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

gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.storeDotStore Inc.radixregistry.comView
1. GOAL OF .STORE

1.1 SPECIALTY

* Our goal for .Store in terms of area of specialty is to be the first choice generic TLD among new registrants seeking to communicate a direct offering to sell or purchase goods, services and⁄or merchandise online. The .Store registry will provide registrants the opportunity for first choice of their preferred domain name on a generic global TLD.

The .Store extension is intended to provide the registrant an immediately recognized domain name that tells their potential customers the registrant’s products or services can be purchased online.

1.2 SERVICE LEVELS

Our goal for .Store in terms of service levels is to go above and beyond the ICANN SLAs. ICANN provides for its expected SLA in Specification 10 in the Registry Agreement in the Applicant guidebook.

We have engaged ARI Registry Services (ARI) to deliver services for this TLD. ARI provides registry services for a number of TLDs including the .au ccTLD.

Our contract with ARI is attached to our response to Q46. This contract details the SLA we intend on achieving with this TLD. As can be seen in the contract we have exceeded the ICANN required SLA on every parameter.

Our response to Q34 and Q35 provides details on ARI’s distributed anycast DNS network. ARI’s DNS network provides for 16 geo distributed sites resulting in a very low resolution latency for end-users, amongst the lowest in the industry.

It is our objective to provide 100% uptime, a resilient global DNS infrastructure, and very low latency in terms of DNS resolution for this TLD

1.3 REPUTATION

Reputation of our TLD is of paramount importance to us. The reputation of our TLD directly relates to how end-users on the internet perceive our Registrants. We will ensure the highest reputation of .Store by ensuring the following –
* Maintaining a high quality bar with respect to Registrants in the TLD
* Well defined Acceptable usage and content policies
* Well defined dispute resolution mechanisms
* Ensuring Whois accuracy to support abuse mitigation
* Well defined and implemented abuse mitigation processes
* Well defined and implemented rights protection mechanisms
* Exceptional service levels

To this effect we have created unprecedented Abuse mitigation policies and Rights protection mechanisms that go significantly above and beyond mandatory requirements and common practice described in considerable detail in our response to Q28 and Q29. We also commit to extremely high service levels that go beyond the stipulated service levels in the applicant guidebook.

2. CONTRIBUTION OF .STORE TO THE NAMESPACE

2.1 CONTRIBUTION IN TERMS OF COMPETITION, DIFFERENTIATION, OR INNOVATION

* Per ICANN’s Bylaws as amended June 24, 2011, ICANN’s core value number six is “Introducing and promoting competition in the registration of domain names where practicable and beneficial in the public interest.”

* The .Store registry will be a new direct and formidable competitor to for the current group of global generic TLDs. This will be especially true in the key growing international markets.

* The .Store registry’s innovation will focus on two areas, the themed meaning of our string: a “virtual global market”, and our enhanced abuse management programs.

* The .Store registry’s differentiation will be “the virtual global market”. More than any of the other global generic gTLD registries, we will provide registrants a domain space that intrinsically implies the purpose of associated web services: business-to-consumer commerce. Additionally, by offering a new top level domain with vast second-level name availability, we will also aspire to be the first choice gTLD of an e-commerce registrant seeking to sell their products and⁄or services to consumers. .Store will provide registrants the option to register more desirable and shorter names as opposed to names they would have otherwise registered in existing gTLDs due to the high saturation of the existing namespaces.

* Despite the prevalence of English as a language of commerce, past gTLD registries have largely focused on North America and European marketplaces. Directi will be offering the .Store to international markets, with the goal of a truly global distribution of registrants and hence and their products and⁄or services. The .Store virtual global market will bring international e-commerce registrants a greater opportunity to display their products on the world stage rather than being lost in the millions of websites within .com.

* Most gTLDs have largely focused on developed markets with 70+% internet penetration. Domain Name and website growth is yet to occur in other developing markets like India, Brazil, Russia, China, Indonesia etc. However as the market for websites and domain names grows in these economies the existing gTLD space in TLDs like .com, .net, .org etc will already be saturated with all tier 1 names no longer available to markets like Asia, Africa. 70% of .com check-availability checks return unavailable (data obtained from our Internal Research). New companies have to resort to 2nd tier long multi-word names for their businesses in these markets. .Store will broaden the namespace by providing an alternative for the business-to-customer e-commerce market in developing markets to register the domain name of their choice creating competition.

* .Store will also allow Registrants in the e-commerce market to differentiate themselves from the 200+ million domain names out there. As of now a domain belonging to an online store appears identical to any other domain name in a .gTLD (com) or .ccTLD extension (eg .in). .Store provides the ability for Registrants to create a differentiated identity wherein just by looking at the URL end-users will be able to recognize and identify the URL as a destination at which they can buy something or shop, and essentially realize that they are visiting a virtual store.

