gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.chat	dot Chat Limited	famousfourmedia.com	View

Q18C
What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs (e.g., time or financial resource costs, as well as various types of consumer vulnerabilities)? What other steps will you take to minimize negative consequences⁄costs imposed upon consumers?

The Applicant fully appreciates the concerns of ICANN, the GAC and other consumer protection authorities about the need to operate new gTLDs in ways that minimize social costs, consumer vulnerabilities as well as other time and financial resource costs. To achieve these goals this gTLD will not only employ the ICANN mandated minimum protections, but will also deploy the following innovative protection measures that will put the gTLD at the forefront of addressing these critical issues:

1) Abuse Prevention and Mitigation Policies and Procedures

The Applicant’s core mission and purpose is to create an environment where individuals and companies can interact and express themselves in ways never before seen on the Internet, in a more targeted, secure and stable environment. To achieve this goal the Applicant will be implementing a range of Abuse Prevention and Mitigation (ʺAPMʺ) policies and procedures.

These Policies and Procedures will include: 1) gTLD APM Plan, 2) Policies and Procedures to Minimize Abusive Registrations ,3) Abuse Point of Contact, 4) Policies for Handling Complaints Regarding the Abuse Policies, 5) Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”), 6) Proposed Measures for Removal of Orphan Glue Records, 7) Resourcing plans for the initial implementation of, and ongoing maintenance of, the APM initiatives, 8) Registry semi-annual WHOIS verification, 9) Regular monitoring of WHOIS registration data for accuracy and completeness, 10) Registrar WHOIS self-certification, 11) WHOIS data reminder process, 12) Establishing policies and procedures to ensure Registrar compliance, which may include audits, financial incentives, penalties, or other means, 13) Registrar verification of WHOIS, 14) Abuse Response Process, 15) Policies and procedures that define malicious or abusive behaviour, 16) Service Level Requirements for resolution regarding APM issues, 17) Service Level Requirements for Law enforcement requests regarding APM issues, 18) Coordination of APM efforts with sector Groups and Law Enforcement, 19) Rapid takedown and suspension, 20) Controls to Ensure Proper Access to Domain Functions, 21) Enabling two-factor authentication from Registrants to process update, transfers, and deletion requests, 22) Enabling multiple, unique points of contact to request and⁄or approve update, transfer, and deletion requests, 23) Enabling the notification of multiple, unique points of contact when a domain has been updated, transferred, or deleted, 24) Additional Mechanism for Protection of Capital City Names, 25) Additional Mechanisms to Protect and Reserve IGO Names, 26) Governance Council Structure, 27) Efforts to increase Registrant Security Awareness, 28) Registrant Disqualification, 29) Restrictions on Proxy Registration Services, 30) Registry Lock. (Q28 for detail)

2) Rights Protection Mechanisms

The Applicant is firmly committed to the protection of Intellectual Property rights and to implementing all the mandatory Rights Protection Mechanisms (“RPMs”) contained in the Applicant Guidebook and detailed in Specification 7 of the Registry Agreement. Use of domain names that infringe upon the legal rights of others in the gTLD will not be tolerated and preventing abusive registrations is a core objective of the Applicant. The nature of such uses creates security and stability issues for the Registry, Registrars, and Registrants, as well as for users of the Internet in general. The Applicant will minimize time or financial resources costs by preventing abusive registrations and reduce opportunities for behaviours such as phishing or pharming. This will be achieved by implementing comprehensive registration, anti-abuse, and rights protection guidelines as defined in its AUP, as well as innovative additional RPMs such as the Mechanism to Protect IGO Names by blocking second level labels currently present in the .int zone file and the Mechanism for Further Protection of Capital City Names, as described below. In order to identify and address the abusive use of registered names on an ongoing basis, the Applicant will also incorporate and abide by the following RPMs and all other RPMs as specified in Specification 7 of the Registry Agreement and as adopted by the ICANN Board of Directors as ICANN Consensus Policies.

