gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.LLC	Dot Registry LLC	hotmail.com	View

DOT Registry plans to serve the Community of Registered Limited Liability Companies. Members of the community are defined as businesses registered as limited liability companies with the United States or its territories. Limited Liability Companies or (LLC’s) as they are commonly abbreviated, represent one of the most popular business entity structures in the US. LLCʹs commonly participate in acts of commerce, public services, and product creation.

Limited Liability Companies (LLC) are a relatively new business structure for the United States, the first LLC was validated in the state of Wyoming in 1977 and in 1996 the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws adopted the Uniform Limited Liability Company Act; providing for both the definition of an LLC and the governmental standards under which an LLC may be formed. It was through the Uniform Limited Liability Company Act that a standard set of policies were created to define, validate, and monitor the operations of LLC’s, thus creating a unique and accountable business community in the United States.

An LLC is defined as a flexible form of enterprise that blends elements of partnership and corporate structures. It is a legal form of company that provides limited liability to its owners in the vast majority of United States jurisdictions. LLC’s are a unique entity type because they are considered a hybrid, having certain characteristics of both a corporation and a partnership or sole proprietorship. LLC’s are closely related to corporations in the sense that they participate in similar activities and provide limited liability to their partners. Additionally, LLC’s share a key characteristic with partnerships through the availability of pass-through income taxation. LLC’s are a more flexibile entity type than a corporation and are often well suited for businesses owned by a single owner.

Common advantages to forming an LLC include:

1) Flexibility in tax reporting, LLC’s may choose if they would like to be taxed as a sole proprietorship, partnership, S Corporation, or C Corporation. This is the only business entity form in the United States that allows for taxation flexibility.
2) LLC’s have much less administrative paperwork and reporting requirements then corporations.
3) Unless the LLC elects to be taxed as a C Corp, LLC’s enjoy pass through taxation.
4) Limited liability, meaning that owners of an LLC, called “members” are protected from some or all liability acts and debts of the LLC.

LLC’s have become increasingly popular in the United States because their formation provides owners with the protection of a corporation and the flexibility of a partnership.

With the number of registered LLC’s in the United States totaling over five million in 2010 (as reported by the International Association of Commercial Administrators) it is hard for the average consumer to not conduct business with an LLC (popular LLC’s in the United States include: AOL and BMW). Through the creation of DOT Registry’s .LLC string, consumers can quickly validate that they are working with a member of the Community of Registered Limited Liability Companies, providing consumers with brand reassurance and peace of mind. DOT Registry believes that it is essential to identify limited liability companies online in order to expand on their creditability and further highlight their privilege to conduct business in the US. Proper representation of this community would allow consumers to make educated choices in choosing businesses to patronize and support.
LLCʹs can be formed through any jurisdiction of the United States. Therefore members of this community exist in all 50 US states and its territories. LLC formation guidelines are dictated by state law and can vary based on each state’s regulations. Persons form an LLC by filing required documents with the appropriate state authority, usually the Secretary of State. Most states require the filing of Articles of Organization. These are considered public documents and are similar to articles of incorporation, which establish a corporation as a legal entity. At minimum, the articles of organization give a brief description of the intended business purposes, the registered agent, and registered business address.
LLC’s are expected to conduct business in conjunction with the policies of the state in which they are formed, and the Secretary of State periodically evaluates a LLC’s level of good standing based on their commercial interactions with both the state and consumers. DOT Registry or its designated agents would verify membership to the Community of Registered Limited Liability Companies by collecting data on each Registrant and cross-referencing the information with their applicable registration state. In order to maintain the reputation of the “.LLC” string and accurately delineate the member to consumers, Registrants would only be awarded a domain that accurately represents their registered legal business name. Additionally, DOT Registry will not allow blind registrations or registration by proxy, therefore DOT Registry’s WHOIS service will tie directly back to each member’s state registration information and will be publicly available in order to provide complete transparency for consumers.
Entities are required to comply with formation practices in order to receive the right to conduct business in the US. Once formed an LLC must be properly maintained. LLC’s are expected to comply with state regulations, submit annual filings, and pay specific taxes and fees. Should an LLC fail to comply with state statutes it could result in involuntary dissolution by the state in addition to imposed penalties, taxes and fees.
While state statutes vary, the majority of states have adopted the following guidelines in regards to the formation of LLC’s:

(1) The name of each limited liability company must contain the words ʺLimited Liability Companyʺ or the abbreviation ʺL.L.C.ʺ or the designation ʺLLCʺ.