* Our intent is to operate .Store with a focus on integrity and quality for the .Store brand. This entails running robust abuse mitigation programs and pioneering Rights Protection Mechanisms from initiation, which in our case not only meets ICANN’s requirements, but extends significantly beyond it as described in our response to Q28 and Q29.

3. USER EXPERIENCE GOALS

.Store considers both its Registrants and the end-users that access .Store websites as its users. Our goal is to create a highly reliable namespace and provide an outstanding user experience to both Registrants and end-users of .Store.

Registrants of .Store have an assurance of a scalable, resilient registry with 100% uptime, low latency, and exemplary security standards. Registrants will have the option to register the domain name of their choice, without much saturation of the namespace. Our registration policies and abuse mitigation policies ensure that Registrants will get advantages like higher recognition, better branding and more desirable, shorter names.

Our content and acceptable use policies and abuse mitigation processes ensure that end-users are benefited from a clean namespace. These are described in further detail in our response to Q28 and Q29.

4. REGISTRATION POLICIES IN SUPPORT OF GOALS

4.1 GENERAL NAMES

The goals of .Store are outlined in the sections above. These goals are supported by the following artifacts –
* Registration policies and processes
* Acceptable usage policies and content guidelines
* Abuse mitigation processes
* Rights protection mechanisms
* Dispute resolution polices

To this effect we have created unprecedented Abuse mitigation policies and Rights protection mechanisms that go significantly above and beyond mandatory requirements and common practice. The salient aspects of all of the above are described below -
* DotStore Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary within the Directi Group. The Directi Group runs various businesses including several ICANN Accredited Domain Registrars (ResellerClub.com and BigRock.com) and Web Hosting companies. With over four million active domain names registered through its registrars, Directi has significant experience (over 10 years) of managing domain name abuse mitigation and rights protection. Directi has been heralded as a white hat registrar and the undisputed leader with respect to abuse mitigation.
* Our Abuse and compliance processes will be run by the Directi Group
* We have an elaborate and detailed Accepted usage and content policy that covers over 11 macro forms of violations
* .Store will create a zero-tolerance reputation when it comes to abuse
* We have a defined SLA for responding to abuse complaints ensuring guaranteed turn-around time on any abuse complaint depending on its severity
* We will work closely with LEA and other security groups to mitigate abuse within the TLD by providing them with special interfaces (eg searcheable whois) and interacting with them regularly in terms of knowledge sharing.
* Other abuse mitigation steps we undertake include profiling, blacklisting, proactive quality reviews, industry collaboration and information sharing, regular sampling, contractual enforcements and sanctions
* The protection of trademark rights is a core goal of .Store. .Store will have a professional plan for rights protection. It will incorporate best practices of existing TLDs, going above and beyond the ICANN mandated RPMs to prevent abusive registrations and rapidly take-down abuse when it does occur.
* Standard RPMs such as Sunrise, Trademarks claims service, URS, UDRP, SDRP, PDDRP, SPOC etc are all provided for. Additional RPMs such as Optional Trademark declaration, profiling and blacklisting, proactive quality reviews, APWG Review and others will also be provided.

The above salient points barely scratch the surface in detailing the steps that .Store will take in order to build a reputation of operating a clean, secure and trusted namespace. Significant details of all of the above and more are provided in our responses to Q26, Q27, Q28 and Q29

4.2. OTHER NAMES

* We will reserve the following classes of domain names, which will not be available to registrants via the Sunrise or subsequent periods:
** The reserved names required in Specification 5 of the new gTLD Registry Agreement.
** The geographic names required in Specification 5 of the new gTLD Registry Agreement. See our response to Question 22 (“Protection of Geographic Names”) for details.
** The registry operator will reserve its own name and variations thereof, and registry operations names (such as nic.Store, registry.Store, and www.Store), so that we can point them to our Web site. Reservation of the registry operator’s names was standard in ICANN’s past gTLD contracts.
** We will also reserve names related to ICANN and Internet standards bodies (iana.Store, ietf.Store, w3c.Store, etc.), for delegation of those names to the relevant organizations upon their request. Reservation of this type of names was standard in ICANN’s past gTLD contracts. The list of reserved names will be published publicly before the Sunrise period begins, so that registrars and potential registrants will know which names have been set aside.
* We will reserve generic names which will be set aside for distribution via special mechanisms.

