets.

The .TICKETS TLD will also increase competition in the top-level domain name space by assuring that .TICKETS domain names are priced at levels that are appropriate to the vast majority of potential registrants to whom .TICKETS is targeted.

The .TICKETS TLD benefits the Arts & Entertainment Community by providing venue owners and operators, artists, producers and presenters of legitimate forms of entertainment the ability to better control the sale and distribution of their tickets.

In terms of user experience, one goal of .TICKETS is to provide users with a top-level domain name that easily allows them to recognize that the registrant seeks to have its second-level domain name (and content) associated with ticketing, the provision of ticketing services, and the Arts & Entertainment Community. We believe this will be of substantial benefit to the Internet user community, as it will allow them to more easily and more readily understand the purpose or motives of the registrant’s website or email, allowing for better, more efficient and more effective use of their time online.


Another goal of .TICKETS in terms of user experience is to protect third-party rights as well as to prevent abusive uses of a .TICKETS domain name. We intend to achieve this goal by crafting our Naming Policy, Acceptable Use Policy, and other policies to be readily understandable and easily accessible, and by making sure that our mechanisms for enforcing rights and preventing abuse (such as our Complaint Resolution Service) operate effectively, efficiently, and fairly, as well as by ensuring that they complement other ICANN-mandated rights protection mechanisms such as the UDRP.

We will provide a framework for registration of .TICKETS domains that fully support the goals, mission and purposes set forth above. Our registration framework is based on advice from our consultants, applicable laws, and a variety of other expert sources. Specifically, the planned .TICKETS framework includes these interrelated sets of agreements setting forth our policies and regulations, all of which registrants must agree to be bound by:

1) The Registrant Agreement, which registrars contracted with .TICKETS must present to registrants. This is a collateral agreement to the Registrar Registry Agreement, and will bind registrants to .TICKETS’s Acceptable Use Policy, .TICKETS’s Privacy & Whois Policy, ICANN-mandated rights protection mechanisms (including the Universal Dispute Resolution Policy (“UDRP”)), and the Complaint Resolution Service;

2) The Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”), which details the proper use of domain names that end in .TICKETS, which is incorporated by reference in the Registrant Agreement that registrants must agree to;

3) The Privacy and Whois Policy, which describes how a registrant’s personal data is to be used, which is also incorporated by reference in the Registrant Agreement;

4) The Registrar-Registry Agreement, which is the contract between .TICKETS and its ICANN-accredited registrars which sets forth, inter alia, the duties and obligations of the registrar with respect to .TICKETS registrants and the .TICKETS registry; and

5) The Naming Policy, which sets out .TICKETS’s policies governing prohibited, blocked or reserved domain names and the qualifications for registration of a .TICKETS domain name. We intend to use eligibility criteria for the .Tickets TLD, but we are cognizant of the fact that the use of eligibility criteria could significantly reduce our applicant pool. Therefore, we plan to issue clear criteria that are not overly restrictive, but which further our mission, encourage good registrant behavior and foster consumer trust by offering greater transparency in the ticketing distribution process.

These agreements and policies are designed to ensure transparent and non-discriminatory policies for the registration of .TICKETS names; fair and competitive pricing; protection of personal data and privacy; adherence by registrars and registrants to the AUP; protection of trademarks, the names of natural and juristic persons and other property rights; prevention of the registration of illegal terms; and the prevention of violations of the law. Moreover, our policies will promote competition among registrars, combat abuse of the DNS, address cybercrime, protect intellectual property rights, and align the .TICKETS top-level domain with applicable regulatory and legislative environments and Internet registry best practices.

These policies will effectively support the key mission, purposes and goals of the .TICKETS top-level domain, by allowing qualified registrants who want to associate themselves with the Arts & Entertainment Community and the provision of ticketing services to do so, while at the same time protecting third-party rights and preventing abuse.

With respect to protecting registrant privacy and confidential information, we will comply with applicable ICANN rules, including Whois policies, and all applicable laws, rules and regulations of appropriate jurisdictions. Registrant privacy and use of confidential information are set forth in our Privacy & Whois Policy. Information concerning updates and changes to the Privacy & Whois Policy will be promptly and prominently displayed on the .TICKETS Registry Network Information Center (www.nic.TICKETS) web site.

.TICKETS’s back-end registry services provider will also be required to employ industry standard procedures to prevent the unauthorized or illegal access of registrant privacy or confidential information.

With respect to users, .TICKETS’s Registration Agreement will require that all registrants must comply with any and all applicable laws, rules or regulations concerning user privacy and confidential information for applicable jurisdictions, and that failure to do so may result in suspension or loss of their .TICKETS name, and may in addition result in legal actions by appropriate authorities.

Outreach to targeted potential registrants will be important to .TICKETS achieving its projected benefits by allowing it to cost-effectively and quickly market to the most likely potential registrants, and to promote the ways in which .TICKETS will allow them to associate themselves with the Arts & Entertainment Community and the provision of ticketing services, and how their association with .TICKETS helps further their interest and that of the greater Arts & Entertainment and Ticketing Services Communities. To achieve this outreach, we intend to leverage our existing relationships with groups with an association with Shubert, our industry partners, and other arts-related and ticketing services organizations by engaging in advertising, promotion, social media outreach, and other methods of reaching potential registrants. We believe that outreach to people and organizations that already identify with the Arts & Entertainment and Ticketing Services Communities gives us the best chance of a strong launch of the top-level domain, giving us the best chance of long-term viability, and thus the best chance of fulfilling our mission and purpose.

We will keep in touch with our registrants to understand how they would like to see .TICKETS develop, and to understand how we can improve our policies, registration rules, or other aspects of our operations or administration.
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