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

Prototypical answer:

We totally agree with ICANN: New gTLDs will change the way people find information on the Internet and how businesses plan and structure their online presence.

By the light of this vision, we believe that the proposed TLDs will provide numerous benefits to the registrants, internet users and others who want to become a part of the Istanbul. However, these we mentioned in this content are only limited by our imagination.

The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (the ʺIMMʺ) has a powerful budget and capabilities to support these TLDs in every aspect. We as the IMM, have a strong advertisement infrastructure, media vehicles and powerful market, and above all we truly believe the success of the TLDs.

At first glance, the proposed TLD offers benefits to City tourism, small-to mid businesses, entrepreneurs, and global corporations with a presence in the City. It will provide connections that facilitate innovation enabling people to create and sell their services and products to one another and the world. Most importantly, creative use of the Internetʹs naming and networking features will facilitate transparency, collaboration, and trust helping the City grow as a global economic force.

The IMM intends to market the proposed TLDs as a truly prestigious strings that can be embraced and utilized by an individual, entrepreneurs, enterprises, and organizations whether located in Istanbul, or not. By positioning the proposed TLD as a truly prestigious string and by providing an entirely new pool of domain names for registration, the proposed TLD will open the possibility of domain name registration to a far greater number of people.

New name space

Although this market is currently served by existing gTLDs and ccTLDs, as a practical matter many of the most popular commonly-known and utilized words and phrases have already been registered. Accordingly, new registrants must have the financial resources sufficient either to conduct a major marketing campaign for an uncommon phrase or to purchase a previously registered domain name at a substantial price. It created a aggressive competition between people, businesses and organizations with the same name. Number of domain name disputes are growing, and the name space for generic names is getting tight since a lot of companies register many gTLDs and ccTLDs when launching a business or product. This limits the ability of the Internet to continue to expand into a truly global medium. In this context, the proposed TLD will calm this competition down, since a nearly infinite number of new combinations will be available with it.

Through the introduction of a new TLD, the IMM will provide registrants with a fresh set of domain names eligible for registration. Although the IMM expects that some registrants of existing gTLDs domain names will quickly move to register an equivalent name in the new TLD, the IMM expects that the majority of registrants will not apply for duplicative registrations, leaving many domain names free for registration by entirely new registrants. The most important goal of proposed TLDs is to provide a new fresh name space for local brands to encourage them becoming a part of the virtual world.

The new Turkish Commerce Code, which will start a new era in the Turkish economy.

The New Turkish Commercial Code (the “NTCC”), which will be effective from 1 July 2012, is a change that will direct the course of commercial life in our country, a real “Regulation for the Future”. The TCC was adopted by the Turkish Parliament on 13 January 2011 and promulgated in the Official Gazette on 14 February 2011. In summary, The NTCC redefines the rules governing commercial life in Turkey, with a modern approach that will help take Turkey to the next level in terms of transparency, auditability and reliability. Additional notes regarding to NTCC is provided at the question #49c Contingency Planning - Volumes as Attachment 49c.

In accordance with the principle of transparency at the NTCC, all equity capital companies are obliged to found a web site, and if such a site is available, to allocate a section of the web site to the use of shareholders and society. The web site shall include all the reports and all the relevant data concerning creditors and investors; primarily all announcements that should be legally made by the company, annual reports, financial statements and audit reports. Penalties and sanctions shall apply if the company fail to fulfil these obligations.

In this context, we believe that proposed TLDs in parallel with the NTCCʹs goals will have a important role on creation of an information society by providing a new name space for businesses, marketing and introducing this new TLDs.

Benefits for the local business and trademarks

Primarily, we believe that this TLD will assist local merchants based in Istanbul to be able to brand their businesses as located in the Istanbul. The small business community is a vital part of the Istanbul economy and any opportunity to increase their exposure while facilitating easy searching online is a step forward. The following list summarizes benefits for the businesses:
- Short, descriptive, and memorable domain names will be available for the Cityʹs businesses. Many local businesses will have the opportunity to reclaim their traditional and familiar names within the proposed TLD.
- The new set of domain names will reduce the current time consuming task of locating a good domain name, provide identity, and promote ʺfindabilityʺ through the intuitive names and Search Engine Optimization, helping city businesses rise to the top of search engines results.
- The proposed TLDs will provide local identity for companies using the same name used in other cities.
- Global companies with a city presence will choose a local TLD for more focused communication such as to let residents know of their local jobs, distributors, concerts, and community events they sponsor.

By encouraging domain name registration by a large audience both national and international, the proposed TLD will foster to improve service levels of both local and global businesses and government institutes. The TLD will able to enable government institutes to launch new e-government initiatives by a modern communication infrastructure and thereby it will ease the interaction of the city government and institutions with residents, organizations and businesses. Self-explaining URLs with content users expect will make the Cityʹs resources readily available and easier to locate by the regional, national and international audience. In addition, global and local businesses will be able to market and promote their events, new products and services for a targeted audience under a City brand.