5. PROTECTING PRIVACY OF REGISTRANTS’ OR USERS’ INFORMATION

.Store is committed to providing a secure and trusted namespace to its Registrants and end-users. To that extent we will have several measures for protecting the privacy or confidential information of registrants or users -

* Our Whois service (web-based whois, port 43 whois and searchable whois) all have built in abuse prevention mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access, data mining, data scraping and any other abusive behavior. Details of this are provided in our response to Q26

* .Store will allow Registrants to use privacy protection services provided by their Registrars in the form of a Proxy whois service as long as they follow the guidelines stipulated within our response to Q28 to prevent any abuse of the same

* As per the requirements of the new gTLD Registry Agreement (Article 2.17), we shall notify each of our registrars regarding the purposes for which data about any identified or identifiable natural person (“Personal Data”) submitted to the Registry Operator by such registrar is collected and used, and the intended recipients (or categories of recipients) of such Personal Data. (This data is basically the registrant and contact data required to be published in the WHOIS.)

* We will also require each registrar to obtain the consent of each registrant in the TLD for such collection and use of Personal Data. As the registry operator, we shall not use or authorize the use of Personal Data in a way that is incompatible with the notice provided to registrars.

* As the registry operator we shall take significant steps to protect Personal Data collected from registrars from loss, misuse, unauthorized disclosure, alteration, or destruction. In our responses to Q24, Q30 and Q38 we detail the security policies and procedures we will use to protect the registry system and the data contained there from unauthorized access and loss.

* As registry operator we impose certain operational standards for our registrars. In order gain and maintain accreditation for our TLD, we require them to adhere to certain information technology policies designed to help protect registrant data. These include standards for access to the registry system. Please see our response to Q24, Q25 and Q30 for details.

* We offer a “registry lock” service, designed to help protect participating registrants’ contact data from unauthorized modification, and against unauthorized domain transfers and deletions. Please see our response to Q27 for details.

* .Store implements DNSSEC at the zone which guarantees origin authentication of DNS data, authenticated denial of existence, and data integrity. This protects end-users from a man-in-the-middle attack protecting the privacy of data of end-users.

6. OUTREACH AND COMMUNICATIONS

* Our goal for .Store is to create a global virtual market for e-commerce registrants seeking a themed TLD to identify a business-to- consumer commerce offering, reaching shoppers around the world.

* To achieve this, we will emphasize distribution channels internationally – not just in one or more focused regions.

* Our outreach efforts will thus be directed towards our target market in coordination with Registrar partners, to ensure greater adoption of the .Store TLD. One important method of outreach will involve co-marketing programs with registrars. We will also leverage Directi’s existing channel of 65,000 Resellers, and its strategic relationships with other ICANN Accredited Registrars.

* We will also engage in relevant PR and outreach programs as well as ensure appropriate publication of information on our website.

The communication and outreach will focus on -
* Education amongst the e-commerce market.
* Generating awareness of our Registration policies, Acceptable usage and content policies, Abuse mitigation processes and Rights protection mechanisms

This completes our answer to Q18(b).
gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.clickDotClick Inc.radixregistry.comView
1. GOAL OF .CLICK

1.1 SPECIALTY

* Our goal for .Click in terms of area of specialty is to provide a blank canvas for Internet innovation. Good names, at a fair price on a secure and stable platform.

1.2 SERVICE LEVELS

Our goal for .Click in terms of service levels is to go above and beyond the ICANN SLAs. ICANN provides for its expected SLA in Specification 10 in the Registry Agreement in the Applicant guidebook.

We have engaged ARI Registry Services (ARI) to deliver services for this TLD. ARI provides registry services for a number of TLDs including the .au ccTLD.

Our contract with ARI is attached to our response to Q46. This contract details the SLA we intend on achieving with this TLD. As can be seen in the contract we have exceeded the ICANN required SLA on every parameter.

Our response to Q34 and Q35 provides details on ARI’s distributed anycast DNS network. ARI’s DNS network provides for 16 geo distributed sites resulting in a very low resolution latency for end-users, amongst the lowest in the industry.

It is our objective to provide 100% uptime, a resilient global DNS infrastructure, and very low latency in terms of DNS resolution for this TLD

1.3 REPUTATION

Reputation of our TLD is of paramount importance to us. The reputation of our TLD directly relates to how end-users on the internet perceive our Registrants. We will ensure the highest reputation of .Click by ensuring the following –
* Maintaining a high quality bar with respect to Registrants in the TLD
* Well defined Acceptable usage and content policies
* Well defined dispute resolution mechanisms
* Ensuring Whois accuracy to support abuse mitigation
* Well defined and implemented abuse mitigation processes
* Well defined and implemented rights protection mechanisms
* Exceptional service levels

To this effect we have created unprecedented Abuse mitigation policies and Rights protection mechanisms that go significantly above and beyond mandatory requirements and common practice described in considerable detail in our response to Q28 and Q29. We also commit to extremely high service levels that go beyond the stipulated service levels in the applicant guidebook.

