gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.NGO	Public Interest Registry	pir.org	View

PIR is a NGO, and thereby part of the NGO Community. PIR as a NGO has extensive gTLD management experience via the .ORG gTLD. PIR a supporting organization to the Internet Society (ISOC) and is committed to supporting the Internet Society’s (ISOC) mission stated below.

History of PIR’s Relationship to the NGO Community
In January 2003, PIR, assumed responsibility for operating .ORG and maintaining the authoritative database of all .ORG domains.

Created in 1984, .ORG is one of the Internetʹs original seven top-level domains (TLDs), along with .com, .net, etc. Although it is ʺopenʺ and ʺunrestrictedʺ, .ORG has been the domain of choice for organizations dedicated to serving the public interest. The high regard of these well-intentioned organizations was soon conferred to this domain, and today .ORG is considered around the world to be the domain of trust.

Public Interest Registry’s (PIR) primary activity is to maintain the .ORG domain registry as the exemplary top level domain (TLD) registry service, by advocating for higher standards of Internet security, safety and reliability. PIR’s mission is to facilitate the effective use of a global Internet among non-commercial and other Internet users worldwide. In its relationship with the ISOC, (reference Evaluation Questions #9a and #9b), PIR is committed to supporting ISOC’s goals of encouraging the evolution of the Internet as research, education and communication infrastructure equally accessible to the global non-commercial, NGO and nonprofit community. PIR’s activities also include funding educational programs focused on expanding the knowledge and ability of non-commercial, NGO and nonprofit organizations located in technologically deprived areas of the world to more efficiently and effectively use the Internet as a tool to better accomplish their important mission.

The 2003 transition of .ORG from the previous operator to PIR was the largest transfer in Internet history. More than 2.6 million domains were transferred in about a day, without negatively impacting any .ORG registrant or website.

Since 2003, PIR has been connected with NGOs through our management of .ORG, and recently in preparation for our pursuit of the .NGO gTLD domain, we have worked closely with the NGO Community to develop the requirements and specification for the proposed .NGO gTLD.

Current Relationship to the NGO Community
PIR is a strong supporter of NGOs in both a direct role as manager of the .ORG gTLD and through other efforts, including:
• A ʺStrategic and Sponsoring Partnerʺ of NTEN, the Non-Profit Technology Network of 10,000 members and over 30,000 participants in the community, covering 126 countries. NTEN aspires to a world where all nonprofit organizations use technology skillfully and confidently to meet community needs and fulfill their missions.
• Making financial contributions to various organizations, such as the NCUC (Non Commercial Constituency of ICANN) and Centr. For NCUC, annual donations have been in the $5,000 to $15,000 range every year since PIR assumed operations of the .ORG registry.
• In December 2005, PIR sponsored a symposium at the Nelson Mandela Center in Cape Town, South Africa bringing in various Internet leaders in Africa to discuss the needs of the Internet in Africa.
• In response to Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans, Louisiana, PIR donated $1 for every new create for a limited time. The final donation was over $100,000 to the Red Cross.
• In response to JapanʹsTsunami disaster, a 3 month program was rolled out to waive renewal fees for Japanese domain name holders, in order to help those affected and unable to renew their .ORG domains.

Within the community, there is a wide appreciation of PIR’s role as an advocate of “do good” for the Internet at large, and in many countries around the world there is a general perception that .ORG domains are more trusted than other domains. At the time of application submission, PIR manages nearly 10 million .ORG domains, and is seen to do so in an exemplary way. We are very happy to be judged on this reputation.

PIR has over 500 letters of support from the NGO Community endorsing its application for .NGO. PIR will continue outreach to the community and anticipates receipt of additional support letters from NGOs throughout the ICANN application evaluation process. Specific recognition of PIR’s efforts to support the nonprofit community includes:
• “As a not-for-profit corporation, we believe that being part of the .org domain has done much to reinforce MITRE’s identity as an organization chartered to work in the public interest. [Thanks to PIR’s] continuing work to enhance the .org domain.ʺ - Al Grasso, President and CEO, The MITRE Corporation (the first .ORG registrant).
• “We recognize and applaud PIRʹs long-standing commitment to the non-profit community since taking over the management of .ORG.” - Lisa Vogt, APR, Director of Marketing & Communications, SOS Children’s Villages – USA.

