gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.网站	RISE VICTORY LIMITED	zodiac-corp.com	View

Zodiac Holdings Limited (“Zodiac”) was founded and incorporated in Cayman Islands by James Seng in 2008 in anticipation of the launch of the ICANN new gTLD program. Currently, it is headquartered in Hong Kong and has an operation center in Beijing, China. The team consists of experienced veterans in the global and China domain name industry like James Seng and former China Network Information Center (CNNIC) employees such as Eugene Li.

James Seng is one of the Internet pioneers in Singapore and is widely recognized as an international expert in numerous Internet areas. He is well known as the inventor of IDN and has co-chaired the IDN Working Group in IETF from 1999 to 2004, leading to the standardization of IDN.

Eugene Li, is the former Vice President of China Network Information Center (CNNIC). During his 7 years tenure at CNNIC, Eugene has launched initiatives that doubled domain name registrations and helped CNNIC become the no. 1 ccTLD and no. 2 TLD by volume. At the time when Eugene left to join Zodiac, CNNIC has over 13 million domain name registrations.

Under the vision and leadership of James Seng, with the support of angels, venture capital firm and family offices of approximately USD 20 million in place for the application and operation of the new gTLDs, Zodiac is seeking to become the first and largest privately held ICANN-approved TLD registry operator in Asia. It intends to operate TLDs that are centric to the Chinese culture.

Asia is currently contributing 44.8% to the global 2.2 billion Internet users population (http:⁄⁄www.Internetworldstats.com⁄stats.htm). Yet, the penetration of Internet users relative to the population is only 26.2%, significantly lower than regions like Europe and America. The gap indicates potential of growth in the coming years as the region continues to develop. In addition, all of the currently available TLDs are operated either by country governments or non-profit organizations. Zodiac believes that the existence of a privately held commercial registry operator would not only help to create healthy market competition but also introduce innovations for the region. Furthermore, no other TLD specifically targets this region other than “.asia”, a non-profit sponsored TLD. The introduction of IDN ccTLDs has helped open opportunities for new TLDs that are more precise in purpose and identity, e.g. .中国 for the country China.

With Chinese being the major population in this region, Zodiac, through its wholly owned subsidiaries and equity affiliates (please refer to the attachment for Zodiac’s holding structure) is applying for 15 new gTLDs in Chinese or strings that have strong relevance to this Chinese Internet community. While different entities would be used for each application, a single business team under Zodiac will be operating all of ICANN’s approved gTLDs. Zodiac expects its 15 new gTLDs to grow from 437,541 in the 1st year of operation to 898,147 by the 3rd year.

To support such a vision technically, Zodiac is partnering with KNET Co Ltd (“KNET” or “Back-End Service Provider”). KNET is founded and established in November 2009 by a team of leading developers and experts under the purview of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with the objective to setup and operate a secure Registry service plus a Central Internet Exchange.

Since its inception, KNET has been involved across various domestic and international registry-related technical standards forums. Currently KNET has been actively contributing to the development of the Internet keyword addressing series such as technical standards, technical standards for protection of security of the domain name industry standards.

Within the short span of founding in 2009, KNET is already being recognized as one of the National High-Tech Enterprises, achieved numerous enterprise software certifications and has assembled an experienced team of experts in internet technologies, security, marketing and operations. Key members of the management team are highly experienced in top-level domain name operations having previously involved in the .CHINA IDN ccTLD application, setup and operations.

For this application, Rise Victory Limited (“the Applicant”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Zodiac is applying for “.网站”. To make it easier for non-Chinese reader, “网站” will be referred to as “STRING” in the remaining part of this application.

The Applicant’s vision for “.STRING” is to be a connected namespace for everyone that want to attract and serve the Chinese Internet population and help promote innovation, participation and collaboration among them.

“STRING”, pronounced as “wang zhan” means “website” in Chinese.

One of “.STRING” objectives is to make it easier for the Chinese Internet population to access and use the Internet. Today, as fewer and fewer premium domain names are available, companies and individuals have to come up with longer and less intuitive domain names in “.com” or other related TLDs. To the Chinese, where English is a second language, remembering long domain names is very tedious.

Furthermore, there are many methods to type Chinese characters today. An IDN gTLD will make it easier for the Chinese Internet population to not have to switch input methods when typing the full domain name.

“.STRING” is meant to add variety to the current available offering of TLDs. Its purpose is to serve the Chinese Internet population just as how “.com” is serving the English Internet population. Having a specific target audience in mind also helps providers servicing this group to customize their services and products better. Even returns on marketing will be higher due to the presence of such a useful targeted “.STRING” gTLD.

On a global scale, the introduction of “.STRING” gTLD allows any Chinese Internet user (not just limited to China) to have an online identity that he can be more familiar and can associate with. It also helps to promote various aspects of Chinese culture to the rest of the non-Chinese Internet population.

In the latest data released by CNNIC, at the end of 2011, there were about 2.3 million websites and 7.8 million domain names currently in China. This is the initial target audience for the “.STRING” where the emergence of the IDN domain names will become a mainstream way for the Chinese Internet users to input and remember website names.

The Applicant expects “.STRING” to initially reach about 104,098 in the 1st year, and grow to 148,712 and 208,196 by the 2nd and 3rd year respectively.

The projection is based on a conservative estimate taking the following into consideration:
total number of domain names registered in China across all TLDs
proportion of total number of domain names registered in China that are in Chinese
ICANN benchmarking of registry operations, Feb. 2010
price point for “.STRING” and how the China market would react based on the team’s experience in China
initial growth of existing gTLDs in China

The pricing for “.STRING” is intentionally set at similar price point to other gTLDs as the Applicant envisions “.STRING” to be widely adopted as the gTLD of choice for the Chinese Internet community.

