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

Prototypical answer:

A venue for dialogue and creative engagement of all the parties concerned, .TATAR will serve as an on-line platform to represent the Tatars on the Internet as an ethnic group, with its background, language, historic and cultural riches.

For academic and experts, and other parties concerned, both in Tatarstan and overseas, .TATAR provides an ultimate pool of information and data best practices, whether for academic research, or every day, eg. culinary, artisan, etc., experiences.

For public associations and profile governmental organizations .TATAR grants access to a broad, diverse audience and forms an efficient way to mobilize and engage local residents, the civil society groups, and overseas stakeholders in various kinds of activities associated with the Tatars.
For businesses .TATAR provides a unique chance to most effectively reach out to, and market their products and services among a huge target audience and in so doing, establish their presence and promote their brands and values with a very broad circle of consumers.

The overarching purpose of .TATAR is to bolster the target audiences - and in the first place ethnic Tatars’ - trust in the Internet per se and its opportunities and benefits for an ethnic group’s advancement. By indoctrinating certain groups to the Internet’s positive effects, .TATAR helps its expansion nationwide.

That the project on launching a new gTLD for the Tatars is indeed central to the Republic’s strive for promotion of ethnic and cultural diversity is proved by the support and endorsement from a number of leading local institutions.

.TATAR forms a specialized environment which consolidates a high-quality and rapidly increasing educational, historic, ethnic, cultural, etc. content whose safety rests upon rigorous administrative procedures and robust technical solutions.

Once delegated, .TATAR should promote integration of educational, information projects and programs, games and contests, including interactive ones, etc. with a due account of the target audiences’ needs and interests.

.TATAR constitutes a genuinely multistakeholder undertaking, which engages civil society, business, academia, educational, government and technical community, thus qualifying as an exemplary self-regulated, open, voluntary and all-inclusive initiative in a region where such things are still nascent, thus paving the way for new initiatives of this sort.

.TATAR gives impulse to the rise of new Internet resources for specific agents, thus encouraging software developers to embark on new, software development projects, thus boosting competition and creativity in the respective area.

.TATAR focuses primarily on Tatar communities residing both in Russia and overseas; however, it may become a model project for different ethnic groups, should they take on similar efforts, which would add to diversity of the global Internet.

.TATAR contributes to socialization of the environment and promotion of the civil-society values. With the rise of new exciting resources and convenient tools, new population groups go online. The more comprehensive those resources and tools are, the more Tatars, the elderly and the young alike, will be keen to master and explore the Internet, thus bolstering both their respective skills and the Internet’s expansion in the Republic and in Russia as a whole, thus narrowing digital divide in the Republic and in Russia.

.TATAR offers ample marketing opportunities for a broad array of businesses. Not only will the new gTLD become home to corporate websites of local multi-billion undertakings, but its profile will enable businesses to narrow down their marketing strategies, more effectively establish and promote their brands and respective values, target very concrete audiences and reap additional benefits vis-à-vis potential rivals, as .TATAR will minimize search efforts for a potential multimillion community and maximize businesses’ on-line identity. The Applicant believes business initiatives will account for a relatively significant fraction within the gTLD, while another important one should become public agencies and municipal bodies and respective institutions. Their presence in .TATAR will help domestic communities and individuals to more closely and effectively monitor and evaluate their performance and make them more transparent and accountable, thus ensuring a greater efficacy of public service and the Republic’s fast progress on the path towards e-government.

.TATAR offers the possibility for a transparent and easy-to-implement control over community-specific resources adhering to the Tatar’s fundamentals and long-standing traditions, meaning abiding by certain moral principles and zero tolerance towards hatred, including racial, ethnic, etc. one, opprobriousness, violence.

Thus, the use of the addressing within the gTLD ensures certain control (with the use of technical means and thanks, inter alia, to the societal and centralized expert control), while not precluding the possibility for users to pick a certain resource and safely surf across .TATAR.

.TATAR thus becomes a unique identifier attributing a given Internet resource to a specific ethnic and cultural community, the mark of its safety and security and observance with certain moral traditions and policies.

As .TATAR suggests unique content focused primarily on Tatar speakers, the gTLD is set to satisfy the needs of Tatars of all ages, walks of life, and countries of residence. Using Tatar as their native language, the users find it easy to key in the name of their favorite resource in the browser window using the Latin script, which is not foreign both to “Russian” Tatars, who used to practice the Latin version of the native alphabet and – even more so- to a broad audience across Newly Independent States, and overseas.
So, all that will propel increase in the number of Internet users across Russia and helps them diversify their user skills and experiences worldwide.

The Applicant understands that the registration policies in the applied-for gTLD are to be in compliance with the standards, requirements and limitations outlined in the Registry Agreement, the Registry-Registrar Agreement (RRA), Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), as well as other general policies, standards and procedures established by ICANN.