PIR has conducted outreach, worked with established relationships, and developed new types of relationships which will facilitate the delivery of the .NGO domain and related services to the NGO Community. Our discussions and outreach have included NGOs in several countries across Asia, Europe, North America, South America⁄Latin America, and Africa as well as many different segments of the NGO Community to ensure wide acceptance and adoption of our proposed gTLD domain and related services. The segments include but are not limited to agriculture, environment, arts⁄culture, charitable services, human rights, humanitarian, and advocacy for a range of issues affecting societal development.

Accountability to the NGO Community
By offering .NGO as a secure and well-managed domain of trust uniquely for eligible NGOs, PIR believes that NGOs can benefit from the Internet and our specific services as a means to safely and reliably reach out to the community and sponsors. PIR will be accountable to the NGO Community by:
• A NGO Community input process soliciting input from the community through the NGO Advisory Council drawn from the community and accepting a broad range of input to stay current on the issues of importance to the community and manage the NGO verification process;
• Creating and marketing .NGO as a distinctive place on the Internet for NGOs to differentiate and promote their organization;
• Establishing community programs to support capacity building of NGOs with technical and educational platforms;
• Enforcing registration policies that elevate the integrity of the domains in the .NGO gTLD name space, soliciting input from the NGO Community;
• Easing discovery and promotion through the creation, management and promotion of the .NGO gTLD;
• Offering registration from a proven, scalable registry platform that can ensure 100% DNS availability;
• Delivering a challenge process for the NGO Community to dispute the legitimacy of a .NGO registrant or its activity on a .NGO domain; and,
• As a community priority gTLD, PIR is committing to manage the .NGO domain with participation of the community. Failing to do that would put our registry contract in jeopardy.

PIR is in an excellent position to provide such support to the NGO Community given documented experience running a stable and trusted registry. PIR holds a track record demonstrating good intent to the global community by being a leader in activities such as implementation of anti-abuse policies, DNSSEC, active participation in numerous public interest events, etc.

gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.MUSIC	DotMusic ⁄ CGR E-Commerce Ltd	music.us	View