These Rights Protection Mechanisms will among other things include: 1) Trademark Clearinghouse, 2) Applicant’s Sunrise Period, 3) Trademark Claims Service , 4) Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, 5) Uniform Rapid Suspension System, 6) Trademark Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedure, 7) Mechanism to protect IGO Names, 8) Mechanism for Further Protection of Capital City Names, 9) Efforts to promote WHOIS Accuracy, 10) Thick Searchable WHOIS, 11) Semi Annual Audits to Ensure Accurate WHOIS, 12) Policies Handling Complaints Regarding Abuse and Rights Issues, 13) Registry Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”), 14) Monitoring for Malicious Activity. (Q29 for detail)

3) Governance Council Structure

The Applicant believes that sector stakeholders should be afforded the opportunity to influence the manner in which the gTLD is governed. Accordingly, the Applicant will establish a Governance Council (the “GC”) comprised of key sector stakeholders that will serve as an advisory body tasked with defining best practice recommendations for the gTLD space. The Applicant believes that the success of the gTLD will be determined largely by the sector’s key stakeholders. Not only will these stakeholders have the primary interest in registering domains in the gTLD, but they will also be motivated to protect the sector from practices that would negatively impact the sector overall. The GC exists to provide guidance on matters related to best practices, intellectual property, authentication, certification, and other matters of importance to the sector and it will elect its own Board of Directors, which will be responsible for self-governance, the recommendation of sector-specific policies, and other best practices related to the gTLD.

4) BITS and Coalition for Online Accountability (“COA”) Recommendations

The Applicant will further structure its policies around the BITS and COA Recommendations where relevant to this gTLD. The Applicant’s goal is to provide a safe and secure experience for consumers. A domain within this gTLD that is owned, operated by or compromised by a malicious party could cause harm to consumers, to the gTLDʹs reputation and to the reputation of the Internet itself. As such, additional controls are in place relating to the validity of registrations, as well as measures to ensure the correct identity of both Registrants and Registrars relating to changes made within the SRS, and to protecting the integrity of the DNS service as a whole.

The Security Standards Working Group (SSWG) formed by BITS drafted a set of policy recommendations that should be applied to financial TLDs. The policy comprises of a set of 31 recommendations that should be adopted by ICANN in evaluating any applicant of a financial gTLD. The recommendations were posted by BITS in the form of a letter to ICANN at [http:⁄⁄www.icann.org⁄en⁄correspondence⁄aba-bits-to-beckstrom-crocker-20dec11-en.pdf].

The Coalition for Online Accountability have drafted a set of policy recommendations, also endorsed by many other international organizations representing the creative industries, that should be applied to entertainment gTLDs - especially those dependent on copyright protection. The policy comprises of a set of 7 recommendations that should be adopted by ICANN in evaluating any applicant for an entertainment-based gTLD. The recommendations were posted by COA in the form of a letter to ICANN at http:⁄⁄bit.ly⁄HuHtmq.

We welcome the recommendations from BITS and the COA and will strongly consider the recommendations relating to the implementation of this gTLD where considered relevant.

5) Registry Operators Startup Plan

The Applicant proposes to implement the following start-up plan so that the new gTLD is introduced in an orderly, transparent and stable manner. This will safeguard competition, fairness, trust and reliability for Registrants, the User Community, ICANN Accredited Registrars, and other Stakeholders.
The Applicant’s startup plan is designed to minimize social costs (e.g., time or financial resources costs, as well as various types of consumer vulnerabilities) by instilling a number of RPMs as well as APMs.
The plan consists of the following multi-phase process that will be executed by the Registry Operator. The timeline for the gTLDs start-up process and associated RPMs in the Applicants gTLD is as follows:

Phase 1 – Sunrise Process:

- Day 1: Sunrise round opens
- Day 60: Sunrise round Closes
- Day 61: Sunrise Allocation Including contention resolution mechanisms opens
- Day 71: Sunrise Allocation contention resolution mechanisms closes

• The following Rights Protection Mechanisms apply:
a. Trademark Clearinghouse (“TMCH”)
b. Sunrise Eligibility Requirements (“SER”)
c. Sunrise Dispute Resolution Policy (“SDRP”)
d. Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (“UDRP”)
e. Uniform Rapid Suspension System (ʺURSʺ)
f. Mechanism for the Protection of IGO Names (“PIN”)
g. Trademark Claims Service (“TCS”) *

