18(c) What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs?

Prototypical answer:

Only Obi Group Holding GmbH will be an eligible registrant for .obi domain names. This will be laid down in the OBI Eligibility Policy. In addition to that, OBI will implement all Rights Protection Mechanisms as required by ICANN. This commitment applies both for currently known RPMs as well as those yet to be defined or imposed at a later stage by means of consensus policies.
As a consequence, there is no risk of cybersquatting or speculative registrations that could possibly cause costs, e.g. for defensive registrations.
In addition to that, OBI uses content restrictions to ensure that all contents and services offered under ʺ.obiʺ domain names are family-friendly.
As contractors such as franchisees might be granted the right to use domain names (registered by Obi Group Holding GmbH), contractual agreements with these parties including sanctions and including the policies for the .obi gTLD will ensure that the name space will be used in a compliant manner.
A clear demarcation of acceptable use versus abuse is detailed in the .OBI Domain Name Policy, which will be enforced by means of robust escalation procedures including response times to provide for swift action, if needed.

i) The only eligible registrant will be OBI, which is why multiple applications for a particular domain name will not occur. As a consequence, there will be no mechanisms to resolve such conflicts.
However, OBI wishes to grant the right of use regarding specific domain names to contractors, e.g. franchise partners that run OBI markets. Since there are multiple markets in certain cities, it is not possible to allocate a second level domain name in the format of city.obi to each market. It is therefore planned to resolve such conflicts by implementing a landing page for such cities and link the markets under their name or the name of the quarter where they are located or another unique identifier (e.g. koeln-marsdorf.obi).

ii) Since no registration fees will be charged by the registry, there are no such cost benefits.

iii) Registrations will be possible for the duration of one to ten years. Since no registration fees will be charged, no commitments in terms of price increases will be made.

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