18(b) How do you expect that your proposed gTLD will benefit registrants, Internet users, and others?

Prototypical answer:

Currently, a lot of information with respect to health care, health issues,
pharmaceutical products, methods, etc. can be found on the Internet. Absent
any specific oversight over this information or the individuals,
organizations and companies that make such information available, this
clearly poses a number of risks for individuals who are looking for
health-related information.

For more than a decade, various national and international organizations,
have pointed on various occasions to risks relating to medical information
and products provided ⁄ distributed over the Internet, self-medication, etc.

The .MED gTLD intends to be the top-level domain in which professionals from
the health care industry will be entitled to register domain names in view
of protecting the interests of consumers ⁄ patients. Although the Applicant
-when awarded the .MED gTLD by ICANN- will not review the information
provided by registrants under .MED domain names, it will review the
qualifications and licenses of registrants in order to ensure that at least
the source of such information can be considered reliable.

By restricting the registrants to licensed practitioners and health care
entities, the .MED TLD has therefore the potential to become the domain in
which quality information with respect to health care can be found, and
reliable (contact) information with respect to domain name registrants ⁄
health care practitioners can be retrieved.

This model has been successfully implemented by HEXAPʹs sister company,
PROMOPIXEL, which has secured more than 2,100 sector-based domain name
registrations up to today in the following three second level domain names :

- chirurgiens-dentistes.fr (targeted at dental surgeons)
- pharmacien.fr (targeted at pharmacists)
- medecin.fr (targeted at physicians)

These three zones are regulated by specific policies that include legal elements
from the French Codes of Medical Practice.

This successful cooperation with the 3 French medical, dental and pharmaceutical
Orders lead our team to propose a community-based gTLD, operated under the
highest ethical standards. This initiative is supported by both medical
authorities and practitioners, and piloted by HEXAP founders, some of which have
sworn by the Hippocratic Oath, which sets the duties of qualified professionals
in their relation with patients and respect for colleagues.

The .MED gTLD will thus give benefits to:

- medical professionals (i.e., members of the ʺ.MED Communityʺ) who would like
to become a registrant in the .MED TLD;

- Internet users in general who are looking for genuine health care related
information, products or services from reliable sources, being recognized
professionals that are entitled to practice medicine or other health care
related professions; and

- patients seeking to exchange information in a secure environment: in addition
to DNSSEC, internet users will be able to check on .MED WHOIS services various
verified information regarding the registrant occupation (license id,
professional address, diplomas).

1. SERVICE LEVELS

The .MED gTLD proposes a new safe namespace for the medical community,
maintained by recognized and licensed practitioners in the health care
sector. It is supported by various organizations and will be monitored by
national and international stakeholders with whom the Applicant, its sister
company (PROMOPIXEL) and their respective founders are working with for
several years.

It is therefore a TLD for the medical professions, managed and controlled by
medical practitioners.

In terms of service levels, HEXAP will ensure a quality application
dedicated to health care professionals using combined 20 years experience in
medical publishing and 3 years experience in registry operating:

- legal issues regarding medical practicing;
- medical information publishing on the Internet with regional scopes;
- establishing relationships with health care providers and stakeholders;
- guiding colleagues on the Internet for good medical practices;
- ethics on the web;
- helping the patients finding a practitioner with a neutral attitude; and
- helping colleagues in finding a registrar with no discrimination.

HEXAPʹs application is guided by the sense of ethics that HEXAPʹs founders
have consistently demonstrated in their business dealings, and reinforced by
the technical expertise renowned for partners and clients. Furthermore,
HEXAPʹs founders are medical practitioners who are unaffiliated with any
medical or pharmaceutical company or organization. This continuous
commitment guarantees that the .MED TLD will be operating independently from
influences from industry.

2. INNOVATION

As of today, except in France for physicians, dentists and pharmacists,
there is no opportunity for a health care provider to register a domain name
at second or third level under a regulatory framework defined by Medical
Colleges or Boards. While some ccTLDs do offer third level domain names for
physicians (Brazil, Comoros, Ecuador, Estonia, Haiti, Libya, Oman, Panama,
Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Vietnam), none of these are currently supervised by
any representative health authority. Some of them do not even require a
proof of license of registrants, or are only carrying out limited and random
identification clearances. Most of these second level name spaces are also
restricted to physicians only. None of them offers the possibility for any
Internet user to check the registrant professional credentials.

The .MED gTLD establishes a relationship of trust with patients by setting
up a highly monitored namespace, handled by HEXAPʹs Medical Clearinghouse.
This specific clearinghouse is an advanced tool derived from our
smallregistry.net clearance engine that is used on a daily basis by French
Colleges and regulating authorities during the past 3 years.

