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

gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.bargainsHalf Hallow, LLCdonuts.coView
Q18A CHAR: 7985

ABOUT DONUTS
Donuts Inc. is the parent applicant for this and multiple other TLDs. The company intends to increase competition and consumer choice at the top level. It will operate these carefully selected TLDs safely and securely in a shared resources business model. To achieve its objectives, Donuts has recruited seasoned executive management with proven track records of excellence in the industry. In addition to this business and operational experience, the Donuts team also has contributed broadly to industry policymaking and regulation, successfully launched TLDs, built industry-leading companies from the ground up, and brought innovation, value and choice to the domain name marketplace.

DONUTS’ PLACE WITHIN ICANN’S MISSION
ICANN and the new TLD program share the following purposes:
1. to make sure that the Internet remains as safe, stable and secure as possible, while
2. helping to ensure there is a vibrant competitive marketplace to efficiently bring the benefits of the namespace to registrants and users alike.

ICANN harnesses the power of private enterprise to bring forth these public benefits. While pursuing its interests, Donuts helps ICANN accomplish its objectives by:

1. Significantly widening competition and choice in Internet identities with hundreds of new top-level domain choices;
2. Providing innovative, robust, and easy-to-use new services, names and tools for users, registrants, registrars, and registries while at the same time safeguarding the rights of others;
3. Designing, launching, and securely operating carefully selected TLDs in multiple languages and character sets; and
4. Providing a financially robust corporate umbrella under which its new TLDs will be protected and can thrive.

ABOUT DONUTS’ RESOURCES
Donuts’ financial resources are extensive. The company has raised more than US$100 million from a number of capital sources including multiple multi-billion dollar venture capital and private equity funds, a top-tier bank, and other well-capitalized investors. Should circumstances warrant, Donuts is prepared to raise additional funding from current or new investors. Donuts also has in place pre-funded, Continued Operations Instruments to protect future registrants. These resource commitments mean Donuts has the capability and intent to launch, expand and operate its TLDs in a secure manner, and to properly protect Internet users and rights-holders from potential abuse.

Donuts firmly believes a capable and skilled organization will operate multiple TLDs and benefit Internet users by:

1. Providing the operational and financial stability necessary for TLDs of all sizes, but particularly for those with smaller volume (which are more likely to succeed within a shared resources and shared services model);
2. Competing more powerfully against incumbent gTLDs; and
3. More thoroughly and uniformly executing consumer and rights holder protections.

THIS TLD
This TLD is attractive and useful to end-users as it better facilitates search, self-expression, information sharing and the provision of legitimate goods and services. Along with the other TLDs in the Donuts family, this TLD will provide Internet users with opportunities for online identities and expression that do not currently exist. In doing so, the TLD will introduce significant consumer choice and competition to the Internet namespace – the very purpose of ICANN’s new TLD program.

This TLD is a generic term and its second level names will be attractive to a variety of Internet users. Making this TLD available to a broad audience of registrants is consistent with the competition goals of the New TLD expansion program, and consistent with ICANN’s objective of maximizing Internet participation. Donuts believes in an open Internet and, accordingly, we will encourage inclusiveness in the registration policies for this TLD. In order to avoid harm to legitimate registrants, Donuts will not artificially deny access, on the basis of identity alone (without legal cause), to a TLD that represents a generic form of activity and expression.

DONUTS’ APPROACH TO PROTECTIONS
No entity, or group of entities, has exclusive rights to own or register second level names in this TLD. There are superior ways to minimize the potential abuse of second level names, and in this application Donuts will describe and commit to an extensive array of protections against abuse, including protections against the abuse of trademark rights.

We recognize some applicants seek to address harms by constraining access to the registration of second level names. However, we believe attempts to limit abuse by limiting registrant eligibility is unnecessarily restrictive and harms users by denying access to many legitimate registrants. Restrictions on second level domain eligibility would prevent law-abiding individuals and organizations from participating in a space to which they are legitimately connected, and would inhibit the sort of positive innovation we intend to see in this TLD. As detailed throughout this application, we have struck the correct balance between consumer and business safety, and open access to second level names.

By applying our array of protection mechanisms, Donuts will make this TLD a place for Internet users that is far safer than existing TLDs. Donuts will strive to operate this TLD with fewer incidences of fraud and abuse than occur in incumbent TLDs. In addition, Donuts commits to work toward a downward trend in such incidents.

OUR PROTECTIONS
Donuts has consulted with and evaluated the ideas of international law enforcement, consumer privacy advocacy organizations, intellectual property interests and other Internet industry groups to create a set of protections that far exceed those in existing TLDs, and bring to the Internet namespace nearly two dozen new rights and protection mechanisms to raise user safety and protection to a new level.

These include eight, innovative and forceful mechanisms and resources that far exceed the already powerful protections in the applicant guidebook. These are:

1. Periodic audit of WhoIs data for accuracy;
2. Remediation of inaccurate Whois data, including takedown, if warranted;
3. A new Domain Protected Marks List (DPML) product for trademark protection;
4. A new Claims Plus product for trademark protection;
5. Terms of use that prohibit illegal or abusive activity;
6. Limitations on domain proxy and privacy service;
7. Published policies and procedures that define abusive activity; and
8. Proper resourcing for all of the functions above.

