gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.islam	Asia Green IT System Bilgisayar San. ve Tic. Ltd. Sti.	nsline.com	View

• Intended registrants in the TLD.

The .Islam gTLD is intended for Muslim faithful who wish to promote, participate or learn about Islam and its various facets, its affect on the daily life of the people around the word, its history, its law and jurisprudence and the rich and diverse culture that surrounds it. Thus, any well-intentioned Muslim who wants to supply such content, or do business based around it, will be able to operate a domain under the .ISLAM gTLD.

• Intended end-users of the TLD.


For a fifth of the worldʹs population, Islam is both a religion and a complete way of life. Muslims follow a religion of peace, mercy, and forgiveness - and the majority have nothing to do with the extremely grave events which have come to be associated with their faith. Every Muslim, and indeed a great many non-Muslims, in the world can benefit from .ISLAM websites and the wealth of information and services that it is anticipated will offered by them. The diversity of the .ISLAM gTLD’s offering would be wide enough to cover almost all audiences and their Islam-related needs, considering that all .ISLAM websites will be promoting Islam in some form.

Within all of these populations, the specific intended end users of the .ISLAM gTLD are manifold, and include:

People with ties to Islamic heritage: This includes a significant percentage of both the population of Muslim countries and also with other nations.
Individual Muslims: As demonstrated above, this includes hundreds of millions of individuals around the world.
Students: Those learning about different aspects of Islam, its concepts, its laws, its culture and heritage and its many other facets would benefit from increased resources online that would help them to learn and develop.
Islamic businesses: as in every community, Muslims undertake a great deal of business both within their community and also with external groups. The ability to link their business to the word Islam will therefore be of significant importance to Muslim businesses, both to denote a Muslim-based business and also as a source of pride in being known as such. Indeed, the word Islam is already exceptionally popular within online business – and the word alone yields more than 500 million hits when searched.
All sects: As described above, the main two sects of the Muslim community are Sunnis and Shias – both of whom will be welcome to operate under the .ISLAM gTLD, alongside all other Muslim sects.

It is hoped that not only will these intended users derive individual benefit from the existence of a .ISLAM community, but that they will also contribute in turn. This should create a group benefit, which will in turn feed back in to individual benefits – establishing a beneficial cycle.


• Related activities the applicant has carried out or intends to carry out in service of this purpose.

Anticipating the diversification of TLDs now being realized, and the consequent introduction of an Islamic-specific online space, AGITSys has been working with a wide variety of related parties for several years in preparation, and will continue to do so going forward. A key element for the success of the .ISLAM gTLD is a strong and interactive community, which Muslims around the world are proud to associate with and keen to contribute to. To ensure this, AGITSys will sponsor community outreach and marketing, in order to raise awareness of the forthcoming possibilities. These possibilities are also highly appealing for Islamic businesses, and as such AGITSys will engage in dialogue with those businesses, and industry chiefs, regarding their ideas for how the .ISLAM gTLD will take shape, and what they intend to subsequently give back to it.
Quality content will also be fundamental to a thriving .ISLAM community, especially because AGITSys is committed to ensuring that .ISLAM is populated by quality second-level domain offerings. With this in mind, AGITSys will be talking with those most likely to contribute quality content, from news and media agencies to academics and libraries (who will be able to digitize Islamic materials and then distribute them online comprehensively for the first time) about how they can and will contribute, and what AGITSys can do to facilitate this process.
Ultimately, however, religion will always be the most important element for a successful .ISLAM community online. The entire gTLD concept is designed as a place of online respect; almost worship, for those of Islamic faith. As such, the involvement, blessing and feedback of the Islamic religious community is fundamentally important. Aware of this, AGITSys has been in prolonged and continued contact with important religious figures – asking them what they want to see and how they would like to see it done, whilst also encouraging them to spread the word and prepare themselves. This should mean that when the .ISLAM gTLD comes online, there will be a large swathe of information posted almost immediately – therefore instantly creating a rewarding user experience.

• Explanation of how the purpose is of a lasting nature.

The community that will be served by .ISLAM--growing as it has out of the Muslims community--has thrived and grown for more than a millennium. Remarkably, it has done so largely without the level of connection online found within Western cultures. This existing community interconnection speaks to the cultural staying power of the Islamic community and the many ways it enriches world culture.

With the adoption of a .ISLAM community, this robust group will be further empowered to interconnect and grow, allowing it to take its equal place on the Internet stage. The community thrives now, but will reach new heights through the .ISLAM gTLD.

The growth of the .ISLAM gTLD will be driven by what economists refer to as the network effect. A network effect occurs when a service becomes more popular as more individuals adopt it. A significant portion of the serviceʹs value stems directly from the increased adoption and usage of the service. Historically the network effect is most powerful in tools of interconnection. The telegraph and telephone were technologies that grew exponentially due to the network effect. The Internet itself is an example of that phenomenon, as seen by the rapid upward growth curve of Internet penetration, broadband speeds, and web site creation. ICANNʹs data on the growth of .COM is an example of the network effect, and now it is seen in social-media platforms atop the Internet, such as Facebook and Twitter.

As more sites offer information, services, and opportunities for interconnection to the .ISLAM community as a whole, more members of the community will navigate to those sites. Many of those will provide their own content, and their activity there will spark further growth of second-level .ISLAM domains. At some point, information and service providers currently not offering sites will see the demand for .ISLAM-related content and will migrate their offerings to .ISLAM sites as well, furthering the offerings to the community and further driving community members to .ISLAM sites. The future benefits of interlinking this diverse and global community are incalculable but immense.

gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.gay	dotgay llc	spimarketing.com	View

The intended registrants for the .gay TLD are those who identify as members of the Gay Community and meet eligibility requirements outlined by the dotgay LLC registration policies. Registrants will be comprised of a wide variety of constituents in the Gay Community, including but not limited to the service and non-profit community, business community, advertisers and media, plus a diverse range of individuals and emerging community groups.