Phase 2 – Landrush process:

- Day 72: Landrush opens
- Day 102: Landrush closes
- Day 103: Landrush contention resolution mechanisms opens
- Day 113: Landrush contention resolution mechanisms closes

- The following Rights Protection Mechanisms apply:

a. UDRP
b. URS
c. PIN
d. Mechanism for Further Protection of Capital City Names (“CCC”)
e. TCS *

Phase 3 – General Availability⁄Registrations:

- Day 114: General availability begins

- The following Rights Protection Mechanisms apply:

a. UDRP
b. URS
c. PIN
d. Trademark Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedure (“PDDRP”)
e. TCS for the 90 days after day 114 *

* To ease the concerns of trademark owners and mitigate the impact of infringing registrations, the Applicant will be implementing the TCS in all three phases of launch. It is important to note that during the General Availability Phase, the TCS will be used for 90 days, 30 days longer than the ICANN mandated minimum.

18(C)(i) How will multiple applications for a particular domain name be resolved, for example, by auction or on a first-come⁄first-serve basis?

Sunrise and Landrush periods:

During the gTLDs launch period, multiple applications for a particular domain name will be resolved through a Contention Resolution Mechanism (“CRM”) involving auctions. These CRMs will apply to the Sunrise and Landrush application phases. The CRMs will be conducted by Sedo GMBH, an experienced provider of domain auction services. The mechanisms offered will involve closed auctions where only specific bidders can participate.

During the Applicants Sunrise process, if there are two or more eligible applicants for one domain name string, then the contention will be resolved by auction. Auctions held during the Sunrise phase (“Sunrise Auctions”) will be closed and the only bidders will be eligible applicants according to the gTLDs Sunrise eligibility requirements including the TMCH.

During the Applicants Landrush process, if there are two or more eligible applicants for one domain name string, then the contention will be resolved by auction. Auctions held during the Landrush phase (“Landrush Auctions”) will be closed and the only bidders will be eligible applicants according to the gTLDs Landrush eligibility requirements.

General Availability:

After the two initial startup phases of the Registry the allocation of domain names will occur on a first-come first-serve basis, taking into account the registries APM and RPM mechanisms.

18(c)(ii) Explain any cost benefits for registrants you intend to implement (e.g., advantageous pricing, introductory discounts, bulk registration discounts).

Incentive, Marketing and Outreach Programs

The Applicant will implement a number of incentive, marketing assistance, awareness and PR programs to assist the Registrar channel in providing a sector leading experience to end-users and to provide cost benefits for registrants. The Applicant will work with the global Registrar channel to ensure that the new gTLD offer is clearly visible on registrar sites resulting in an increase in the awareness and in the number of new gTLD registrations. Achieving this visibility requires (1) a clear business case and incentives for registrars to motivate them and (2) mechanisms and assets to make it easy for them to do so.

The Applicant will at the time of launch depending upon market conditions consider incentive programs that will deliver cost benefits to registrants through either the use of advantageous pricing, introductory discounts, bulk registration discounts or other similar methods. The Applicant is aware of Specification 9 – Registry Operator Code of Conduct, and will not directly or indirectly show any preference or provide any special consideration to any Registrar in its marketing efforts.

Example incentive mechanisms the Applicant will provide to the registrars may include:

Marketing Incentives

The Applicant intends to provide expertise, tools and creative assets to the registrars as part of general marketing and co-marketing programs. There is a significant cost saving if the expertise, tools and assets are developed centrally and the costs amortized across the registrar base. Significant cost savings can occur relating to Market Research, Social Customer Relationship Management (“SCRM”), Content Management Systems (“CMS”), Direct Marketing Tools, Marketing Collateral and Analytics Solutions.