(2) In order to form a limited liability company, one or more authorized persons must execute the Articles of Organization. Which shall contain: the name of the limited liability company; the address of the registered office and the name and address of the registered agent for service of process required to be maintained; and any other matters the members determine to include therein.
(3) A Limited Liability Company may be organized to conduct or promote any lawful business or purposes, except as may otherwise be provided by the Constitution or other law of this State.
All entities bearing the abbreviation LLC in their business name create the assumption that they have been awarded the privileges associated to that title such as: the ability to conduct commerce transactions within US borders or territories, the ability to market products, solicit consumers and provide reputable services in exchange for monetary values, and finally to provide jobs or employment incentives to other citizens.
Membership in the Community of Registered Limited Liability Companies is established through your business entity registration. In order to maintain your membership to this community you must remain an “Active” member of the community. Active” in this context can be defined as any LLC registered with a Secretary of State in the United States and its territories, that is determined to be authorized to conduct business within that State at the time of their registration. Registrant’s “Active” status will be verified on an annual basis as described above in question 18 in order to ensure the reputation and validity of the “.LLC” gTLD.
Since LLC’s are not currently delineated on the Internet, the creation of this string would mark a unique advancement in consumer security and confidence in the United States. Essentially, this will create the first ever, clear delineator for the Community of Registered Limited Liability Companies.

gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.рус	Rusnames Limited	gmail.com	View

The .РУС gTLD community is global; peoples of various nations united through their historical, ethnic and linguistic connections which date back more than a millennium. The Rus communityʹs earliest recorded origin is that of a Germanic tribe in the 800s. Rus, the English language translation of the Russian Cyrillic word for both the Kievan Rus people and their Russian Cyrillic Language, migrated from the Baltic region of what is now Sweden to eastern Europe in the 9th Century, eventually establishing a dynasty headquartered in Kiev, located in the heart of modern day Ukraine. The Kievan Rus state covered what is today Belarus, Ukraine and the European portion of Russia, and evolved over the centuries into the several nations that have Russian as an official language today, including Belarus, Ukraine, and others. These nations also have a 20 million strong diaspora of linguistically or culturally Russian people living in hundreds of countries around the world.
But the .РУС community connects not merely through ethnic ties to the Rus people but also to an alphabet, born in the 9th Century and adopted and spread by the Kievan Rus, known eventually as Cyrillic. The Christian Saint Cyril (known prior to becoming a monk by the name Constantine) is believed to have spurred development of the precursor of the modern Cyrillic alphabet. The development of a written form of Eastern European speech, the Glagolitic alphabet--derived from the ancient Greek alphabet with new symbols to capture sounds not found in ancient Greece--allowed Cyril and other missionaries to convert the Orthodox Bible in a form that could be read and understood by peoples of Eastern Europe. The evolved form of that alphabet that arose in the 11th Century, Cyrillic, is named after Cyril.
Cyrillic is commonly associated with the Russian language, and Russia contains the largest population of Cyrillic Language speakers. But the alphabet is used in other Slavic languages such as Bulgarian, Belarusian, Macedonian, Serbian, and Ukrainian. The Cyrillic alphabet has spread beyond Slavic languages, in tongues scattered across the globe, from Asia to Europe to North America. Some of those languages are Abkhaz, Bashkir, Aleut, Erzya, Kazakh, Kildin Sami, Komi, Kyrgyz, Mari, Moksha, Mongolian, Ossetic, Romani, Sakha, Tajik, Tatar, Tlingit, Tuvan, Udmurt, Yakut, Yuit, and Yupik.
The .РУС gTLD will allow these disparate but related peoples--connected through ethnicity and linguistics--to unite online as a full and robust community, enjoying the connection and exchange of information empowered by speakers of other languages, primarily English, on the Internet. The community is further defined in the subheads below.
Descriptions should include:

• How the community is delineated from Internet users generally.