2. CONTRIBUTION OF .CLICK TO THE NAMESPACE

2.1 CONTRIBUTION IN TERMS OF COMPETITION, DIFFERENTIATION, OR INNOVATION

Per ICANN’s Bylaws as amended June 24, 2011, ICANN’s core value number six is “Introducing and promoting competition in the registration of domain names where practicable and beneficial in the public interest.”

The .Click registry will be a new direct and formidable competitor to the current group of global generic TLDs. This will be especially true in the key growing international markets. Since Directi has a rich background in the registrar business (10+ years’ experience and managing over 6 million domains), we understand the nuances of domain name buying behavior. The .Click registry will leverage this unique market knowledge to design competitive offerings against other global gTLDs.

The .Click registry’s differentiation will be the “blank canvas” for Internet innovation. Our branding will open, innovative and fun.

Outside of ccTLD programs, past gTLD registries have largely focused on North America and European marketplaces. Directi will be offering the language and culture agnostic .Click to international markets, with the goal of a truly global distribution of registrants.

Lastly .Click will provide registrants the option to register more desirable and shorter names as opposed to names they would have otherwise registered in existing gTLDs due to the high saturation of the existing namespaces.

Our intent is to operate .Click with a focus on integrity and quality for the .Click brand. This entails running robust abuse mitigation programs and pioneering Rights Protection Mechanisms from initiation, which in our case not only meets ICANN’s requirements, but extends significantly beyond it as described in our response to Q28 and Q29.

3. USER EXPERIENCE GOALS

The purpose of .Click is to allow registrants to register their name in a TLD with no overriding meaning. We are not “commercial” or “non-profit” or “information” or “network”. Registrants will have choice and the freedom use the blank name space canvas that is .Click and create their own Internet masterpiece.

.Click considers both its Registrants and the end-users that access .Click websites as its users. Our goal is to create a highly reliable namespace and provide an outstanding user experience to both Registrants and end-users of .Click.

Registrants of .Click have an assurance of a scalable, resilient registry with 100% uptime, low latency, and exemplary security standards. Registrants will have the option to register the domain name of their choice, without much saturation of the namespace. Our registration policies and abuse mitigation policies ensure that Registrants will get advantages like higher recognition, better branding and more desirable, shorter names.

Our content and acceptable use policies and abuse mitigation processes ensure that end-users are benefited from a clean namespace. These are described in further detail in our response to Q28 and Q29.

4. REGISTRATION POLICIES IN SUPPORT OF GOALS

4.1 GENERAL NAMES

The goals of .Click are outlined in the sections above. These goals are supported by the following artifacts –
* Registration policies and processes
* Acceptable usage policies and content guidelines
* Abuse mitigation processes
* Rights protection mechanisms
* Dispute resolution polices

To this effect we have created unprecedented Abuse mitigation policies and Rights protection mechanisms that go significantly above and beyond mandatory requirements and common practice. The salient aspects of all of the above are described below –

* DotClick Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary within the Directi Group. The Directi Group runs various businesses including several ICANN Accredited Domain Registrars (ResellerClub.com and BigRock.com) and Web Hosting companies. With over four million active domain names registered through its registrars, Directi has significant experience (over 10 years) of managing domain name abuse mitigation and rights protection. Directi has been heralded as a white hat registrar and the undisputed leader with respect to abuse mitigation.

* Our Abuse and compliance processes will be run by the Directi Group
* We have an elaborate and detailed Accepted usage and content policy that covers over 11 macro forms of violations
* .Click will create a zero-tolerance reputation when it comes to abuse
* We have a defined SLA for responding to abuse complaints ensuring guaranteed turn-around time on any abuse complaint depending on its severity
* We will work closely with LEA and other security groups to mitigate abuse within TLD by providing them with special interfaces (eg searcheable whois) and interacting with them regularly in terms of knowledge sharing.
* Other abuse mitigation steps we undertake include profiling, blacklisting, proactive quality reviews, industry collaboration and information sharing, regular sampling, contractual enforcements and sanctions
* The protection of trademark rights is a core goal of .Click. .Click will have a professional plan for rights protection. It will incorporate best practices of existing TLDs, going above and beyond the ICANN mandated RPMs to prevent abusive registrations and rapidly take-down abuse when it does occur.
* Standard RPMs such as Sunrise, Trademarks claims service, URS, UDRP, SDRP, PDDRP, SPOC etc are all provided for. Additional RPMs such as Optional Trademark declaration, profiling and blacklisting, proactive quality reviews, APWG Review and others will also be provided.