DotMusic is a member of:
- International Federation of Arts Councils & Culture Agencies (IFACCA) serving a global community of arts councils and government ministries of culture representing over 70 countries (www.ifacca.org)
- American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) serving the independent Music Community (www.a2im.org)
- National Association of Recording Manufacturers (NARM) the music business association formed in 1958 (www.narm.com)
DotMusic was founded in 2004 under the Music.us umbrella by Community member Constantine Roussos, an independent musician, songwriter and certified sound engineer, who also produced albums for artists such as Family of Snail, Katie Quinlan, Some Change from US, Pigeon’s Rhythm and David Silverman. It was through his interactions with the Community that he recognized the opportunity for a safer and more trusted innovative, community-based music-themed TLD. He is also a member of the National Association of Recording Industry Professionals and other music organizations.
Other DotMusic team members include:
Robert Singerman: NARAS member with over 30 years of experience as an agent, manager, label executive, consultant, producer, venue programmer and music supervisor; represented R.E.M, Gipsy Kings, James Brown, Suzanne Vega, 10,000 Maniacs and others; directed the European Music Office for the European Commission (EU) and the French Music Export Office in the U.S; represents Brazilian music, funded by APEX, the Brazilian trade organization.
Ken Abdo: A known artist advocate; a life-long multi-instrumentalist⁄songwriter and former DJ; served as legal counsel to artists including Jonny Lang, Michelle Branch, Owl City and Hall & Oates.
Bob Donnelly: Music industry attorney with over 35 years of experience; 41-awarded platinum albums.
John Simson: A singer-songwriter; managed country artists who sold over 10 Million albums and won 6 Grammys; ex-director of SoundExchange, the first performing rights organization formed to collect digital performance royalties for sound recording copyright owners & artists; co-founded the Washington Area Music Association; ex-president of the NARAS⁄Grammys D.C. chapter; National Trustee of the Academy; Board of the Alliance of Artists & Record Companies; member of the Folk Alliance and the Country Music Association.
Paul Bezilla: Bassist in various bands; entertainment lawyer for over 25 years; clients included Frank Sinatra, Cher, Quincy Jones, Warner Bros, and Disney.
DotMusic is the only Community member with advanced professional technical, policy, and operational TLD management experience led by DNS veteran Tina Dam to meet DotMusic’s primary role: to launch, operate and maintain trusted Music Community-based TLD.
RELATION TO MUSIC COMMUNITY
Pursuant to its mission, DotMusic has been conducting extensive outreach to the Community since 2008 to brand itself and its mission to convey the benefits of .MUSIC and requesting Community support letters. Since 2008 DotMusic has led Music Community efforts to the ICANN community through dedicated participation at ICANN meetings and other DNS⁄new TLD related events. The mCMO domain allocation method during the Landrush phase was created by DotMusic to allow Community members to register through established Community organizations. During the General Registration phase the TLD is open to all Community members for registration but also restricted by Eligibility, Use and other Policies, including enhanced safeguards.
DotMusic has been a strong Community supporter and participant as demonstrated in its ongoing efforts to build a sustainable TLD with policies dedicated to match the needs of the Community using a multi-stakeholder model, while ensuring it is implemented in a manner fulfilling DNS and ICANN technical, political and legal requirements.
DotMusic has publicly branded itself in an open, transparent and accessible manner through differentiated .MUSIC-related sites, social media, online marketing and through tens of thousands of web discussions⁄media mentions. Over 1,500,000 have signed the .MUSIC Initiative petition; over 5 million have liked⁄followed DotMusic in popular social media sites; and a significant number of leading mCMOs have signed support⁄interest letters as demonstrated in response to question 20f.
Other activities include sponsorships of Community events such as SxSW, Midem, Billboard, CMJ, Digital Music Forum, SF Music Tech, SoundCtrl, Social Media Week, ASCAP Expo, Popkomm, Miami Music Festival, Future of Music Policy Summit, Bandwidth, New Music Park Thing and others.
Social Media presence includes:
- Myspace, the Internet’s largest music artist community (4.2 million friends: www.myspace.com⁄musicextension)
- Facebook, the world’s largest social media site (Over 100,000 likes on www.facebook.com⁄musicextension and www.facebook.com⁄DotMusic and about 5,000 group members on www.facebook.com⁄groups⁄46381289474)
- Twitter, the world’s largest micro-blogging site (220,000+ followers on www.twitter.com⁄mus, about 50,000 followers on www.twitter.com⁄DotMusic, about 60,000+ followers on www.twitter.com⁄musicextension, about 31,000+ on www.twitter.com⁄dot_music, about 21,000+ followers on www.twitter.com⁄musicdomain) and other social media sites
DotMusic also branded itself through earned media including:
- Forbes, Billboard, Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, World Trademark Review (www.music.us⁄news.htm), other mainstream publications, online press and thousands of blogs and social media mentions
- Google and Bing search engines have ranked the official DotMusic site (www.music.us) on the top of search engine results for the term “music” ((#23 Google, #25 Bing – March 6th, 2012), one of the most competitive keyword terms on the web according to Google Adwords (277 million global searches on Google, costing advertisers over $9k a day in clicks - www.music.us⁄adwords⁄google-adwords-keyword-music.jpg)
- The official DotMusic site ranks on the top of both Google’s and Bing’s search engines for terms such as “dotmusic”, “dot music”, “music domain”, “music TLD”, “music gTLD”, “music top-level domain”, “music generic top level domain” (www.music.us⁄seo)
A complete list of events relating to the ongoing outreach campaign can be found on www.music.us⁄events.htm
DotMusic will continue its active outreach and participation efforts in the Community and anticipates receipt of additional support letters from Community members throughout and beyond the ICANN TLD evaluation process.
ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISMS
DotMusic will be accountable to the Community by serving them without conflicts of interest and:
- Creating and managing a trusted safe online haven for music consumption
- Establishing a safe home on the Internet for Community members to differentiate themselves regardless of locale, segment or size
- Enforcing registration policies that enhance and preserve the integrity of the Community
- Enabling music discovery & Community member promotion through Premium Channels
- Protecting intellectual property & fighting piracy
- Supporting musiciansʹ welfare, rights & fair compensation
- Promoting music and arts, cultural diversity and music education
- Following a neutral multi-stakeholder governance of fair representation of all global music constituents
- Soliciting Community advice through the Advisory Committee
- Offering registration from a proven, scalable registry platform with 100% DNS availability
The rotating, global Advisory Committee will represent all Community stakeholder groups per the NAICS codes list, such as musicians, songwriters, composers, industry professionals, collection agencies, associations, unions, businesses, education, arts councils⁄export offices⁄government agencies, managers, promoters and agents. The Committee will operate under Bylaws central to the .MUSIC Mission, Core Values, and commitment to serve the Community and public interest.