By increasing navigation, the proposed TLD will obviously provide localization for areas of specialty such as hospitality, culture and education. Therefore accessibility of trusted-information will become easier than ever. In addition, the TLD will enable the IMM to generate new income streams which will enable a considerable resource for the IMM to support its services for the public and City development as well as to support its unique initiatives for tourism and economic development.

Our proposed TLDs goals are to foster businesses and government institutes to develop new methods to reach and communicate their targeted audience.

Reputation

We believe that proposed TLDs will support to increase brand awareness, recognition, and reputation of the Istanbul around the world. In this sense, it will support to promote and market tourism and culture in the Istanbul globally.

The TLD will ease the marketing of the city brand and city image to residents, tourists, businesses and investors from all over the globe with every domain name, e-mail, and web site. All of them will be associated with the City, and people will be reminded of our great city, and dream of their next visit. The TLD will create a unique local identity for citizens, companies, organizations and institutions and also provide a opportunity for local business to market their brands under a world City brand.

Our proposed TLD, which will boost importance and richness of Istanbul, goals is to support economic growth of the City by providing a new vehicle for City tourism. Once the ʺ.istanbulʺ and ʺ.istʺ TLDs are launched, individuals and local business owners will be able to uniquely associate themselves and their business with their home, and the Istanbul brand. They will be able to choose their online presence, how they want to represent themselves, with IST brand short-form of Istanbul or Istanbul brand.

The both proposed TLDs will be a source of prestige for Istanbul. Istanbul will be honored to recognize with its own TLD in the country and in the worldwide.

Competition

One of the central goals of the introduction of new TLDs is to create competition between existing ccTLDs and gTLDs and registry operators, as such competition will inevitably benefit the public. By definition, the more competitors there are in any given market, the greater the opportunities for competition in that market.

The introduction of a new TLD managed by the IMM and its experienced back-end registry operator will also create competition for the existing gTLDs, ccTLDs and their registry operators. This competition will drive each registry operator to improve its services and pricing and thereby benefit the entire Internet community.

New gTLDs will also create additional choices for consumers, and thus foster competition between the proposed TLDs and the existing unrestricted and restricted gTLDs and ccTLDs. Such competition will benefit consumers as it will encourage all registries to offer better services and prices. Domain name registrants will for the first time have an opportunity to choose the registry or registries with which they would like to do business.

The proposed TLDs consequently will increase choice and competition for the regional city community in an environment of national and international competition on investments.

Accordingly, we expect from ICANN to examine the degree to which the introduction of a new gTLD encourages competition between TLD registry operators, and the effects of such competition. Although the impact of competition in a marketplace may be difficult to measure over a short time period, The IMM will make its best effort to have the desired effect.

Finally, we expect that ICANN should study the degree to which effective marketing on the part of a new entrant is necessary to ensure real competition for registration services. If such competition requires an extensive marketing campaign, then only those that have the financial resources to conduct such a campaign should be selected to operate new TLDs. The IMM has already funded necessary contribution for marketing campaign and has a powerful marketing vehicles with large audience to support proposed TLDs advertisement.

Innovation

One of the important goals of the proposed TLD is to leverage innovation and create differentiation globally. The TLDs will offer the opportunity to create projects, ideas and new initiatives to individuals, enterprises and organization on a green field.

We believe that proposed TLDs will become an engine of innovation that will enable citizens and Istanbul to grow and thrive.

User Experience

As an unrestricted TLD, the proposed TLDs will serve businesses and individuals of all countries and classes.

The proposed TLDs will allow registrants the opportunity to establish an international-regional web presence, and reduce the need to register multiple domain names in other TLD spaces. Domain name registrants may then focus their resources on expanding the reach of their offerings and content, as well as their brand identity. Finally, the proposed TLDs will enable new registrants to enter the market and register domain names.

In addition, the TLDs will also unite people across the world under a city brand. People who lives, or formerly lived, visited or wants to visit, and do business or looking for business opportunities in Istanbul will be able to associate themselves as they are somehow connected to the Istanbul. Other locations worldwide with the same name, even if small villages or towns, shall also be part of the community. They will profit from the increased visibility of the city name and will have equal rights to register domain names under the TLD.

Through .istanbul and .ist TLDs, we hope to make the search for Istanbul City-related content easier than ever by providing individuals, entrepreneurs, organizations, non-profits and others a chance to own a virtual piece of the greatest city in the world.

The IMM Mission

The IMM Department of Information Technologiesʹ mission is to transform the way Istanbul City interacts with its residents, businesses, visitors and employees by leveraging technology to improve services and increase transparency, accountability and accessibility across all agencies.

In addition to IMMʹs mission, 2010-2012 Strategic Plan by Information and Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA) has three main goals that support the macro scale objective “creation of an information society”, (1) e-transform of public authorities⁄institutions, (2) Widespread use of electronic communication over broadband and (3) Efficient information security.