They also include fourteen new measures that were developed specifically by ICANN for the new TLD process. These are:

1. Controls to ensure proper access to domain management functions;
2. 24⁄7⁄365 abuse point of contact at registry;
3. Procedures for handling complaints of illegal or abusive activity, including remediation and takedown processes;
4. Thick WhoIs;
5. Use of the Trademark Clearinghouse;
6. A Sunrise process;
7. A Trademark Claims process;
8. Adherence to the Uniform Rapid Suspension system;
9. Adherence to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy;
10. Adherence to the Post Delegation Dispute Resolution Policy;
11. Detailed security policies and procedures;
12. Strong security controls for access, threat analysis and audit;
13. Implementation DNSSEC; and
14. Measures for the prevention of orphan glue records.

DONUTS’ INTENTION FOR THIS TLD
As a senior government authority has recently said, “a successful applicant is entrusted with operating a critical piece of global Internet infrastructure.” Donuts’ plan and intent is for this TLD to serve the international community by bringing new users online through opportunities for economic growth, increased productivity, the exchange of ideas and information and greater self-expression.
gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.网站Global Website TLD Asia Limitednamesphere.asiaView
With close to 500 million users online, China is already the country with the most Internet users. However, with a population of over 1.3 billion people, that represents only a penetration rate of around 36%. Part of the challenge for the hundreds of millions of Chinese Internet users who have yet to be connected is the ability to navigate the Internet with domain names in their own language. The ability to have complete domain names in Chinese script is seen as providing significant opportunity to these people, as well as offering tremendous value and benefit to the current online users.

The meaning of the TLD string “网站” roughly translates to ‘website’ in English. The purpose of the TLD is therefore to support the development of Chinese websites around the world. Furthermore, the Registry aspires to become a breeding ground for innovation and development for the global Chinese Internet community as a generic Chinese IDN TLD.

The introduction of a fully generic Chinese IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) TLD also provides an opportunity for global businesses to open a window into the rapidly growing Chinese Internet marketplace. Businesses and initiatives around the world can better communicate and express themselves with a more friendly and memorable online identity to the audience in China.

The vision of the .网站 TLD is that through the development of an open generic namespace supporting full Chinese IDNs, it could become a nucleus for Internet activities from and for the Chinese community, and become a driver of economic and social value for Chinese users around the world.

The mission and purposes of the .网站 TLD are:

1. To develop a namespace that is meaningful to the Chinese language community and is globally recognized as a prime Chinese IDN gTLD;

2. To operate a secure, stable and trusted Chinese IDN gTLD with a reputation as a reliable online destination on the Internet;

3. To foster the sense of connection and ownership from the Chinese language community to the Internet, especially to engage participation in global Internet governance;

4. To promote the accessibility of the Internet to the majority of Chinese users whose primary spoken and written language is Chinese; and,

5. To serve the global Chinese language community with an open generic namespace supporting a full Chinese IDN experience.

Based on the broad generic nature of the .网站 TLD, Global Website TLD Asia Limited (the ‘Registry’) aspires to become the domain of choice for individuals and companies developing websites serving the Chinese language community.

In addition to its mission and vision as a new gTLD, the Registry believes in its responsibility as a responsible industry participant to advance competition, enhance consumer trust and promote consumer choice with the development of the TLD:

A. Advance Constructive Competition

The release of IDN TLDs in this new gTLD round is expected to add a significant level of overall competition to the market for domain registrations by introducing an option to register full Chinese domain names based on a Chinese IDN gTLD. The .网站 TLD seeks to especially target to capture the segment of the market that is not yet online, especially those that could find English alphanumeric TLDs to be difficult to manage.

This is important, as it is expected that a number of proposed new TLDs will enhance competition by targeting existing domain registrations and penetrating into the existing marketplace with aims to switch away from or add to their existing domains. As a broad generic IDN gTLD, .网站 aspires to attract a good portion of registrations from amongst new Internet users such as Chinese SMEs that are just about to get online, and be unique to the TLD, rather than primarily being alternative registrations across multiple TLDs.

B. Enhance Consumer Trust

Based on expert studies, Internet users have more trust for domain names that exactly match what they are looking for. Today, Chinese Internet users may still be using English alphanumeric domains because those already online may be more familiar with English. Even so, an absolute majority searches online in their native language: Chinese. A full Chinese IDN is therefore one of the best ways for companies from China or looking to enter the China market, to speak to and be found by the target audience.

The value of the TLD name in itself is therefore a core part of the value and of building consumer trust. Companies can establish their own dedicated domain for videos introducing their company or for online customer support via video instead of using other platforms.

Furthermore, appropriate Abuse Prevention & Mitigation (APM) as well as Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPM) are also important to ensuring a trusted domain space. Further details of APM and RPM beyond the basic ICANN requirements are discussed in response to Question 28 and Question 29.

C. Promote Consumer Choice

The Registry believes that a broadly generic full Chinese IDN TLD promotes choice for registrants to better express their offline identity online without being diluted by the “.ascii” restriction (or be boxed-in to a country code).

Based on recent studies, the majority of the Asian online population is under the age of 30. This young crowd is energetically engaged in social media, with a growing social networking population which surpassed 250 million (the entire Internet population in the US is estimated at 245M) in 2011. Already half of China’s online population is microblogging on Twitter-like services, and that percentage is expected to rise to two-thirds by 2014. The significance of this is that the user generated content is almost exclusively in Chinese language, and therefore it is only natural that the choice of web addresses used should be Chinese. Furthermore, the microblogging scene is not just about teenagers. Companies are scrambling to join this Chinese conversation to promote their brands on the major microblogging platforms as consumers continue flocking to them.

Riding the creative explosion of the Chinese Internet users, the .网站 TLD promotes consumer choice by providing an option for users, including individuals and companies, to utilize different microblogging platforms and integrate them onto their own website under their own domain, rather than to rely and depend on the platform. That also promotes user choice in helping users to regain control of their traffic and reduce the barrier for switching between providers.