The Medical Clearinghouse will offer the following services, which certainly
sets apart the .MED gTLD from any other TLD currently available in the DNS:

- mandatory professional identification: any new registrant creating a
domain name will have to prove its profession, occupation and⁄or
professional qualifications (see life cycle description in our answer to
Question 27);

- continuous license checking: every domain name renewal will be subject to
an automatic re-verification of the registrantʹs credentials, similar to
the verification set out above; any registrant who has lost its
accreditation, license, or professional accreditation will consequently
also not be entitled to renew its domain name registration (see our answer
to Question 20);

- professional account credential provider for third party authentication:
using a single combination of email and password, .MED domain name
registrant will be able to be authenticated on websites and devices
granted by the Registry Operator. This single sign-in service will
benefit:

* .MED domain name registrants being identified as a health care provider
without sharing their logins and passwords; and

* companies willing to identify health care provider upon sign-up on their
websites and devices, by connecting to the Medical Clearinghouse. This
implemented service is using OAuth, an open protocol to allow secure
authentication in a simple and standard method for desktop or web
application, mobile phones and living room devices. This protocol is
already widely used by developers who are working with various major
service providers (Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn,
MySpace, Yahoo, Netflix, etc.). It is a safe way for any service
provider to give clearance to authenticated and verified practitioners
who allow to share limited, revocable and non-critical information with
the service provider. This service will be free for every registered
developer.

- Advanced WHOIS web interface: the WHOIS data will be complemented with a
full description of the domain ownerʹs health care license, and made
available to Internet users (however always bearing in mind that privacy
restrictions may apply);

- In order to increase visibility of the .MED TLD and its domain name
registrants, the Applicant will also distribute SSL certificates and
deliver seals of authenticity for web publishers, in addition to the
default DNSSEC implementation. These certificates intend to reinforce the
security and safety aspects of .MED.

All these processes, tools and technologies are aimed at establishing a
unique relationship of trust between, on the one hand, domain name
registrants in .MED and, on the other hand, Internet users at large.

In this respect, .MED is all about offering safety, security, transparency
and oversight for the benefit of the patients.

3. USER EXPERIENCE

The user experience of the .MED gTLD will be entirely different from any TLD
that is currently on the market, considering the combination of the
following features:

- .MED is a short string, easy to write and remember;

- it is understandable in over 70 languages as an abbreviation or the first
characters of the word “medicine” in English, Spanish, French, Italian ,
German, Portuguese, Spanish, etc.;

- a new semantic and meaningful namespace with a high chance of search
engine optimization value;

- the .MED policies will be focused on serving the best interests of
patients: a web search that resolves in a .MED domain name should provide
genuine information regarding health and health care;

- increase the visibility of a .MED registrant by making use of the Medical
Clearinghouse: by way of this tool, the registry will capture and verify
the following information from a registrant: profession, specialization,
professional address, as well as public information relating to the
registrantʹs qualifications and licenses. All this information will be
made public through the WHOIS interface, the SSL certificate and seals to
be displayed on the registrant website; and

- it will add to Health 2.0 initiatives, considering the fact that
authentication of registrants is a cornerstone function of .MED. Because
registrants are authenticated, patientsʹ medical files can be exchanged
with and between .MED registrants, respecting the confidentiality of such
data, for example during a regulated telemedicine session; and a secure
registration process with minimal impact on registrars and no specific
proprietary EPP scheme for easier integration.

4. REGISTRATION POLICIES

The .MED registration policy is inspired by the principles reflected by the
Hippocratic Oath, as well as Medical Good Practices established by various
national and international organizations and institutions. These establish
the obligation imposed upon the registrant to respect the interests of
patients as well as the medical deontology.

Given the fact that the registration of domain names will be monitored at
all times by the .MED Registry Operator, these principles will apply during
the registration process, but also as regards the use the registrant is
making of such domain name.

Eligible registrants must be part of the designed community and are
classified under two categories:

- practitioners: these consist of licensed health professionals and health
associate professionals only. Regional restrictions may apply for all
professions as not all of these professions are recognized by local
authorities. They are defined by the International Standard Classification
of Occupations (ISCO), 2008 revision 8 (ISCO-08), which forms part of the
international family of economic and social classifications of the United
Nations and is mapped by the World Health Organization (
http:⁄⁄www.who.int⁄hrh⁄statistics⁄workforce_statistics⁄en⁄index.html ):

* Generalist medical practitioners
* Specialist medical practitioners
* Nursing professionals
* Midwifery professionals
* Traditional and complementary medicine professionals
* Paramedical practitioners
* Dentists
* Pharmacists
* Environmental and occupational health and hygiene professionals
* Physiotherapists
* Dieticians and nutritionists
* Audiologists and speech therapists
* Optometrists and opthalmic opticians, orthoptists
* Chiropractors, Osteopaths

- entities:
* Hospitals, health care facilities
* Ambulances
* Pharmacies
* Medical laboratories
* Schools, Universities
* Pharmaceutical industries
* Libraries
* Scientific and Academic publishers
* Public health journals
* Boards, Orders, Colleges, Government related councils
* Public administrations, ministries
* Academies
* Scientific organizations
* Professional associations
* Health care professionals unions

Conditions of qualification are made available in our response to Question
20c. However, this list is subject to change, which is mainly inspired and
driven by changes implemented by the International Standard Classification
of Occupations (ISCO) and changes in the law.

