18(c) What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs?

Prototypical answer:

18 (c) What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs (e.g., time or financial resource costs, as well as various types of consumer vulnerabilities)? What other steps will you take to minimize negative consequences⁄costs imposed upon consumers?

The application and use of “.citic” TLD is meant to improve consumer trust and to minimize consumer costs. CITIC Group has developed and adopted several operating rules to this end.

CITIC Group will also adopt rights protection mechanisms to protect trademarks and geographic names. More information in this regard can be seen in the answer to Question 29.

CITIC Group will also adopt anti-abuse policy as described in the answer to Question 28 to prevent and mitigate any potential domain name abuse.

Answers should address the following points:
How will multiple applications for a particular domain name be resolved, for example, by auction or on a first-come⁄first-serve basis?

Specifically, with regards to multiple applications for a particular name, they would be addressed in the following manner, depending on who the applicants are:
i) During the pre-launch period, CITIC Group will implement a Sunrise service for trademark holders with supporting letter from the CITIC Group’s legal department. If there are multiple eligible applications, CITIC Group will resolve this using the internal dispute resolution mechanism (please refer to answer to Question 29 for details):
CITIC Group will setup a panel to facilitate the negotiations. This panel shall conduct internal negotiation by hearing both parties on the rights claims. The Panel then would come to a conclusion regarding the rights of the domain name registrant within 5 working days
ii) During open registration period, CITIC Group will abide by the first-come-first -served policy to registration applications.


Explain any cost benefits for registrants you need to implement (e.g. advantageous pricing, introductory discounts, bulk registration discounts).

The running of “.citic” is based on a cost-recovery basis. As such, there is no intention to provide any promotion or bulk registration discount.


Note that the Registry Agreement requires that registrars be offered the option to obtain initial domain name registrations for periods of one to ten years at the discretion of the registrar, but no greater than ten years. Additionally, the Registry Agreement requires advance written notice of price increases. Do you intend to make contractual commitments to registrants regarding the magnitude of price escalation? If so, please describe your plans.

As “.citic” TLD is not geared toward for profit, the magnitude of price increase per year will not be higher than 10% to offset the increase of operation cost. CITIC Group shall inform of the price adjustment to its registrars at least 6 months in advance.

CITIC Group will offer optional multi year registrations for up to ten years. Any registrants who make advance payment for multi year registrations will not be affected by any price adjustment during the period they had made advance payment for.

Similar gTLD applications: (1)