20(e) Provide a description of the applicant's intended registration policies in support of the community-based purpose of the applied-for gTLD

Prototypical answer:

The mission and vision of DotKids is exemplified by the registration policies that reflect our community purpose. (Please refer to 20c):

A) Eligibility: For registering a second-level name, and how will eligibility be determined

The .kids TLD is restricted to children centric organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), children’s rights initiatives and children led initiatives in the first phase of Sunrise. A multi-phased Sunrise process will be adopted (for more information please see application form #29).

In a subsequent Sunrise phase, the standard ICANN new gTLD sunrise and Trademark Clearing House implementation will be offered for legitimate registered trademarks and service marks owners to obtain domains corresponding to their entity names.

Throughout the Sunrise, Landrush phases and upon Go Live, the .kids TLD is restricted to registrants who expressly adhere to the following Guiding Principles in the provision of content and services with their .kids domain:

1) Strictly adhere to the UNCRC principles in the provision of content and services under the .kids domain;

2) Content, including the domain name itself, and services provided through the .kids domain must be appropriate for children under the age of 18 and must not include any materials related to:
- Gambling
- Illegal drugs
- Pornography & Obscenity
- Violence
- Alcohol
- Tobacco
- Criminal Activities;

3) Illegal content is strictly prohibited (including but not limited to trafficking, substance of abuse, phishing, copyright infringement, and other illegal content as defined by the laws of the country for which the registrant and⁄or the sponsoring registrar resides); and,

4) Registrants pledge to use best efforts basis to offer kids friendly content and services (i.e. content that are more easily comprehendible for kids) on the .kids domain.

Violation of any of the Guiding Principles is grounds for suspension or cancellation of the .kids domain name registration. The enforcement of the Guiding Principles are described in D) below.

B) Name Selection

In the earlier community Sunrise phase, name selection is restricted to names corresponding to the children centric organizations, NGOs and initiatives, and at the standard Sunrise ⁄ TMCH phase names corresponding to registered trademarks and legitimate marks and prior rights holders.

In the Landrush and Go Live phases, registrants can self-select their .kids name of choice. Yet since the domain name is the first manifesting point of kids to the Internet to ensure the kids-friendliness in all aspects, the domain string itself will also be considered as part of the content and subject to the adherence of the Guiding Principles above. In other words, domain name that contains any inappropriate content (i.e. words or phrases) as regarded in the Guiding Principles will be considered in violation of the Guiding Principles.

C) Content and Use

UNCRC encourages the development of appropriate guidelines:

According to Article 17 of the UNCRC, it encourages the development of appropriate guidelines for the protection of the child from information and material injurious to his or her well-being, bearing in mind the provisions of articles 13 and 18.

The DotKids Foundation has developed a set of Guiding Principles as described above in A) and will continue to refine such Guiding Principles under the guidance of the community. It is mandatory for all .kids registrants to adhere to the Guiding Principles. Violation of the principles, whether or not intentionally by the registrant, especially if such violation results in the proliferation of materials likely to harm and disturb kids, will be grounds for cancelation, suspension and takedown of the domain name.

The DotKids Foundation, along with children information experts, will further develop guidelines for registrants in the creation of kids-friendly content. For example, the use of kids-friendly language, graphics and presentation formats.

While the protection of children against harmful information is important, the DotKids Foundation deeply understand that under UNCRC, children shall have basic human rights:

According to UNCRC Article 13, the child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the childʹs choice.

Under the guidelines developed by The DotKids Foundation, children are entitled to the freedom to express opinions and to have a say in matters affecting their social, economic, religious, cultural and political life.

More importantly, that underlines an important principle of the .kids TLD to refrain from pre-screening or unnecessary censorship. The framework for enforcement of the Guiding Principles is further discussed below.

D) Enforcement

A Protection Scheme is developed and designed with the purpose of striking a balance between protecting kids from unwanted materials (UNCRC Article 17) and the freedom of expression online (UNCRC Article 13).

Details of the Protection Scheme is included in the response to question 18c above: 4. Protection Scheme.

Open Compliant Platform and Immediate Process

Every netizen can file a complaint via the online portal with clear indication of the point of inappropriate content. The online portal enables all Internet users to contribute on building a kids-friendly Internet space at ease.

Our initial projection of the number of domains is less than 5,000 within a 3-year period, so we do not expect an overwhelming number of abusive cases. Even with 10% of abusive rate over 3 years, our members would only receive a case approximately every 3 days. We understand the importance of prompt action against abusive materials, therefore when the content is clearly abusive, the domain would be taken down within 24 hours with over 5 Red Ratings.

Our members would need to spend time on those cases where it might be borderline, or require more in-depth discussion, we would allow a longer time of voting period to decide the actions taken on those domains.

Since the reporter of the abusive content would need to point out the exact page of the abusive content, it would only take at most a few minutes for our members, who are themselves expert in the children’s rights community, to determine whether the content is abusive.

Representative Decision of the Community

The Protection Scheme is best maintained by children’s rights experts around the world – who are members of the DotKids Foundation governance structure. We understand that there would be cultural differences as to what harmful material are in the eyes of people, however, the children right experts with a long experience of defending rights of children, would know the best.

The online portal would be the most cost efficient way as well as effective way for us to reach to our members globally within a matter of seconds. Moreover, we understand that it would be physically difficult to have our members in present to vote on websites whether they have harmful content to kids. The online portal is the best way to aggregate the information and have allow our members to have flexibility to vote any time they can within the voting period. This platform is scalable, especially because this can be used with 10 members, or 10,000 members. The DotKids foundation would only need to handle the administrative process for each organisation, but not for using the resources to host a voting meeting every time.

As the DotKids Foundation grows, we expect the Monitoring Committee to grow as well. It is reasonable to expect that as the “.kids” TLD grows, the interest and willingness of organizations and volunteers to participate in the Monitoring Committee would grow as well. We have set the preliminary takedown limit as 5 votes from our members. With the growing interest and size of the domain, we expect this number would be reviewed periodically. Eventually, we would hope that it would be around 3% of our total members that would constitute a significant action and representation from our members. The low threshold represents a conservative approach towards reasonably strong protection towards the content in our domain.

In summary, the Protection Scheme is the most time and cost effective way for collecting opinion from children rights experts around the world.

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