18(b) How do you expect that your proposed gTLD will benefit registrants, Internet users, and others?

Prototypical answer:

Benefits to Registants and the Internet Community

For this response, we provide a high level overview of how the .CLUB gTLD will benefit registrants and the Internet community as a whole. We describe our area of specialty, provide a vision on our service level and reputation goals, discuss how .CLUB will aid the competitive landscape with both a differentiated and innovative service offering which will in turn, enable our club market registrants to differentiate and innovate their own service offerings to their members. In addition, we will include an overview of our registration policies and commitments to protect registrant privacy of their confidential information. Overviews are provided in the following areas;

- Benefit to Registrants, Internet Users and Others
- Goals in areas of Specialty, Service Levels, or Reputation.
- Promoting Competition, Consumer Trust and Choice
- Differentiation and Innovation
- Goals in terms of User Experience
- Privacy and Confidential Information
- Policies, Terms and Conditions
- Safeguards to Mitigate Issues with Introduction
- Outreach to Achieve Market Benefits


Benefit to Registrants, Internet Users and Others

Benefits to the .CLUB registrants and Internet community will include;
1. Ability for clubs to secure a domain name that best matches and represents their identity,
2. Offer easy-to-use web services for clubs that meet their needs, and
3. Establish for Internet users the nature of the entity when they search or go to a .CLUB address.


Goals in areas of Specialty, Service Levels, or Reputation
.CLUB will focus all efforts to address the specific market needs of the club niche markets. We recognize that to be successful .CLUB must deliver a quality service level and we will back that up with a Service Level Agreement as a component of our terms and conditions, with 100% uptime for DNS services as specified in the ICANN Agreement and at 99.5% uptime guarantee for web services. Our specialty, service level standards and reputation represent our brand promise to the market articulated as the .CLUB identity with Easy-To-Use web services for clubs to set up and manage their online presence. Consistent with our mission, .CLUB will be known as a reputable trusted provider to club markets.


Promoting Competition, Consumer Trust and Choice
.CLUB services will provide additional competition in the domain identity and web service markets. Clubs and club-like associations will have available not only an ample new supply of intuitive, marketable and reasonably available domain names, but also a new service suite designed to meet their online needs. Services will be more effective compared to existing gTLDs and web services on the market since they will be designed to meet the specific requirements of clubs. Additionally, since .CLUB is solely focused on the club market it is imperative the Company gain the trust of our market in all our interactions. We will do so by;
1. Recognizing and protect pre-existing registered clubs as having priority rights to a .CLUB domain during the Sunrise and Landrush periods.
2. Partnering with the best in the industry registry service and web service providers,
3. Conducting business in a professional manner and deliver service levels at or better than industry norms,
4. Designing and delivering focused and Easy-to-Use services that are demanded in our niche market,
5. Implementing outreach programs to bring awareness to and educate the market on the new, focused domain identity and club-centered web service suite; and
6. Using outreach to establish ongoing registrant and subscriber relationships and to inform our product roadmaps to ensure future service introductions address club pain points.

By all these measures we will promote competition, consumer trust and choice in the market.


Differentiation and Innovation
Based on needs discovery responses from club operators, we will design innovative services to satisfy those needs and build a reputation as the web service provider who is the most innovative, differentiated and responsive to the club market. .CLUB believes this market is currently underserved without a web service provider addressing their specific needs. .CLUB will fill this service vacuum with easy-to-use services to help clubs grow and manage their club. Focusing on the club category we will differentiate our suite of services by being focused specifically on our category needs. This is new, better and different than any other web service provider to clubs today and as such will help clubs themselves bring innovative services to their members.


Goals in Terms of User Experience
It is critical that domain registration, renewal and other registry services, along with all our web services, are easy for club operators and their members to use and derive value. .CLUB management’s proven track record and experience building successful web service businesses provides us with the expertise required to deliver positive user experiences which include: simple value proposition messaging, ease of purchase, intuitive graphical user interface, elegant application design, easy and effective access to support services and valued best practice guideance. We know great user experiences results in business success and as such will prioritize this element of our service designs and deployments.


Privacy and Confidential Information
Protection of privacy and confidentiality is extremely important in the operation of a registry and any web service business. The company intends for users to perceive the TLD as a trustworthy source of online information, products and services. User trust is enhanced when users are confident that their private or confidential information is securely protected. The Company intends to provide a safe and legitimate Internet space, enhancing user experience by mitigating security-associated risks. With respect to WHOIS data, the Company intends to comply with ICANN policies and otherwise to ensure that complete and accurate WHOIS information is readily accessible for every .CLUB domain name.

The Company intends to deploy DNSSEC and to comply with all of the other policies and practices required by ICANN in the Registry Agreement and⁄or via any Consensus Policy. And of course, the Company complies with all applicable laws and regulations relating to internet security and the privacy of users’ confidential information. Furthermore, the Company will employ all commercially reasonable practices with respect to the security of online transactions and users’ private or confidential information.


Policies, Terms and Conditions
The .CLUB TLD will be open and unrestricted, allowing anyone to select an appropriate .CLUB domain name for their own legitimate purposes. Bad faith and other illegal uses of .CLUB domain names will not be tolerated. The Company will implement an Acceptable Use Policy as further described in response to Question 28, and also will implement the UDRP, URS and all other ICANN-required rights protection mechanisms. Further, the Company will implement additional rights protection mechanisms as described in response to Questions 28 and 29.

.CLUB will institute clear policies, terms and conditions to support our goals. Policies, terms and conditions will include but not be limited to those identified above and elsewhere in the application. No policy will be in conflict with ICANN Registry Agreement or any ICANN Consensus Policy. .CLUB will evaluate new policies as necessary to address emerging security or other threats.


Safeguards to Mitigate Issues with Introduction
.CLUB DOMAINS, LLC seeks to mitigate issues of abusive domain registrations. The following describes a few of our approaches to achieve this objective.

A goal of .CLUB is to ensure existing registered clubs worldwide are able to secure the most relevant domain name to best represent their identity. While the .CLUB gTLD will not be restricted, we have identified the challenge of domain squatting on pre-existing registered club names and will discourage this activity. In an effort to ensure clubs secure their most relevant domain to represent themselves online, we will conduct targeted marketing communication and outreach to as many clubs as is possible to offer them corresponding names during and after Sunrise and Landrush periods.

A second major way that we will focus on mitigating issues with the introduction is through our partnership with a top tier registry services partner, Neustar, Inc. This will ensure best practice handing and world class systems available to the Company to ensure efficient operation of the registry back-end systems designed and well tested to handle abuse complaints expeditiously.

We provide further detailed description of all of our intended rights protection mechanisms in response to Questions 26, 28 and 29.


Outreach to Achieve Market Benefits
.CLUB will employ an aggressive outreach to club and club-like association markets to;
1. Make clubs aware of the new gTLD offering,
2. Educate clubs on the value of a .club domain identity and the services that will benefit their online presence and membership,
3. Offer Sunrise and Landrush processes, and
4. Conduct club needs analysis to inform web service product roadmap requirements.

After the initial launch period, estimated at approximately one year, we will continue to engage in regular communications to our gTLD registrants to;
1. Ensure satisfaction with the value of our services,
2. Inform our product roadmap innovation strategy, and
3. Inform the community on trends in web services best practices as a purely value added information to help registrants learn and improve their club operations and relevance to their membership.

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