In addition, the Applicant intends to establish in the applied-for gTLD supplementary policies, rules, procedures, requirements and limitations according to its mission and purposes. These regulations and rules shall be developed by the Applicant basing both on law of the Russian Federation, the ones of the Republic of Tatarstan, information presented in this Application, and the existing best practices.
The Applicant reserves the right to introduce certain supplementary policies in gTLD .TATAR in the future which shall not contradict standards, procedures, requirements and policies set by the ICANN and the Registry-Registrar Agreement.

Hereinafter Registrar refers to the ICANN-accredited registrar that has entered in Registry-Registrar Agreement with the Registry Operator of applied-for gTLD.

The Registry Operator, Registrars and domain name holders are bound to comply with the conditions stipulated in the aforementioned documents. Registrars are also obligated to include necessary terms and conditions into their agreements with registrants (hereinafter - registration agreements), and must require one’s mandatory familiarization with and acceptance of these terms.

In pursuit of the mission of the new IDN gTLD, the Applicant plans to establish therein the following policies and basic principles:

1) Registration policies

a) The second-level domain names should be registered through ICANN-accredited registrars only. The Registry Operator enters into a Registry-Registrar Agreement with an ICANN-accredited registrar provided the latter fully shares and supports the mission, purpose and philosophy of gTLD .TATAR.

b) Any corporation or individual has the right to register a second-level domain in .TATAR, provided the prospective registrant fully shares and supports the mission, purposes and philosophy of .TATAR.

c) There is no restriction on the number of domain names that may be registered by a registrant during the Landrush and Live periods.

d) A registrant may not register a domain name for the sole purpose of resale or transfer to another entity.

e) It is possible to register domain names that comply with the following conditions:
- being from 3 up to 63 characters long;
- containing only letters of the Latin alphabet (a-z), numbers (0-9) and hyphens (-), or a combination of these;
- starting and ending with a number or a letter, not a hyphen; and
- not containing hyphens in the third and fourth position (eg. ab--cd.TATAR).

f) Registration of domain names is possible for a term between 1 and 10 years, where “year” refers to a full calendar year. Domain name registration may be renewed for any term between 1 and 10 years.

g) A clear and unequivocal identification of domain name registrants will be mandatory in .TATAR, with no possibility for any domain name registrant to retain complete anonymity. While submitting an application for domain name registration, the prospective registrant shall produce a set of data and⁄or documents per the respective list established by the Registry Operator, including commitment on the purpose of the domain registration and 2 recommendations by existing registrants in .TATAR. Where a registrant has made a false warranty or otherwise acted in bad faith in order to register a domain name, the Registry Operator reserves the right to cancel the domain name registration.

h) The Registrars comply with the obligation to collect information about domain name registrants and verify its authenticity, and have the right to request respective documents to prove authenticity of the information given by registrant. Special incentives are planned for Registrars to improve WHOIS data accuracy, including marketing benefits for Registrars being most active in this regard, with all the Registrars being on equal footing in this respect.

i) The Applicant will introduce the Reserved List containing words and symbol combinations that may not be registered.

j) It is prohibited to register domain names which include words contradicting public interests, the principles of humanity or morality, in particular, words of obscene content, slogans of antihuman character, which insult human dignity or religious feelings. Where Registry Operator has detected or got complain regarding such a domain name registered, Registry Operator reserves the right to cancel registration of the domain name. The Applicant will develop a detailed description of procedures and modus operandi for such situations. Measures on identification and prevention of an abusive registration of domain names are considered in a greater detail in the response to Evaluation Question #28 (Abuse prevention and mitigation).

k) The Applicant does not plan to implement any second-level domain names of special type to register third-level domain names. The registrant of a second-level domain name may carry out registration of a third-level domain in the registrant’s domain. The said registrant determines his own terms and procedures for the third-level domain name registration, provided they conform with the overarching registration and usage procedures and policies established for and in the TLD.

l) It is envisaged that first there will be launched a Sunrise period intended for owners of exclusive rights to a trade mark, public agencies, registered mass media, and public associations, followed by the Landrush period during which domain names will be made available for any applicant at a premium price. Where more than one application for a certain second-level domain has been submitted during the Sunrise stage or the Landrush stage, then that domain name shall be set for an auction. Subsequently, registration will be carried out on the First Come First Served principle.

2) Domain name use policy

The Registry Operator is determined to control the use of domain names in accordance with the mission and purposes of the gTLD and with the registrant’s intended purpose as established in the registrant’s registration application. A set of strict measures will be adopted with regard to misuse of domain names aiming to prevent or minimize the phishing, spamming, malware distributing as well as bearing any content contradicting moral and public order, law, and⁄or mission and purpose of .TATAR.

a) Registrant is considered to be fully responsible for misuse (both in terms of malicious conduct or content placement) of the domain name and assumes the responsibility for any possible consequences for the actions, where a registrant allows third parties to post content on resources addressed in Internet with the use of the respective domain name.

b) Where the Registry Operator detects abuse or receives an abuse complaint, then the Registry Operator reserves the right to take any immediate action to stop the abuse within a shortest possible time after such an abuse was exposed, including, but not limited to, cancelling the domain registration. Where it has been found out that the genuine purpose of a registered domain name is not in compliance with the mission and purpose of the .TATAR project, to terminate the abuse the Registry Operator reserves the right to impose on the domain name registrant sanctions to the extent of cancelation domain name registration.

