18(a) Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD

Prototypical answer:

.LAT MISSION AND PURPOSE

Internet continues growing day by day, touching more and more people every day. This means that internet users need to identify and differentiate themselves, even beyond their own region, in an effort to reflect their identity in their cultural, social and business activities.

In response to this need, in recent years we have seen the advent of some new top level domains such as: ‘.biz’, ‘.info’, ‘.name’, ‘.travel’, ‘.mobi’, and notably the regional identity TLDs – ‘.eu’, and ‘.asia’ and cultural identity domains such as ‘.cat’ . These two latter domains, offer their registrants the option of registering domain names that enable them to establish a regional or cultural identity in the Internet, in comparison with, for example, a national identity obtained by registering their domain names under a country code top level domain (ccTLD).

With the purpose of responding to the need of choice, and to give latino individuals and organizations from all over the world a new choice to identify themselves with the rest of the internet, eCOM-LAC and NIC Mexico have partnered together to participate in ICANN’s New gTLDs Program and apply to obtain the delegation of a new top level domain for latinos: .LAT

.LAT is easily recognizable and has intrinsic meaning as oriented to latinos and has the potential to serve as a virtual space that brings together the diverse actors that make up the latino community.

ABOUT ECOM-LAC

eCOM-LAC is the Latin America and Caribbean Federation of Internet and Electronic Commerce. Founded in March 1999 in a meeting of stakeholders held in Rio de Janeiro, eCOM-LAC was conceived as a non-profit regional entity, which could congregate non-profit industry associations, chambers of commerce and corporations, interested in contributing to the development of the Internet and Electronic Commerce in the region. The entity registered formally in the Republic of Uruguay as an International Non-Profit Entity, and has legal and administrative offices in the LACNIC building in Montevideo.

The entity’s main activities can be summarized thus:

* Participation in ICANN since 1999, attending every ICANN meeting worldwide
* Founding member of LACNIC - 1999
* Organizer of two Regional e-Commerce Summits – Sao Paulo 2000, Buenos Aires 2001
* Participation in the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS)-2003-2005
* Social inclusion educational project titled “Mi lugar, Atlas de la diversidad” – 2002-2004 (As member of group of NGOs in the European Commission @lis program)
* Became a member of Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) in 2006
* Became member of GKP Board of Directors (2009), and then a Trustee of the new GKP Foundation (registered in Gijòn – Asturias, March 2011)
* Organized two “Future of the Internet” conferences – Chile and Brazil (2010)
* Organized two Latin America⁄Caribbean Public Policy Forums – Miami 2010 and 2011

A TLD FOR LATINOS

Latin or Hispanic population, latinos, refers to people who have in common or share a strong heritage of any country from Latin America, this special link is strengthened by their own cultural influence. Being that the most common languages in Latin America have the same origin, it is easy to understand why language is one of the most important cultural influences in this culture.

Notwithstanding the existing and clearly visible geographic differences in Latin America, latinos are noted for preserving a strong identity connection with people from their same origins. This linkage is reinforced by the existing similarities that are characteristic of latino countries, be it in their political histories, their social structures and their economies.

The latinos that live in a country they were not born in, tend to miss their old way of life, such as the habits and customs they performed daily. This homesickness becomes a factor that increases the latino sentiment, with this the latino population generates and develops a series of activities within their community, in order to link up and remember their past, be it through specialized commercial products, integration cultural activities, religious festivities, etc. In the United States, these activities are generating a resurgence of the latino identity, which to a degree, is caused by the increase in purchasing power of the new latino generations and the migrations of the last decades.

OBJECTIVES OF THE .LAT

The .LAT is an initiative to give latino individuals and organizations from all over the world a new choice to identify themselves with the rest of the internet, enabling them to promote their culture, interests and heritage through internet presence with latin identity.

The objectives the .LAT initiative pursues are:

* Adopt a new gTLD oriented to the latino community. This translates to the development and promotion of a new category of specialized domain names for the latino community, becoming a real alternative to the current TLDs.
* Establish a gTLD that is easily recognizable. The .LAT, due to its number of characters and intrinsic meaning, will be easy to memorize, and will represent a cultural legacy more than a geographic space.
* Facilitate regional communication between latinos. The .LAT will serve as a means of drawing close, targeted at the worldwide latino community, be they residents of their country of origin, or people who have had to migrate to another country.
* Guarantee a virtual space that brings together the diverse actors that make up the latino community. The latino diversity does not center only on country of origin, but it also includes their social environment and economic activity: companies, institutions and civil society.
* Turn the .LAT domain into a platform for the growth of the Internet, and as a tool for business in the latino market. The .LAT will be a digital component that will increasingly enable more latino companies and individuals to initiate or continue their growth and conquer new markets on a global scale. Thus, the gTLD will promote the visibility of the latino market, offering a communication channel via the Internet by leveraging the high label recognition, multiplying the efforts of companies and individuals seeking to offer services and⁄or products for the latino market through the Internet.
* Promote and develop the use of information technologies. The .LAT will contribute to the process of developing technologically based initiatives, that promote the development of the Internet, focused on the welfare of latinos and reinforcing their identity on the Internet.
* Complement the development of the latino ccTLDs, The existing links between the diverse latino ccTLDs will be reinforced and thus, between the communities that make up and use these ccTLDs, taking the integration between the users of these ccTLDs to the next level, to a global scale. This will result in an important impulse in the category of latino domain names, projecting them as an increasingly attractive market. A specialized domain will assist in the acceleration and self-evolution of the latino identity, which will complement the national identity.

In summary, the .LAT TLD is the “logical home” for latinos all over the world seeking internet presence with latin identity.

With the development of the .LAT new gTLD, eCOM-LAC will get the funds necessary to finance projects and initiatives contained in the main directives of the organization, like the development of information technologies in Latin-America , and also the promotion and support to projects and initiatives that focus on reducing the digital divide.

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