The Applicant will employ some or all of the following marketing techniques jointly with registrars globally: (1) Direct Response Print, (2) General Web Marketing, (3) Email campaigns without Incentive, (4) Email with Incentive, (5) Email Marketing - Prospect List, (6) Email Marketing - Sponsored Newsletter, (7) Direct Marketing with Incentive, (8) Web Marketing with Incentive, (9) Viral Marketing (Social, Video, Micro-sites), (10) Develop User Interface Improvement best practices, (11) Develop Search Engine Optimization best practices, (12) Email Marketing - Registrar List
As an example of a marketing initiative, the Applicant will forward leads to the Registrars “buy” pages as an incentive via the means of Pay-Per-Click (“PPC”) search marketing. The Applicant will run multiple PPC campaigns targeting gTLD Registrants and point these to landing pages on the Registrar’s websites. Conversions are directly trackable from all PPC campaigns and keywords with a high Click-Through-Rate (“CTR”) or conversions will also be leveraged for SEO best practice purposes.

PR and Awareness Incentives:

In addition to the core outreach to the Registrar Channel, the Applicant will engage in a wider outreach to build awareness of the new gTLD with customers, end-users and other stakeholders. The Applicant will engage with a number of high profile individuals associated with the gTLD and will seek to reach end consumers through webcasts, podcasts, traditional broadcast TV as well as radio.

Provision of customer retention toolkits to Registrars:

The Applicant will use propensity modelling to build retention marketing programs to minimize churn whilst building renewal sustainability. The Applicant will develop econometric models designed to measure the likelihood of a customer segment to purchase a product or offer bundle, at a certain point in the relationship lifecycle. They are used to predict the best time, and the best combination of products, to offer to customers who match a certain profile. They are especially effective where there are large numbers of customers and reliable data can be gathered. The Applicant expects that registration volume in the gTLD will provide sufficient data for this modelling.

Measure, benchmark and improve the customer experience:

The Applicant will engage in a program to develop best practice policies related to the customer experience at differing levels of the channel. This will include the entire ecosystem from Registry through Registrar to Resellers and finally end-users. One key metric might be, for example, to reduce the number of clicks to make a purchase equivalent to the most customer friendly e-commerce sites in the world.
The Applicant might, for example, provide website performance tracking tools to registrars, which would benchmark current performance and provide insights into customers’ needs and behaviour at the point of purchase.
The Applicant will engage in a Social Customer Relationship Management Program to monitor social media feedback to questions, concerns or other issues. The Applicant will further seek to measure marketing communication expenditure and activity.

Other initiatives that will be considered by the Applicant in its outreach efforts:

(a) Customized Vertical Search App for major mobile platforms.
(b) Designated Twitter channel for the stakeholder community.
(c) Social Media outreach through Facebook and other social media solutions.

Translation into other languages:

At present, the Applicant plans to translate marketing collateral and other content that it considers to have geographically diverse appeal in to the 6 official UN languages, namely Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), English, French, Russian and Spanish.

18(c)(iii) Note that the Registry Agreement requires that registrars be offered the option to obtain initial domain name registrations for periods of one to ten years at the discretion of the registrar, but no greater than ten years. Additionally, the Registry Agreement requires advance written notice of price increases. Do you intend to make contractual commitments to registrants regarding the magnitude of price escalation? If so, please describe your plans.

The Applicant will follow the lifecycle and business rules found in the majority of gTLDs today. Our back-end operator has in excess of ten years of experience managing numerous gTLDs that utilize standard and unique business rules and lifecycles.

Initial registrations of registered names may be made in the registry in one (1) year increments for up to a maximum of ten (10) years. For the avoidance of doubt, the registration term for registered names may not exceed ten (10) years. Further the renewal of registered names may be made in one (1) year increments for up to a maximum of ten (10) years. For the avoidance of doubt, renewal of registered names may not extend their registration period beyond ten (10) years from the time of the renewal.

The Applicant plans to review domain name registration rates on an annual basis and will make a determination at that time regarding adjustments, depending upon market factors. Thus, at this time, the Applicant does not plan to make specific guarantees regarding pricing increases.