Measures on identification and prevention of an abusive registration of domain names are considered in a greater detail in the response to Evaluation Question #28 Abuse prevention and mitigation.

The Applicant is a legal entity incorporated in the Russian Federation and shall abide by the Russian law. In accordance with the Federal Act of Russian Federation #152-FZ “On personal data”, the Registry Operator exercises a set of measures to protect registrants’ personal data. The Applicant will introduce policies and procedures regarding personal data processing including keeping, transferring and using such data while rendering domain name registration services, transferring the data to the registry, depositing, etc.

Specifically, when a domain name registrant is a private individual, his⁄her written consent is required to display his⁄her data in WHOIS results. The Registry Operator requires from the Registrars to obtain such a written consent from domain name holders. Where a written consent to publish personal data in WHOIS is not granted, such data will be depersonalized.

According to the above mentioned Federal Act, the Registry Operator may not disclose any personal data of individual domain name registrants, but Registrar may disclose the personal data of individuals only upon an official request by a government agency authorized for that in compliance with Russian and international law (law enforcement agencies, courts etc).

The Applicant understands that regular awareness raising and communication with various stakeholders are critical to expansion of .TATAR, as well as to building its identity among other top-level domains both in Russia and overseas. To this effect, the Applicant is committed to reaching out to various stakeholders, including both the primary audience and other audiences concerned, be those academic, social, educational institutions, public associations, public agencies and businesses, with a series of bold and explicit messages packaged in an integrated marketing strategy. The strategy is to ensure a synergy effect from the Registry Operator’s various PR and marketing activities tailored to promote the new gTLD and centering largely on Russian Federation and CIS countries wherein most Tatar-speaking Internet users reside. Meanwhile, special messages and communication channels should be designed to ensure a greater, Europe-wide and global outreach to and engagement of international audiences, including ethnic Tatars and other non-Tatar parties concerned.

At this point, it should be noted that .TATAR is a commercial project whose potential audiences are local (Tatarstan) and nationwide (Russia as a whole) and international (both Tatar and non-Tatar, but sharing the same identity and culture) audiences representing all the above stakeholder groups. Thus, communication campaigns for .TATAR should be multi-faceted and cater to raising awareness among the said communities, key stakeholders and decision makers in the first place, as well as to their encouragement to use the Internet to their own advantage and promote their initiatives online.

The integrated marketing strategy will rest upon four pillars:

a) positioning of .TATAR as a global domain Embassy for both the Tatar-speaking and multilingual audience;
- .TATAR’s positioning is to exhibit its unique qualities and highlight its identity among other gTLDs. That should help reap competitive benefits from .TATAR having a unique, long-lasting presence in the Internet, which appears attractive and consonant with its target audience’s natural drive for ethnic-wise self-identification;
- .TATAR aims at winning the Internet users’ confidence that registration of both profit-making and non-for-profit, social projects in the gTLD should become a common practice for all the parties concerned. Registrations are set to be run perpetually, as .TATAR is going to be a universal, rather than mono-ethnic TLD.

b) Marketing program to back distribution channels and engage registrars (and their resellers) in promotion of .TATAR
The fundamental components of this program are:
- marketing research to improve the Applicant’s knowledge of the target audiences’ needs and ensure a credible feedback from them;
- a program to raise the audiences’ awareness and encourage domain name registrations by cooperating with key players and associations: e.g. using a site as an advertising and sales channel; and .TATAR’s participation in major fairs and exhibitions.
- Dissemination of marketing materials, which allows direct communication with prospective domain name administrators.
- Maintaining a distribution system to engage registrars in support to, and promotion of .TATAR.

c) Awareness raising campaign focusing on a broad audience of Internet users (on the primary market in the first place), which includes the following activities:
- Highlighting benefits and advantages of owning and operating a domain in .TATAR;
- Showcasing individual success stories built on TATAR’s identity and opportunities it offers

d) Educational activities
- Engagement of nonprofit media, including social ones, to diffuse key messages to the audiences concerned;
- Holding workshops and seminars to educate customers about terms and conditions of domains registration of in .TATAR

e) Building a set of incentives to bolster distribution channels for .TATAR’s services. To that end, certain messages will propagate extra benefits from being in and with .TATAR, such as subsidies, membership and organizational bonuses, etc.
Integrated efforts to promote the project through engagement of all the stakeholders concerned and by versatile means will help communicate to the broad audience fundamental principles underpinning the .TATAR project, encourage emerging academic, societal, non-for-profit and business projects and materialize creative ideas of using the new gTLD for the benefit of the Tatar community and beyond.

Similar gTLD applications: (1)