The intended end-users (the visitors to .gay domain names) of the .gay TLD are members of the global Gay Community and those interested in understanding, supporting or engaging with the Gay Community. .gay domains will become community identifiers and trusted entry points to the Gay Community that highlight, and make clear to the end-users, who legitimate community members are.

Community-based Purpose of .gay

The community-based purpose of .gay is to put forth a coordinated effort from the Gay Community to take control of an Internet space that uniquely identifies our community and that will serve some unique needs of the global community. The .gay TLD will create a trusted foundation on the Internet to build tangible economic and social visibility for the Gay Community, while demonstrating metrics and commerce in an effort to garner local and global equality.

Since 2009, dotgay LLC has been working with the largest and most visible organizations, in all segments of the community, to develop a model for the .gay TLD that addresses the issues of safety and visibility. In the process it was revealed that a community-based TLD could also fill a financial need, one that is far too common in the community because of discrimination and non-inclusive policy that prevents access to business, institutional or governmental resources.

dotgay LLC has been educating and engaging the Gay Community in the opportunities around creating a community-based gTLD since 2009. The communications strategy has included an interactive website, one-on-one office visits, town hall meetings, teleconferences, social-media, speaking engagements, panel discussions at conferences and community events globally. At all levels, the Gay Community has been encouraged to participate in the discussion and formation of models and policy for the .gay TLD, while drawing on best practices used within the community.

As of writing (May 29, 2012) dotgay LLC has received more than 125 endorsements from all regions and from all segments of the Gay Community, including support from the world’s largest Gay Community organizations and United Nations accredited organizations in the Gay Community. During the many months when applications are being processed and evaluated, dotgay LLC will continue its outreach to the Gay Community through community organizations and the gay media.

Three items have been identified by dotgay LLC and the Gay Community as fundamental to the community-based purpose of the .gay TLD and integral in creating a direct response to addressing safety, visibility (economic & metric) and support. These items include the:

1. Authentication Partners
2. Index Directory
3. Giving Back

Authentication Partners

The foundation of the Gay Community is largely rooted in the membership organizations that emerged to provide service, support and a voice for the community at critical times in gay history. They created “safe places” for members of the Gay Community to organize and became the collective voice for those who had fear or risk in standing up for themselves. Today, the efforts of these organizations continue to improve the lives of the Gay Community around the globe, amplifying their voices in the pursuit of progress while providing a trusted platform to claim status and be confirmed into the Gay Community.

Fundamental to building the community-based .gay TLD is the need to support and strengthen Gay Community organizations, while incorporating their proven and community adapted methodology for accepting membership. dotgay LLC will incorporate these organizations as Authentication Partners, becoming part of the eligibility process in determining who is eligible to register .gay domain names.

Index Directory

dotgay LLC will use a selection of domain names based on generic community relevant key words to create an index directory within the .gay TLD, safeguarding important key words based domain names that will serve the community and be administered accordingly. This will be critical for key words that offer a greater value for registrants and end-users when used for the benefit of the Gay Community and not just one solitary owner. Key word based domains such as “travel.gay” will not be sold, but instead maintained by dotgay LLC as an index page so that it can become a community hub and a trusted resource for queries related to gay travel.

Registrants in the .gay TLD will be able to identify their registrations via an index questionnaire provided by dotgay LLC and, without charge, utilized to place them into the index directory. For example, travel related .gay registrations will be included in the travel.gay index. The normal function of a domain name is to route to one website, however the travel.gay index domain name would instead point to many websites based on geographical preferences and a sorting mechanism used by the end-users. This creates added value for the end-users and it creates awareness that results in valuable traffic for .gay domain name registrants.

End-users visiting index domains like travel.gay will be able to access information relevant to their travel needs. For example, end-users looking for beach resorts in Cape Town, South Africa would be able to visit travel.gay and then narrow down search by country, city and other preferences. Additionally, the search results produced will represent a trusted source of travel related registrants who are open for business with the Gay Community.

Over all, the index directory attracts traffic for the most important generic key word based .gay domain names, drives that traffic to user relevant .gay registrations and thus provides useful service to the end-user. This is a win-win situation for the entire Gay Community.

Giving Back

The Gay Community is intimately familiar with struggles around funding, often excluded or delayed in accessing resources because of discrimination, non-inclusive policy or lack of statistics. The struggles are widespread in the community and the challenges vary country by country based on governmental and cultural influences. In response, the Gay Community has looked to its own community members to financially support programs and services that emerge as priorities. An example of this is the immediate response of the community to the HIV⁄AIDS crisis in the 1980’s, funding programs and services well before any external support was provided.

dotgay LLC will channel funds back into the Gay Community using two methods. The first is to compensate all Authentication Partners in the community for each confirmed name registration or renewal. Secondly, dotgay LLC has also committed to giving a minimum of 67% of the profits from domain name registrations to the dotgay Foundation for redistribution back into the Gay Community.

Lasting nature of .gay

.gay will be of a lasting nature because of the community-based solutions built into the design, bringing value and benefit to the community with disregard to traditional short-term revenue streams for the Registry (eg. Landrush). Otherwise lucrative domain names will be used to create awareness and channel aggregated traffic to .gay registrants, enhancing the popularity and usefulness of the .gay TLD space. The .gay TLD will offer an immediate and lasting impact on the Gay Community by providing solutions to real issues the community struggles with on a daily basis, while being flexible enough to address new and changing challenges confronting the community.