The Applicant will provide ICANN and each ICANN accredited registrar that has executed the registry-registrar agreement for the gTLD advance written notice of any price increase (including as a result of the elimination of any refunds, rebates, discounts, product tying or other programs which had the effect of reducing the price charged to registrars, unless such refunds, rebates, discounts, product tying or other programs are of a limited duration that is clearly and conspicuously disclosed to the registrar when offered) that complies with the requirements as outlined in the New gTLD Registry Agreement.
-end-

gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.book	DotBook, LLC	gmail.com	View

The DotBook registryʹs mission is to establish .book as the most preferred top level domain for global book industry stakeholders and the book consumers that purchase from them. To ensure success for all participants, it is vital that publisher and author registrants be safeguarded from abusive registrations that might be used to promote unauthorized access to copyrighted text and image based works legally assigned to rightsholders. DotBook will provide both a Trademark Claims and a Sunrise Service for the safeguarding of trademarks and non-trademarked ʺbook titleʺ domains as part of its registry operations.

The goal of DotBookʹs sunrise period is to ensure that all book stakeholders are able to successfully leverage the brand recognition and value established from their works in the context of new ʺtitleʺ .book domain assignments, if they choose to do so. We recognize that trademarks are an important business asset for book industry stakeholders and as such, we will be implementing a pre-launch Rights Protection Mechanism (RPM) that will involve a phased sunrise period to fully support the registration needs of book industry stakeholders and their trademarked brands. But non-trademarked titles will also receive special outreach.

This approach to protecting both trademarked and non-trademarked names is necessitated by the fact that many of the most recognizable ʺbrandsʺ in book publishing are the actual titles of books, which for the most part are not subject to trademark protection. Moreover, .book title domains mean that publishers donʹt have to compete with movie producers for URLs in instances where books are converted into films. Numerous titles that represent common words and phrases that are already taken in the existing TLDs such as .com can be accommodated with greater clarity in a .book domain.

Publisher and authors have a tremendous amount of goodwill attached to certain titles that cannot be formally assigned trademark protection. But consumer trust and full stakeholder adoption will be enhanced if consumers can rely on the fact that when they visit a .book domain to purchase a particular title, that seller has the legal distribution rights. We trust such extra community-oriented measures will greatly reduce the risk of title domains being registered by applicants that do not have the rights to distribute or sell the book, including any portion of its content.

The Sunrise period will be in effect for up to two years, with different phases running both concurrently and in succession. All applicants arriving within the timeframe of a given phase will be considered to have arrived at the same time. The longer timeframe is being implemented in support of both authors and publishers. Ultimately, our objective is to allocate desirable terms such as title names, semantic subject terms and trademarks fairly and appropriately between eligible claimants from across jurisdictions and to avoid disputes wherever possible.


Minimizing Consumer Vulnerabilities

For the .book TLD, DotBook will institute numerous operating rules and procedures in order to eliminate or minimize consumer vulnerabilities or other negative consequences which may be imposed upon consumers, registrants, IP rightsholders and other .book TLD registry stakeholders.

DotBook intends to utilize our back-end registry service provider’s Threat Mitigation Services as part of the .book registry’s standard operating procedures. These will ensure that DotBook can proactively identify, detect, catalog, and disrupt any malicious activity within the .book TLD which threaten end-user safety or security. Additionally, these measures will importantly combat the potential brand damaging effects of phishing, malware distribution, exploit hosting, and botnets that exploit registrants and rightsholders.

If warranted, DotBook may take down any .book domains verified to be harboring and⁄or supporting online threats to the .book registry and the broader internet community of users. This action shuts down all activities associated with the domain name, including all websites. Our philosophy in administering this procedure is that removing threats to the consumer outweighs any potential damage to the registrar⁄registrant relationship. DotBook will commit to keeping its registrars updated of any malicious activity within the .book TLD through weekly or monthly reporting. We will also leverage our back-end provider’s existing relationships with international law enforcement agencies as necessary and in support of these procedures.


