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

gTLDFull Legal NameE-mail suffixDetail
.auctionSand Galley, 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
.financialaidRezolve Group, Inc.studentaidservice.comView
18.(a).1 Mission of proposed gTLD

The mission of the .FINANCIALAID gTLD (“gTLD”, “.FINANCIALAID”, “the domain” and “this domain”) is to become the recognized web space for accurate, up-to-date and complete information on the student financial aid process. Rezolve Group, Inc. (“Rezolve”, “we”, “Rezolve Group” and “the company”) has the capabilities and experience in this industry to be the operator of this new registry and provide students and families with the necessary information on planning and paying for college. This gTLD will be a closed registry that will allow Rezolve Group to accomplish two main purposes.

1) Create an innovative web space that provides accurate, consistent and up-to-date information surrounding the student financial aid process. Under the umbrella of this domain, Rezolve Group could integrate, organize and streamline the financial aid process for students and institutions.

2) Enhance current relationships with college and university partners to create a seamless and intuitive web experience for students and families to research and possibly apply for financial aid at that school.

Purpose 1 –
In the United States the National Center for Education Statistics predicts that almost 20 million US students will enroll in college in 2012. This number is forecasted to increase approximately 2% each year; forecasting almost 22.5 million students enrolling in college in 2019. In the European Union (EU-27) the European Commission in their Eurostat report indicated that in 2009 there were 25 million students enrolled in upper and post-secondary, non-tertiary education as well as an additional 21 million enrolled in tertiary education. There is a growing population of students attending post-secondary institutions. For the majority of these students and their families, financial aid is an integral part of making a good college decision and successfully earning a degree. Financial aid is a very broad term which in the United States alone encompasses 10 separate and unique federal aid programs, 636 individual state aid programs, 11 military financial aid programs and almost 100,000 unique institutional aid programs at more than 7300 colleges and universities. These programs do not take into account a number of other unique ways that students may pay for a college education including hundreds of private student loan options, institutional payment plans and thousands of potential private scholarships. Each of these programs and alternative sources of aid has unique deadlines and rules to follow. Accurately completing the various applications for this vast array of programs is an important part of maximizing an individual student’s eligibility for aid. Needless to say this process can be confusing and stressful to many of the students and families who are preparing for college - many of which are going through this process for the first time.

The decision of which college to attend and how to finance that education is typically one of the two largest expenses that a person will make in their lifetime. With the exception of the purchase of a home, financing a college education can be the largest financial decision that many students and their families will ever make.

Keeping in mind the magnitude of this decision and lifelong negative consequences of making the wrong choice, Rezolve Group believes that it is important for students and families to have access to this wealth of financial aid information in a simple and intuitive way. Rezolve Group plans to use the .FINANCIALAID gTLD as the new web space to compile, organize and make available accurate information on the thousands of different financial aid programs and other sources of aid.
There is also the possibility of creating area specific sites like military.FINANCIALAID or nursing.FINANCIALAID that can create a more focused presentation of information and further streamline a family’s financial aid research.
Rezolve’s business model will be to provide a substantial amount of this information free of charge while also offering specific services for a fee for those families that would like individualized products, services or assistance to help with the financial aid process.

Purpose 2 –

Rezolve Group currently has relationships with more than 700 college and university campuses in all 50 US states for which we provide an array of student financial aid products and services. The main product that these clients use is a Net Price Calculator - a financial aid estimation tool that calculates an individual student’s true net cost of attendance at that university, after taking into account the individual’s unique economic circumstances, academic abilities and personal characteristics. This calculation takes into account tuition and fees as well as the other costs associated with a post-secondary education less estimated eligible financial aid. Our capabilities are built on complex financial aid eligibility algorithms that required more than 5 years of compiling the necessary information and building the internal systems infrastructure to provide extremely accurate estimates for aid to a large population of prospective and current college students. . These algorithms take into consideration the student’s personal circumstances in order to determine eligibility for individual financial aid programs and then create a package of programs to fund their education based on federal, state, and institutional regulations.

Rezolve Group has additional products and services to deepen relationships with these clients. This gTLD will be used to facilitate further integration with these university partners. Each college or university partner that desires to add additional products and services from the suite of Rezolve Group would also receive their own 〈school〉.FINANCIALAID second level domain (SLD) to support all their financial aid information at that school. A college or university may use their second level domain in many ways. The general idea would be that all the services that are provided by Rezolve Group as well as all services that are provided by the university should be coordinated and presented in a unified and easily accessible manner using the 〈school〉.FINANCIALAID SLD. The school could create and maintain pages that give an overview of financial aid including detailed information about specific school deadlines, policies, procedures or guidelines. These school maintained pages would flow seamlessly with the third party products and services provided to the school by Rezolve Group, Inc. Net price calculators provided by Rezolve Group, Inc. at each school might be accessed through npc.〈school〉.FINANCIALAID while additional services such as online application forms could be referenced similarly.

Under such a content display model, there would be tremendous benefit to both Internet users and colleges. Internet users would benefit from an intuitive process of understanding and contrasting financial aid across the different institutions as they search for information. Colleges and universities would benefit from access to a 〈school〉.FINANCIALAID SLD and a more standardized content organization and intuitive experience for current and prospective students. Internet users would benefit by having a single space that has developed intrinsic trust to research the complexities of the student aid process that are relevant to their unique situation. They would no longer have to navigate multiple college websites trying to discover the financial aid information only to then have to try to compare information presented in different ways.