18(a) Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD

Prototypical answer:

Q18 a) - Mission⁄purpose

The .scot TLD application is submitted by dotScot Registry Limited in name and on behalf of the Scottish community, composed of individuals and organizations linked to the community on a cultural or business basis, or by any other activity conducive to the welfare of the Scottish community

Registrations under the .scot TLD are restricted to bona-fide members of the Scottish community, and subject to the further requirement that the registrant’s actions in the .scot TLD community, as well as the registrant’s use of the registered domain name, must be:

(i) generally accepted as legitimate; and

(ii) beneficial to the cause and the values of the Scottish community; and

(iii) commensurate with the role and importance of the registered domain name; and

(iv) in good faith at the time of registration and thereafter.

The goals of the .scot TLD are to:

(a) facilitate digital communications from, to, and within the Scottish community;

(b) provide a platform for the development in the digital space of the Scottish community.

(c) strengthen the image of the Scottish community in the on-line world;

This is to be achieved by:

(i) actively designing and developing the .scot TLD name space with a focus on the needs of the Scottish community, involving cultural, welfare, business and public stakeholders;

(ii) facilitating registrations using Scottish languages other than English such as Gaelic, Scots, Doric, Shetlandic and Orcadian many of which use non-ASCII characters. This is especially true for Gaelic, Shetlandic and Orcadian;

(iii) allowing registrations of second-level domains in the .scot TLD by individuals and organizations with a bona fide nexus to the Scottish community; the basic criterion to elucidate this bona fide nexus will be established by the requirement to use the domain names registered conducive to the welfare of the Scottish community.

(iv) operating the .scot TLD under the stewardship of the Scottish community:. As will be elaborated and detailed under 20 b), Dot Scot Registry has the explicit support of the Scottish public authorities, its most relevant cultural and professional institutions and private sector stakeholders.

The .scot TLD will contribute to increase the cultural diversity of the DNS, which is one of the main objectives of the gTLD process.
The above-mentioned general goals of the .scot TLD are further developed as follows:

- Meeting point of a lively community: the .scot TLD will serve approximately a fifty million people community in every part of the globe. A community with a rich cultural heritage, and unique characteristics.

- Enabling speakers of Scotlandʹs other languages which use non ASCII characters such as Gaelic, Shetlandic and Orcadian for the first time to promote their languages on-line without transliteration.

- Improving consumer choice by facilitating online marketing: the .scot TLD will help long tail companiesʹ strategies to focus the marketing of their products for the Scottish community. Companies’ adoption of the .scot TLD to address the Scottish market will be key to measure how the .scot TLD has increased consumers’ choice.

- Promoting the relations with and within the diaspora: the .scot TLD will contribute to make the huge Scottish diaspora more visible and to improve the relations between its nods and different generations.

- A new type of community gTLD: the Scottish community has a relevant part of its members beyond Scotland’s original and historical area of influence. This will be very useful for academics and ICANN to study whether this kind of community TLDs effectively contribute to the preservation of a culture among emigrants.

- The previous experience of a TLD, .CAT, offered the possibility to evaluate the beneficiary ripple effects of such a TLD. and its significant contribution to the profile of the catalan speaking community on the Internet. the .scot TLD’s cooperation with Fundació puntCAT throughout ECLID - European Cultural and Linguistic Internet Domains - the working group which both entities are founding members of, will contribute to the benefit of the cultural communities TLDs’ knowledge, and to the development of a network of multistakeholder non-for-profit organizations committed to the aim of developing the advancement of the Internet in their respective cultural areas of influence. Information about ECLID may be found at: http:⁄⁄www.eclid.eu⁄

dotScot Registry Limited is convinced that the .scot string does not fall under the scope of the Geographic Names, and therefore, does not require Government Support. The section 2.2.1.4.2 of the Applicant Guidebook establishes in its sub bullet number 3 that:

ʺThe following types of applied-for strings are considered geographic names and must be accompanied by documentation of support or non-objection from the relevant governments or public authorities:

3. An application for any string that is an exact match of a sub-national place name, such as a county, province, or state, listed in the ISO 3166-2 standard.ʺ

In ISO 3166-2 there is an entry for “Scotland”, but there is no entry for “scot”. It is clear from this description that the .scot string should not be considered a geographic name. However, the Guidebook also indicates in this same section that:

ʺit is in the applicant’s interest to consult with relevant governments and public authorities and enlist their support or non-objection prior to submission of the application, in order to preclude possible objections and pre-address any ambiguities concerning the string and applicable requirements.ʺ

Given the intimate and evident association of the applied for string with the name of Scotland and with the Scots community, and in order to dispel any ambiguities concerning the application, and also taking into account the GAC principles, regarding new gTLDs, presented in March 28, 2007, and specifically, their point 2.2, dotscot Registry Limited obtained letters of support and non objection from both the Governments of Scotland and the United Kingdom.

Therefore, and even though the application is not for a geographic name, the response of dotScot Registry Limited to the Q21 will be affirmative, in order to be able to attach the letters of non objection and support provided for this application.

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