18(c) What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs?

Prototypical answer:

The applicant will use various measures to eliminate or minimize social costs.

First, the applicant will implement all Rights Protection Mechanisms as required by ICANN. This commitment applies both for currently known RPMs and those yet to be defined or imposed at a later stage by means of consensus policies.
Second, the .voting TLD will be marketed as a namespace for a very specific purpose and with clear content restrictions. As a consequence, the TLD will most likely not be interesting for abusive registrations since users will be informed that e.g. no financial transactions are permitted, which will deter the majority of those engaging in criminal activity, such as phishing data or selling pirated goods.
Today, the vast majority of all UDRP cases relate to .com, .net and .org domain names, all of which address Internet users at the global level and none of which have content restrictions.
Third, certain Premium Names will be blocked from general registration and will be sold and⁄or auctioned off by the applicant.
Fourth, the applicant has the right to reserve certain .voting domain names for personal and⁄or internal use and for the provision of directory services to populate the namespace with valuable information relevant to the TLD.
All these measures help mitigate the risk of abusive or speculative registrations. There is accordingly expected to be littleneed for defensive registrations.

i.
As a general principle, the applicant will deal with multiple registrations for a domain name on the first-come, first-served basis. However, the applicant reserves the right to auction certain names during the sunrise period or either auction or sell premium names at a later stage.

ii.
As of today, no cost benefits are planned. There is the option for all registrants to use the advanced version of the Votingtool for free. However, the applicant reserves the right to implement cost benefits at a later stage. Should registrants opt for the advanced or premium version of Votingtool, the applicant will honour this with a commission, to be credited to the registrar’s deposit for .voting domain names.

iii.
Registrations will be offered in accordance with all ICANN requirements, such as registration terms of one to 10 years.

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