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:

A comprehensive charter describing registration policies for the .corsica will be prepared and published before the commercialization of the TLD in late 2013, early 2014. This document will be prepared in conjunction with AFNIC and a third party consultancy, and submitted to the Corsican parliament for approval, prior to the launch of the TLD.

The charter will aim to be sufficiently open encourage large numbers of registrations from legitimate content and service providers, but sufficiently restrictive and with sufficient provisos to protect the TLD against all types of abusive behaviour. It will contain a complete description of the procedures in case of dispute over a domain name.

The launch of the .corsica TLD will be split into three phases: a Sunrise period, a Landrush period, and General Availability period.

1) Sunrise period

During the Sunrise period, expected to last around 3 months, an important communications campaign will be run to draw attention to the imminent delegation of the .corsica TLD. During this period, owners of recognized brand names will be invited to pre-book their domain name or request that it is put on a ‘not for sale’ list of names. The Sunrise period will be implemented in light of ICANN best practices and, in particular, the recommendations of ICANN’s Intellectual Property Constituency ‘The Perfect Sunrise: How pre-launch Rights Protection Mechanisms and successful registry operations go hand in hand.’

During the Sunrise period Pre-registrants will need to prove that they either the right to the commercial name applied for, or that they are registered with a recognized government or industry authority.

The costs for pre-booking a domain name or putting a domain name on a not-for-sale list will be determined in the .Corsica Users Charter. Prices will be in the range of 50 to 100 euros for pre booking a name and 75 euros for putting a name on a not-for-sale list.

2) Landrush period

The Landrush period, also expected to last around 3 months, will be open to all registrants, and the basic rule for the attribution of a domain name will be ‘first come first served’. During the Landrush period, the retail price for a domain name is expected to be approximately three times the eventual price, i.e. 45 to 55 euros.

3) General Availability

With the general launch of the .corsica TLD, registrar prices for domain names will be brought down to around to around 15 euros per domain name. Registrants that meet the eligibility criteria will be able to purchase domain names on a first come first served basis.

.Corsica Users Charter

The .corsica TLD Users Charter will draw on certain aspects of AFNIC’s own Charter (Charte de Nommage: Regles d’enregistrement des noms de domaines).

In summary:

1) There will be syntactic limitations with a ban on names:

- that are composed of one or two characters
- that include accented letters
- that start or end with a hyphen
- that contain more than 255 letters

2) The principle of ‘first come first served’ will be observed.

With the exception of a pre-established and publicly available list of domain names that are banned or reserved the principle of ‘first come first served’ will be obseved, i.e. the chronological order in which requests are received will be respected.

3) List of names requiring special approval

The .corsica registry will prepare a list of names which will require a more detailed assessment before they are registered. This list will include the names of the 360 communes and villages across Corsica. For these types of names the registrar will need to obtain certain specified documents which attest to the applicant’s true identity and legitimacy. (See attached list of names requiring special approval).

4) List of banned names

The .corsica registry will also have a list of banned names due to their offensive nature e.g. ‘nazi’, ‘killer’, ‘rape’,...

5) Domain names under the .corsica TLD will be held for fixed durations (typically 12 months) in accordance with the terms of reference of the naming policy.

6) The price of domain names will include setting up costs, annual maintenance and costs requiring the involvement of the registry.

7) The basic, ‘wholesale’ price for a domain name will be published on the registry’s Internet site.

8) Eligibility: the .corsica TLD will be available to individuals and corporate entities regardless of their geographic location.

9) Reachability: There will be a strict requirement for the owners of domain names to be reachable by phone or email.

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