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20(b) Explain the applicant's relationship to the community identified in 20(a)

gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.NGOPublic Interest Registrypir.orgView
PIR is a NGO, and thereby part of the NGO Community. PIR as a NGO has extensive gTLD management experience via the .ORG gTLD. PIR a supporting organization to the Internet Society (ISOC) and is committed to supporting the Internet Society’s (ISOC) mission stated below.

History of PIR’s Relationship to the NGO Community
In January 2003, PIR, assumed responsibility for operating .ORG and maintaining the authoritative database of all .ORG domains.

Created in 1984, .ORG is one of the Internetʹs original seven top-level domains (TLDs), along with .com, .net, etc. Although it is ʺopenʺ and ʺunrestrictedʺ, .ORG has been the domain of choice for organizations dedicated to serving the public interest. The high regard of these well-intentioned organizations was soon conferred to this domain, and today .ORG is considered around the world to be the domain of trust.

Public Interest Registry’s (PIR) primary activity is to maintain the .ORG domain registry as the exemplary top level domain (TLD) registry service, by advocating for higher standards of Internet security, safety and reliability. PIR’s mission is to facilitate the effective use of a global Internet among non-commercial and other Internet users worldwide. In its relationship with the ISOC, (reference Evaluation Questions #9a and #9b), PIR is committed to supporting ISOC’s goals of encouraging the evolution of the Internet as research, education and communication infrastructure equally accessible to the global non-commercial, NGO and nonprofit community. PIR’s activities also include funding educational programs focused on expanding the knowledge and ability of non-commercial, NGO and nonprofit organizations located in technologically deprived areas of the world to more efficiently and effectively use the Internet as a tool to better accomplish their important mission.

The 2003 transition of .ORG from the previous operator to PIR was the largest transfer in Internet history. More than 2.6 million domains were transferred in about a day, without negatively impacting any .ORG registrant or website.

Since 2003, PIR has been connected with NGOs through our management of .ORG, and recently in preparation for our pursuit of the .NGO gTLD domain, we have worked closely with the NGO Community to develop the requirements and specification for the proposed .NGO gTLD.

Current Relationship to the NGO Community
PIR is a strong supporter of NGOs in both a direct role as manager of the .ORG gTLD and through other efforts, including:
• A ʺStrategic and Sponsoring Partnerʺ of NTEN, the Non-Profit Technology Network of 10,000 members and over 30,000 participants in the community, covering 126 countries. NTEN aspires to a world where all nonprofit organizations use technology skillfully and confidently to meet community needs and fulfill their missions.
• Making financial contributions to various organizations, such as the NCUC (Non Commercial Constituency of ICANN) and Centr. For NCUC, annual donations have been in the $5,000 to $15,000 range every year since PIR assumed operations of the .ORG registry.
• In December 2005, PIR sponsored a symposium at the Nelson Mandela Center in Cape Town, South Africa bringing in various Internet leaders in Africa to discuss the needs of the Internet in Africa.
• In response to Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans, Louisiana, PIR donated $1 for every new create for a limited time. The final donation was over $100,000 to the Red Cross.
• In response to JapanʹsTsunami disaster, a 3 month program was rolled out to waive renewal fees for Japanese domain name holders, in order to help those affected and unable to renew their .ORG domains.

Within the community, there is a wide appreciation of PIR’s role as an advocate of “do good” for the Internet at large, and in many countries around the world there is a general perception that .ORG domains are more trusted than other domains. At the time of application submission, PIR manages nearly 10 million .ORG domains, and is seen to do so in an exemplary way. We are very happy to be judged on this reputation.

PIR has over 500 letters of support from the NGO Community endorsing its application for .NGO. PIR will continue outreach to the community and anticipates receipt of additional support letters from NGOs throughout the ICANN application evaluation process. Specific recognition of PIR’s efforts to support the nonprofit community includes:
• “As a not-for-profit corporation, we believe that being part of the .org domain has done much to reinforce MITRE’s identity as an organization chartered to work in the public interest. [Thanks to PIR’s] continuing work to enhance the .org domain.ʺ - Al Grasso, President and CEO, The MITRE Corporation (the first .ORG registrant).
• “We recognize and applaud PIRʹs long-standing commitment to the non-profit community since taking over the management of .ORG.” - Lisa Vogt, APR, Director of Marketing & Communications, SOS Children’s Villages – USA.

PIR has conducted outreach, worked with established relationships, and developed new types of relationships which will facilitate the delivery of the .NGO domain and related services to the NGO Community. Our discussions and outreach have included NGOs in several countries across Asia, Europe, North America, South America⁄Latin America, and Africa as well as many different segments of the NGO Community to ensure wide acceptance and adoption of our proposed gTLD domain and related services. The segments include but are not limited to agriculture, environment, arts⁄culture, charitable services, human rights, humanitarian, and advocacy for a range of issues affecting societal development.

Accountability to the NGO Community
By offering .NGO as a secure and well-managed domain of trust uniquely for eligible NGOs, PIR believes that NGOs can benefit from the Internet and our specific services as a means to safely and reliably reach out to the community and sponsors. PIR will be accountable to the NGO Community by:
• A NGO Community input process soliciting input from the community through the NGO Advisory Council drawn from the community and accepting a broad range of input to stay current on the issues of importance to the community and manage the NGO verification process;
• Creating and marketing .NGO as a distinctive place on the Internet for NGOs to differentiate and promote their organization;
• Establishing community programs to support capacity building of NGOs with technical and educational platforms;
• Enforcing registration policies that elevate the integrity of the domains in the .NGO gTLD name space, soliciting input from the NGO Community;
• Easing discovery and promotion through the creation, management and promotion of the .NGO gTLD;
• Offering registration from a proven, scalable registry platform that can ensure 100% DNS availability;
• Delivering a challenge process for the NGO Community to dispute the legitimacy of a .NGO registrant or its activity on a .NGO domain; and,
• As a community priority gTLD, PIR is committing to manage the .NGO domain with participation of the community. Failing to do that would put our registry contract in jeopardy.