Within this context, goals of proposed TLDs are also to support ICTA strategic goals, launch new e-government initiatives, and increase Istanbul reputation globally.

By marketing and promoting the TLDs successfully, the IMM hopes to increase electronic communication, internet usage, and awareness of virtual worldʹs opportunities around the country.

We believe that the proposed TLDs will establish a focal point for bringing the benefits of the information society to the city community.
In recent years, the IMM has developed many projects promoting sustainable development in areas of urban transformation, social services for deprived citizens. Particularly, ongoing Istanbul Financial Center (ʺIFCʺ) project to support economic growth, and other innovative systems, will have also significant contribution to support proposed TLDs. These major projects will clench the position of Istanbul as a global-scale city. Istanbul will become the exemplary center of culture and arts, environment, humane living environments and health, sports and technology.

Within this context, strategies towards raising Istanbul’s rank among global cities will contribute to the proposed TLDs process and basic goal is that Istanbul should have its own TLD by its diversity of benefits community and quality of brand.

Privacy

The IMM is committed to being a responsible participant in the efforts of the Internet community to balance the need for data privacy with the need to provide access to records that allow the public to identity and contact domain name holders. To that end, the IMM will strive to maintain open access to registrant information to the extent compatible with applicable privacy laws and the its policy of treating all registrants equitably.
In addition, via the Registry Registrar Agreement (RRA), we will require registrars to post privacy policies that provide clear and complete notice to registrants of the type of data that will be collected and maintained by the IMM, the use of such data in operating the registry service, (including display through the Whois service), and the registrantʹs rights to access and correct data maintained by the IMM. Clear consent to such data practices will be a prerequisite to the submission of a domain name registration request.

In addition, for each type of Whois access (general queries, bulk access and enhanced searches), the IMM, via the registrars, will require customers to enter into an agreement prohibiting the customer from using the Whois database to send unsolicited e-mail to registrants, solicit them by telephone or use the database for other such commercial purposes.

The IMM and its back-end registry service provider itself will not use the Whois service to send unsolicited e-mail to registrants, to solicit registrants by telephone, or to otherwise engage in unauthorized uses of their data.

The IMMʹs goal is to improve the reliability and responsiveness of the TLD registry system at all levels through technological, business and policy advancements.

Registration Policies

The IMM will implement a global registration policies to achieve its goals. These are grouped under the following headings:
1. Registry Services through experienced, powerful, centralized registry service provider.
2. Start-up period Policies (Grandfathering, Sunrise A, Sunrise B, Landrush)
3. Registry Registrar Agreement (RRA)

The IMM expects a significant rush for domain name registrations during the period immediately following the initial opening of the TLD (the ʺStart-Up Periodʺ), after the close of the Landrush Period. In order to roll out the registry in a responsible fashion, and ensure proper and accurate processing of the registrations in a fair manner across all registrars, we will implement the following variations in its registry policies in coordinated with back-end registry service provider during the Start-Up Period which is expected to last for more than four months.

At least four months (120 days) prior to the proposed TLDs being opened to the general public, the IMM, in coordination with the intellectual property community, will make a general public announcement with the estimated date that it will open the proposed TLD to the general Internet community.

The IMM will implement a series of special policies with a detailed Launch Plan during a ʺStart-up Periodʺ. The Launch Plan will be intended to deter abusive and bad faith registrations of proposed TLDs Domain Names and to create a stable and effective launch of proposed TLD Domain Names for the benefit of the Internet community on a local and global level.

Schedule for Start-up

The IMM will introduce a detailed .TLD Launch Plan which intends to provide for the allocation of Domain Names in the proposed gTLD in a fair, orderly and equitable manner, and described in detailed at question #29 Rights Protection Mechanisms.

The following list provides a summary of the four phases of the Launch Plan:
- Phase 1: Grandfathering (one month). The IMM intend to provide one month timeframe for grandfathering for existing Registrants of Third Level Name(s) of .TR ccTLD.
- Phase 2: Sunrise (two months). Sunrise “Local (A)” for local trademarks, and Sunrise “Global (B)” for global trademarks.
- Phase 3: Landrush (one month): Period during which interested parties can seek to register Domain Names not previously registered through the Grandfather Process or Sunrise Process, or otherwise reserved by the Registry or Restricted by theses Launch Rules, but where the allocation of Domain Names is not done on a first-come, first-served basis.
- Phase 4: General Availability: As from the start of this phase, Domain Names that have not been previously registered can be registered on a first-come, first-served basis.

Length of Sunrise Registrations

The IMM believes that parties seeking domain name registrations during the Sunrise Periods will select as long a registration term as is available to them, in order to protect their valuable asset as a domain name for as long as possible. Therefore, domain name registrations that issue during the Sunrise Periods will have a minimum term of five years.

Registration

The Registry Registrar Agreement (RRA) will prohibit the purchase of domain names by registrars for any purpose except instances where the registrar has a bona fide intent to use that domain name on its own behalf.

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