The above salient points barely scratch the surface in detailing the steps that .Click will take in order to build a reputation of operating a clean, secure and trusted namespace. Significant details of all of the above and more are provided in our responses to Q26, Q27, Q28 and Q29

4.2. OTHER NAMES

* We will reserve the following classes of domain names, which will not be available to registrants via the Sunrise or subsequent periods:
** The reserved names required in Specification 5 of the new gTLD Registry Agreement.
** The geographic names required in Specification 5 of the new gTLD Registry Agreement. See our response to Question 22 (“Protection of Geographic Names”) for details.
** The registry operator will reserve its own name and variations thereof, and registry operations names (such as nic.Click, registry.Click, and www.Click), so that we can point them to our Web site. Reservation of the registry operator’s names was standard in ICANN’s past gTLD contracts.
** We will also reserve names related to ICANN and Internet standards bodies (iana.Click, ietf.Click, w3c.Click, etc.), for delegation of those names to the relevant organizations upon their request. Reservation of this type of names was standard in ICANN’s past gTLD contracts. The list of reserved names will be published publicly before the Sunrise period begins, so that registrars and potential registrants will know which names have been set aside.
* We will reserve generic names which will be set aside for distribution via special mechanisms.

5. PROTECTING PRIVACY OF REGISTRANTS’ OR USERS’ INFORMATION

.Click is committed to providing a secure and trusted namespace to its Registrants and end-users. To that extent we will have several measures for protecting the privacy or confidential information of registrants or users -

* Our Whois service (web-based whois, port 43 whois and searchable whois) all have built in abuse prevention mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access, data mining, data scraping and any other abusive behavior. Details of this are provided in our response to Q26

* .Click will allow Registrants to use privacy protection services provided by their Registrars in the form of a Proxy whois service as long as they follow the guidelines stipulated within our response to Q28 to prevent any abuse of the same

* As per the requirements of the new gTLD Registry Agreement (Article 2.17), we shall notify each of our registrars regarding the purposes for which data about any identified or identifiable natural person (“Personal Data”) submitted to the Registry Operator by such registrar is collected and used, and the intended recipients (or categories of recipients) of such Personal Data. (This data is basically the registrant and contact data required to be published in the WHOIS.)

* We will also require each registrar to obtain the consent of each registrant in the TLD for such collection and use of Personal Data. As the registry operator, we shall not use or authorize the use of Personal Data in a way that is incompatible with the notice provided to registrars.

* As the registry operator we shall take significant steps to protect Personal Data collected from registrars from loss, misuse, unauthorized disclosure, alteration, or destruction. In our responses to Q24, Q30 and Q38 we detail the security policies and procedures we will use to protect the registry system and the data contained there from unauthorized access and loss.

* As registry operator we impose certain operational standards for our registrars. In order gain and maintain accreditation for our TLD, we require them to adhere to certain information technology policies designed to help protect registrant data. These include standards for access to the registry system. Please see our response to Q24, Q25 and Q30 for details.

* We offer a “registry lock” service, designed to help protect participating registrants’ contact data from unauthorized modification, and against unauthorized domain transfers and deletions. Please see our response to Q27 for details.

* .Click implements DNSSEC at the zone which guarantees origin authentication of DNS data, authenticated denial of existence, and data integrity. This protects end-users from a man-in-the-middle attack protecting the privacy of data of end-users.

6. OUTREACH AND COMMUNICATIONS

* Our goal for .Click in terms of area of specialty is to provide a blank canvas for Internet innovation. Good names, at a fair price on a secure and stable platform. Registrants will have choice and the freedom use the blank name space canvas that is .Click and create their own Internet masterpiece.

* To achieve this, we will emphasize distribution channels internationally – not just in one or more focused regions. One important method of outreach will involve co-marketing programs with registrars. Directi will also leverage its existing channel of 65,000 Resellers, and its strategic relationships with other ICANN Accredited Registrars.

* We will also engage in relevant PR and outreach programs as well as ensure appropriate publication of information on our website.

* Our outreach efforts will thus be directed towards Internet users in coordination with Registrar partners, to ensure greater adoption of the .Click TLD. One important method of outreach will involve co-marketing programs with registrars.

The communication and outreach will focus on -
* Educating audiences regarding this new namespace which has a high availability of names, and the immense possibilities and internet innovations that it could result in.
* Generating awareness of our Registration policies, Acceptable usage and content policies, Abuse mitigation processes and Rights protection mechanisms

This completes our answer to Q18(b)