Procedures for Resolving Multiple Requests for Top Level Names

Procedures for resolving requests and limiting unqualified registrations of titles will be implemented in the Sunrise period, and are intended to accomplish the following objectives:

• To ensure trademark protection for all trademarks across all book industry stakeholders.
• To assign ʺbook titleʺ domains to the current registered electronic rights holder if the rights holder submits an application in the sunrise period and can provide verification of their IP rights.
• To assign book title domains to works without a verifiable electronic rights holder on a first-come, first-serve basis to either the publisher or the author, or through an auction process if applications are submitted from both parties in the same sunrise phase of the sunrise period.
• To assign title domains for titles common to more than one legitimate party (author or publisher) in an auction process if the applications are submitted in the same sunrise phase, or on a first-come, first-serve basis if only one legitimate party submits an application in the sunrise period.
• To assign title and author domains for public domain works in an auction process if more than one publisher who has previously published the work submits an application in the same sunrise phase, or on a first-come, first-serve basis if only one publisher submits an application during the sunrise period.
• To ensure protection of first level geographic names.
• To avoid legal disputes related to multiple claims on single titles and unqualified registrations.

Other reserved names for which it is envisioned that multiple applications may be requested shall be sold in conjunction with third-party domain name auction services, brokers or other commercial services providers as authorized by DotBook at its own discretion. All policies and procedures as described herein with respect to reserved names have been developed in accordance with the ICANN New gTLD Registry Agreement and specifically Provision 2.6 as it is currently published and available.


Registry Pricing Policies

Wholesale Price Stability
With respect to cost benefits for registrants, DotBook intends to maintain its introductory wholesale pricing model for registrars for the first three (3) years of registry operations. By providing a predictable wholesale price, we believe this will simplify efforts among registrars to facilitate and achieve end-customer (registrant) adoption at levels which have been forecasted for the .book registry.

Price stability will be particularly meaningful to publisher, self-publisher and author rightsholders that we have identified for .book. As such, even as a matter of making “defensive registration decisions” we felt it would be important to provide some level of predictability for an initial three-year period, which would avoid concerns for pricing as a barrier to .book’s early-stage market adoption. DotBook anticipates coordinating pricing incentives for registrations of titles and bulk registrations from those with larger numbers of names to register. Bulk registrations above a reasonable number of .book domain names from one registrant will be eligible for such discounting incentives through the coordination of our registrar network. Registrants will be offered the option to obtain initial domain name registrations for periods of one to ten years at the discretion of the registrar, but no greater than ten years.

Contractual Commitments

Pursuant to provision 2.10 as contained in the current ICANN New gTLD Registry Agreement, DotBook will make several contractual commitments to registrants regarding the magnitude of price escalation. We will provide ICANN and each ICANN accredited registrar that has executed the registry-registrar agreement for the .book TLD advance written notice of any price increase of no less than thirty (30) calendar days. With respect to renewal of domain name registrations, DotBook shall provide ICANN and each ICANN accredited registrar that has executed the registry-registrar agreement for the .book TLD advance written notice of any price increase, including as a result of the elimination of any refunds, rebates, discounts, product tying, Qualified Marketing Programs or other programs (which had the effect of reducing the price charged to registrars) of no less than one hundred eighty (180) calendar days.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, with respect to renewal of domain name registrations, DotBook will provide at least thirty (30) calendar days notice of any price increase if the resulting price is less than or equal to (A) for the period beginning on the Effective Date and ending twelve (12) months following the Effective Date, the initial price charged for registrations in the .book TLD, or (B) for subsequent periods, a price for which DotBook provided a notice within the twelve (12) month period preceding the effective date of the proposed price increase.

DotBook shall offer registrars the option to obtain domain name registration renewals at the current price (i.e. the price in place prior to any noticed increase) for periods of one to ten years at the discretion of the registrar, but no greater than ten years. In addition, DotBook will maintain uniform pricing for renewals of domain name registrations, for which the price for each domain registration renewal must be identical to the price of all other domain name registration renewals in place at the time of such renewal. Such price must take into account universal application of any refunds, rebates, discounts, product tying or other programs in place at the time of renewal.

DotBook will make available to registrars Qualified Marketing Programs in which discounted renewal pricing will be offered for up to one hundred eighty (180) calendar days. All ICANN accredited registrars for the .book TLD will be provided the same opportunity to qualify for such discounted Renewal Pricing. These programs will not to exclude any particular class or classes of registrations or increase the renewal price of any particular classes of registrations.

For complete transparency, DotBook will provide public query-based DNS lookup service for the TLD at its sole expense.