The Applicant will have Sunrise process prior to opening the general registration to ensure that the relevant rights owners have their first rights to their names. Landrush period will also be introduced to cater for the ardent aspirant registrants. The Applicant will also adopt the Trademark Clearing House to reduce cybersquatting and other intellectual property rights infringements. Furthermore, the Applicant will have additional protection for geographic names. Details are described in the answers to Question 22, 28 and 29.

gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.网站	Global Website TLD Asia Limited	namesphere.asia	View

With close to 500 million users online, China is already the country with the most Internet users. However, with a population of over 1.3 billion people, that represents only a penetration rate of around 36%. Part of the challenge for the hundreds of millions of Chinese Internet users who have yet to be connected is the ability to navigate the Internet with domain names in their own language. The ability to have complete domain names in Chinese script is seen as providing significant opportunity to these people, as well as offering tremendous value and benefit to the current online users.

The meaning of the TLD string “网站” roughly translates to ‘website’ in English. The purpose of the TLD is therefore to support the development of Chinese websites around the world. Furthermore, the Registry aspires to become a breeding ground for innovation and development for the global Chinese Internet community as a generic Chinese IDN TLD.

The introduction of a fully generic Chinese IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) TLD also provides an opportunity for global businesses to open a window into the rapidly growing Chinese Internet marketplace. Businesses and initiatives around the world can better communicate and express themselves with a more friendly and memorable online identity to the audience in China.

The vision of the .网站 TLD is that through the development of an open generic namespace supporting full Chinese IDNs, it could become a nucleus for Internet activities from and for the Chinese community, and become a driver of economic and social value for Chinese users around the world.

The mission and purposes of the .网站 TLD are:

1. To develop a namespace that is meaningful to the Chinese language community and is globally recognized as a prime Chinese IDN gTLD;

2. To operate a secure, stable and trusted Chinese IDN gTLD with a reputation as a reliable online destination on the Internet;

3. To foster the sense of connection and ownership from the Chinese language community to the Internet, especially to engage participation in global Internet governance;

4. To promote the accessibility of the Internet to the majority of Chinese users whose primary spoken and written language is Chinese; and,

5. To serve the global Chinese language community with an open generic namespace supporting a full Chinese IDN experience.

Based on the broad generic nature of the .网站 TLD, Global Website TLD Asia Limited (the ‘Registry’) aspires to become the domain of choice for individuals and companies developing websites serving the Chinese language community.

In addition to its mission and vision as a new gTLD, the Registry believes in its responsibility as a responsible industry participant to advance competition, enhance consumer trust and promote consumer choice with the development of the TLD:

A. Advance Constructive Competition

The release of IDN TLDs in this new gTLD round is expected to add a significant level of overall competition to the market for domain registrations by introducing an option to register full Chinese domain names based on a Chinese IDN gTLD. The .网站 TLD seeks to especially target to capture the segment of the market that is not yet online, especially those that could find English alphanumeric TLDs to be difficult to manage.

This is important, as it is expected that a number of proposed new TLDs will enhance competition by targeting existing domain registrations and penetrating into the existing marketplace with aims to switch away from or add to their existing domains. As a broad generic IDN gTLD, .网站 aspires to attract a good portion of registrations from amongst new Internet users such as Chinese SMEs that are just about to get online, and be unique to the TLD, rather than primarily being alternative registrations across multiple TLDs.

B. Enhance Consumer Trust

Based on expert studies, Internet users have more trust for domain names that exactly match what they are looking for. Today, Chinese Internet users may still be using English alphanumeric domains because those already online may be more familiar with English. Even so, an absolute majority searches online in their native language: Chinese. A full Chinese IDN is therefore one of the best ways for companies from China or looking to enter the China market, to speak to and be found by the target audience.

The value of the TLD name in itself is therefore a core part of the value and of building consumer trust. Companies can establish their own dedicated domain for videos introducing their company or for online customer support via video instead of using other platforms.

Furthermore, appropriate Abuse Prevention & Mitigation (APM) as well as Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPM) are also important to ensuring a trusted domain space. Further details of APM and RPM beyond the basic ICANN requirements are discussed in response to Question 28 and Question 29.

C. Promote Consumer Choice

The Registry believes that a broadly generic full Chinese IDN TLD promotes choice for registrants to better express their offline identity online without being diluted by the “.ascii” restriction (or be boxed-in to a country code).

Based on recent studies, the majority of the Asian online population is under the age of 30. This young crowd is energetically engaged in social media, with a growing social networking population which surpassed 250 million (the entire Internet population in the US is estimated at 245M) in 2011. Already half of China’s online population is microblogging on Twitter-like services, and that percentage is expected to rise to two-thirds by 2014. The significance of this is that the user generated content is almost exclusively in Chinese language, and therefore it is only natural that the choice of web addresses used should be Chinese. Furthermore, the microblogging scene is not just about teenagers. Companies are scrambling to join this Chinese conversation to promote their brands on the major microblogging platforms as consumers continue flocking to them.

Riding the creative explosion of the Chinese Internet users, the .网站 TLD promotes consumer choice by providing an option for users, including individuals and companies, to utilize different microblogging platforms and integrate them onto their own website under their own domain, rather than to rely and depend on the platform. That also promotes user choice in helping users to regain control of their traffic and reduce the barrier for switching between providers.