If the registrant is a practitioner, he or she must certify that he or she
is a health care professional who is licensed to practice in the country
where he purports to be working. Any such information will need to be
reported to the Medical Clearinghouse and must be kept up-to-date at all
times throughout the lifecycle of the domain name.

Any domain name registered in .MED must be used in the best interest of
patients or other health care practitioners. Parking domain names will not
be allowed.

Any registered domain name must also contain either an MX or an A, CNAME or
AAA record in order to be able to use it and refer users to a website whose
content is related to human health. Such website can but must not
necessarily be a website under a .MED domain name.

The holder of a domain name is committed to serve and share information
aimed at patients, always considering the best interests of patients, their
dignity and privacy. Furthermore, the registrant commits to provide
information in accordance with the state of the art (scientific sources),
and that is honest, clear, appropriate and meets the needs of patients with
whom they engage under the .MED domain name.

The holder of a domain name undertakes to respect his peers, colleagues and
competitors with whom he communicates by using the .MED platform.

When registering a domain name, the registrant must acknowledge that
complaints can be filed with the Registry Operator or Medical Clearinghouse
for various reasons, including but not limited to a breach of the
eligibility requirements, if the information of the registrant is inaccurate
or no longer up-to-date, non-compliance with the Registry Operatorʹs
policies, trademark infringement, impersonation, illegal activities, etc.

Furthermore, the registrant must acknowledge that any supervising authority
will be entitled to request the Registry Operator to suspend a domain name
if such domain name is used in an illegal manner, or if the registrant no
longer meets the eligibility requirements.

The domain name must be composed of 3 to 63 characters, case insensitive,
alphanumeric characters and may consist of hyphens (however: a domain name
cannot begin or end with a hyphen), and contain the name or the name of the
holder, its brand, business identifier or company name. Eligible
practitioners are entitled to include a prefix or suffix to their name, such
as a civilian, military, academic or honorary title, specialization, degree,
location where they are practicing medicine, etc.

As part of the landrush, the Registry Operator may release so-called
ʺpremium domain namesʺ to any person or entity that meets the eligibility
requirements, provided that:

- the use that is made of such domain name complies with the rules of good
medical practice;
- the domain name chosen is consistent with the exercise or holderʹs name;
- the domain name will only be used for the benefit of patients; and
- the domain name cannot cause confusion about the profession of the
registrant or its field of activities.

These rules of conduct continue to apply throughout the life cycle of the
premium domain name.

5. PRIVACY

The purpose of the MED gTLD is to establish a stronger trust between
patients and health care providers on the Internet. It is then essential to
first protect the interests of the patients by setting up unambiguous
registration rules and give a full transparency on registrant identity:

- no anonymous records will be allowed;

- registrants must provide their full professional address and phone number
verified records, reflected in the WHOIS, will include the registrantʹs
occupation, specialization, license ID, and the name of the issuing
authority;

- furthermore, these records will include academic, honorific and military
titles;

- optional information: year of establishing, year of main diploma,
university, other diploma recognized by the practitionerʹs regulation
board;

- the WHOIS will expressly mention the last date on which the registrantʹs
information has been verified by the Registry Operator; and

- other domain names owned by the registrant will be available by request on
the Medical Clearinghouse.

These information are available with a free access to the WHOIS from port
43, the WHOIS service on the registry platform website and on the Medical
Clearinghouse website equipped with domain name and registrant search
engines.

These information are checked for every domain name creation, renewal,
transfer and trade. These information will also be monitored by the .MED
scientific council and accredited medical colleges, and will be open to any
authority wanting to be a .MED stakeholder and supervise regional and
professional scoped registrations.

6. COMMUNICATION

PROMOPIXEL, of which HEXAP is a spin-off company, has already entered into
registry-registrar agreements with 7 ICANN accredited registrars and over 70
European registrars, and is hence already dealing with thousands of health
care professionals;

HEXAP founders worked with over 12.000 entities and leading healthcare
providers over these last 20 years, including but not limited to Councils,
Medical Colleges, Academics, medical publishers, scientific organizations,
medical suppliers, industries, web 2.0 communities, health care social media
platforms, hospitals, and universities;

During the same period, HEXAP founders have established close relationships
with specialized media and various medical journals in Europe and North
America, which will present an attractive promotional and sales channel by
publishing advertisements and information about the .MED gTLD.

Similar gTLD applications: (0)