PIR is in an excellent position to provide such support to the NGO Community given documented experience running a stable and trusted registry. PIR holds a track record demonstrating good intent to the global community by being a leader in activities such as implementation of anti-abuse policies, DNSSEC, active participation in numerous public interest events, etc.
gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.medDocCheck AGdoccheck.comView
List of content
a- Relations to (constituent) community organizations
b- Accountability

a- Relations to (constituent) community organizations
It has been stated in the answer to question 20(a) that until today, the medical and healthcare community lacks a single and overarching international umbrella organization. Even though there are organizations with a global claim, none of them comes close to even covering the majority of the multitude of organizations. For over 15 years now, DocCheck AG is building and providing a platform which could, among many other things, work as a cross-organizational platform for operations and interest representation for all community members. Already today, the services combined at the DocCheck portal are designed for and represent the collectivity of all medical and healthcare professions. With more than 800,000 active members today, the critical mass has already been reached. Furthermore, the DocCheck portal is the only community service worldwide that is offered in six different languages, including English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Dutch. It is currently worked on a project to provide even more languages in order to better support members from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. This strongly demonstrates the international approach DocCheck is taking towards its service for the international community members. Even with the languages supported today, the Americas, Europe, parts of Africa, and Australia are provided with services in the respective mother tongue. Furthermore, DocCheck AG and its respective DocCheck portal services are deeply rooted professional groups of medical experts. The founder and chief executive officer, Dr. med. Frank Antwerpes, being a physician himself, and his partners themselves are rooted in the community. Because of their original occupation, they possess a deep understanding for the necessities and requirements the community bears. After 15 years of continuous development, improvement, and implementation of new services and features, the DocCheck portal is in a transition phase towards new strategic community goals. Through the application for the new gTLD .med, DocCheck can gain responsibilities for providing leadership on global health matters, shaping the health research agenda, setting norms and standards, articulating evidence-based policy options, and monitoring and assessing health trends. In the 21st century, health is a shared responsibility, involving equitable access to essential care and collective defense against transnational threats. Transparency of information is another factor that is important for the community. Access to information on conditions, treatments, quality, and pricing greatly affects the choice by patients and, therefore, the incentives of medical professionals. Accordingly the community acts as communications platform for healthcare professionals as well as a trustworthy information source for Internet users.

DocCheck AG is in good terms with a multitude of community organizations and of course with representatives of such organizations as well. Many of those representatives and members are DocCheck members and contribute to and communicate with the community via the portal. They oftentimes take active part in community discussions and the great variety of possibility to generate and conserve content, information, and knowledge. DocCheck AG is engaging in activities to nourish and strengthen those bonds and relationships, for example by establishing personal contacts and relationships with important representatives, groups, institutions, and organizations. This means for example that leaders of such organizations and the c-level of DocCheck AG support each other at management tasks, give speeches and presentations at organizational meetings and conferences, or exchange insights about community- and profession-related purposes.

DocCheckʹs single-sign-on (SSO), one of the core features of the portal, is used by more than 800,000 healthcare professionals world-wide. Hundreds of physicians, pharmacists, nurses and medical students actively contribute medical articles and other medical content. On the other hand, more than 2,500 websites of medical organizations (e.g. the APB - Belgian Pharmacists Association) and healthcare companies (e.g. Pfizer, J&J, Novartis) provide the DocCheck login as an access solution to their respective users. Medical publishers like Wolters Kluver, de Gruyter, Elsevier or The Peopleʹs Medical Publishing House of China work closely together with DocCheck in order to provide the medical community with eBooks and the like. A great many of hospitals in Europe (e.g. Charité Berlin, University Hospital Bonn) feed medical doctors and students with medical videos and other educational material via DocCheck. Medical fairs (e.g. the worldʹs largest medical fair MEDICA) address their visitors through DocCheck. Though DocCheck is heavily engaged in the medical community, it is important to point out, that DocCheck is not affiliated with a specific medical association or industry, but is open to every medical professional at no cost. Besides the extensive networking activities, it should still be noted that DocCheck AG is politically and societally independent. DocCheck AG itself is not member of any organization, association or interest group in the medical and healthcare sector and is therefore not subject to directives of any entity or individual but itself. Furthermore, DocCheck AG being incorporation is financially completely independent and does only rely on corporate equity of its stocks in free float and of only two major shareholders with more than 15% share, both in the founding family. Therefore, DocCheck AG is very much unlikely to show tendencies of preferential treatment towards a certain individual, group, organization, or association part of the community.

b- Accountability
Because of today’s size of DocCheck AG and the DocCheck portal and services, DocCheck AG is fully aware of its accountability towards the medical community. A large group of individuals and organizations rely on the services and functions provided at the portal. The added value of the information supplied and demanded on a daily basis, the content that is generated and shared, the knowledge that is developed and multiplied, and the contacts and conversations that are made every single day constitute a vital part of the professional life of a not negligible part of the community. By applying for .med, DocCheck AG is fully aware of the fact that another, even greater, part of the portal and service to the community will be added to the portfolio. Nevertheless, DocCheck AG is dedicated to provide such services and develop the community and its organization even further.