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

gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.autoBig Maple, 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
.广东Xinhua News Agency Guangdong Branch 新华通讯社广东分社tld.asiaView
“Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the Peopleʹs Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province. It surpassed Henan and Sichuan to become the most populous province in China in January 2005, registering 79 million permanent residents and 31 million migrants who lived in the province for at least six months of the year. The provincial capital Guangzhou and economic hub Shenzhen are amongst the most populous and important cities in China.

Since 1989 Guangdong has topped the total GDP rankings among all provincial-level divisions, with Jiangsu and Shandong second and third in rank. According to provincial annual preliminary statistics Guangdongʹs GDP in 2010 reached CNY 4,550 billion, or USD 689.02 billion, making its economy roughly the same size as that of Turkey or Indonesia. Guangdong has the fourth highest GDP per capita among all provinces of mainland China, after Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Liaoning. The province contributes approximately 12% of the PRCʹs national economic output, and is home to the production facilities and offices of a wide-ranging set of multinational and Chinese corporations. Guangdong also hosts the largest Import and Export Fair in China called the Canton Fair in Guangdongʹs capital city Guangzhou.”

“Guangdongʹs economic boom began with the early 1990s and has since spread to neighboring provinces, and also pulled their populations inward. The economic growth of Guangdong province owes much to the low-value added manufacturing which characterized (and in many ways still defines) the provinceʹs economy following Deng Xiaopingʹs reforms. Guangdong is not only Chinaʹs largest exporter of goods, it is the countryʹs largest importer as well.

The province is now one of the richest in the nation, with the most billionaires in mainland China, the highest GDP among all the provinces, although wage growth has only recently begun to rise due to a large influx of migrant workers from neighboring provinces. In 2011, Guangdongʹs aggregate nominal GDP reached 5.30 trillion RMB (US$838.60 billion) with a per capita GDP of 47,689 RMB. By 2015, the local government of Guangdong hopes that the service industry will account for more than 50% of the provinces GDP and high-tech manufacturing another 20%.”

(http:⁄⁄en.wikipedia.org⁄wiki⁄Guangdong)

It is with the vision of transforming Guangdong from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy based on service and high-tech industry that the premise of the .广东 TLD is built on.

The mission and purposes of the Registry are:

1. To operate the .广东 TLD Registry as a global namespace with the interests of the Guangdong community at heart;

2. To promote the adoption and development of advanced Internet technologies to complement the development and growth of the Guangdong province;

3. To develop the .广东 TLD Registry into an economically viable initiative with capabilities to contribute back to the local community; and,

4. To enhance the awareness and foster an elevated sense of identity and ownership of the Guangdong people in the development of a global internet resource dedicated to their interests, and in turn encourage the participation from Guangdong in the global Internet Governance discourse.

While the Registry understands that as simply a gTLD operator, it may not be able to significantly influence the advancement of the region, the Registry aspires to be a nucleus and breeding ground for innovation and development, especially in the leveraging of the power of the Internet to improve the social well being of the 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 “.广东” TLD aspires to be the domain of choice for initiatives and entities coming from Guangdong as well as providing services for the Guangdong market. As a dedicated TLD for the Guangdong people, the Registry will position itself not only as an alternative to existing TLDs such as “.com”, “.asia” or “.中国” but as a premier domain exploring new markets and new adoption promoting innovation and usage of domain names in the marketplace. For example, while there has been recent reports downplaying the effect of search engine optimization in the use of TLDs, the Registry believes in the prevalence value providing registrants a larger footprint on the Internet that is relevant to the target market they serve. As such, the Registry, also reflected in our financial projections and plans, even though conservatively based on existing market, believe in exploring new market segments rather than replicating existing zones.

B. Enhance Consumer Trust

Based on expert research, users’ confidence and trust of a website is increased if the domain name matches with what they are searching for online. What that illustrates is the value of the name string itself in promoting Consumer Trust. The introduction of the “.广东” TLD would allow individuals and companies from Guangdong to express their offline identity online, as well as allow foreign companies interested to target their audience in Guangdong with a matching and friendly name. This improves the relevance of services and content produced under the TLD and serves to enhance consumer trust.

Furthermore the strong commitments of the Registry on abuse prevention and mitigation (#28), rights protection mechanisms (#29) and reserved names (especially geographical and governmental reserved names -- #22), is a clear indication of the dedication of the Registry to build a trustworthy environment for development. The technically sound implementation of that solidifies the security and stability of the registry further establishes its reliability and consumer trust to transact online.

Finally, social aspects of the TLD registry is also an important element to enhance consumer trust. The Registry believes that with the launching of the TLD, it is possible to better engage the local community and raise their awareness about Internet governance issues. This in turn encourages more from the community to participate in the global Internet governance discussions, including at ICANN, which ultimately enhances consumer trust in the system by making consumers aware that they themselves can participate in the development and establishment of global internet policies.

C. Promote Consumer Choice

The introduction of the TLD itself promotes consumer choice, allowing registrants to choose a name that best fits their need and to best reflect their offline identity online. The Registry intends to offer the TLD in an open global platform for anyone interested to invest into the Guangdong community. At the same time, this is balanced with a strong set of abuse prevention and rights protection mechanisms to ensure that the promotion of consumer choice does not compromise the security and stability of the Internet.