While the English language has dominated both the Internet and TLDs, there are hundreds of millions of individuals in Europe and Asia who write and read in Russian Cyrillic. You can find these individuals in Europe in Bosnia (population 3.8 million), Bulgaria (7.4 million), Belarus (9.5 million), Macedonia (2.1 million), Montenegro (625,000), Serbia (7.1 million), Russia (143 million), and Ukraine (45.9 million). In addition, 60 million people in Central Asia use the Cyrillic alphabet, including in Kazakhstan and Mongolia, in non-Slavic languages. Russian Cyrillic is one of the six official languages⁄scripts of the United Nations.

The Russian Cyrillic language is one of the official languages of the European Union (Western Europe), connecting its 27 member states to this historic Cyrillic alphabet. According to Eurobarometer, Russian Cyrillic is the native language of 1% of the citizens of Western European countries, and studied as a foreign language by five times as many individuals. It is an important element of the interwoven culture of Europe - both Eastern and Western.

As a community connected through ethnicity and language, there is no formal membership, registration, or licensing processes. It is also open to expansion. Often the identification with the community is one of the heart. For example, someone not of Rus descent who has never set foot in a Russian Cyrillic-speaking country could discover the magic of the language and begin to learn it as a foreign tongue. That individual would welcome the opportunity to engage and learn online in Cyrillic script, and could satisfy what likely would be increasing curiosity about the .РУС community and its customs, norms, and culture. By engaging in sites using the .РУС TLD, that individual would become a welcome part of the larger community.

RusNames Limited (RusNames) has pioneered the introduction of Cyrillic text on the Internet, a daunting but critical task. The team behind RusNames has blazed a trail in working toward Cyrillic domain names for more than ten years. No entity is better suited to manage a .РУС gTLD, nor more dedicated to providing new online tools and services to facilitate the unification of the .РУС community online. The .РУС gTLD will increasingly open up the vast resources of the Internet and its interconnectedness to this community, while stimulating the introduction of more information and resources in the Cyrillic language online.
• How the community is structured and organized.
The .РУС community loosely is connected through the use of the Cyrillic alphabet and among the many peoples of Europe and Eurasia with Rus ancestry. Most Cyrillic related language speakers - Russian language or others - are found in countries in which that language is the mother tongue; thus, one can imagine the .РУС core community as the populations of those nations, with the broader community incorporating native Russian Cyrillic speakers⁄ people of Rus Cultural origin in other countries and individuals across the globe studying Russian Cyrillic as a foreign language.


• When the community was established.

The Rus originated as a group of traveling warriors related to the Vikings, and are first recorded occupying a portion of what is now Sweden. The Rus traveled east in the 800s, eventually conquering Kiev and founding the state known today as Kievan Rus. Successor states to the Rus dynasty included Galicia-Volhynia, in what is now Poland; Cherginov, including territory now part of Ukraine and Belarus; and Vladimir-Suzdal, a principality that evolved into the Grand Duchy of Moscow and later Tsarist Russia.

The Cyrillic script came to the Rus people after being developed in the 10th Century in Bulgaria. Derived from ancient Greek script, it built upon the Glagolitic alphabet, which had been developed a century earlier and contained letters for sounds not found in ancient Greek. The Glagolitic alphabet is attributed to two Christian monks, Saints Cyril and Methodius. It is believed these 9th Century monks developed the alphabet in order to convert the Bible for populations in Eastern Europe. They are known as the Apostles of the Slavs, and their linguistic legacy among Slavic populations survives to this day.

The Cyrillic script is believed to have been developed by students of Cyril and is named in the saintʹs honor.
• The current estimated size of the community.
The populations of the core Cyrillic script countries listed above totals nearly 300 million people. Of these, nearly 220 million live in countries where Russian is the official language. Another 60 million live in ex-Soviet countries where many people still speak Russian even though it is no longer an official language. The final 20 million make up the diaspora scattered across the globe. In addition, there are ex-pat communities of these Cyrillic speakers found in countries around the world, and numerous students of Cyrillic languages as well. The community is found mostly in Eastern Europe and Northern and Central Asia, but as documented above, Russian Cyrillic speakers can be found in other parts of the world, including North America.