gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.bet	Foggy Way, LLC	donuts.co	View

Q18A CHAR: 7985

ABOUT DONUTS
Donuts Inc. is the parent applicant for this and multiple other TLDs. The company intends to increase competition and consumer choice at the top level. It will operate these carefully selected TLDs safely and securely in a shared resources business model. To achieve its objectives, Donuts has recruited seasoned executive management with proven track records of excellence in the industry. In addition to this business and operational experience, the Donuts team also has contributed broadly to industry policymaking and regulation, successfully launched TLDs, built industry-leading companies from the ground up, and brought innovation, value and choice to the domain name marketplace.

DONUTS’ PLACE WITHIN ICANN’S MISSION
ICANN and the new TLD program share the following purposes:
1. to make sure that the Internet remains as safe, stable and secure as possible, while
2. helping to ensure there is a vibrant competitive marketplace to efficiently bring the benefits of the namespace to registrants and users alike.

ICANN harnesses the power of private enterprise to bring forth these public benefits. While pursuing its interests, Donuts helps ICANN accomplish its objectives by:

1. Significantly widening competition and choice in Internet identities with hundreds of new top-level domain choices;
2. Providing innovative, robust, and easy-to-use new services, names and tools for users, registrants, registrars, and registries while at the same time safeguarding the rights of others;
3. Designing, launching, and securely operating carefully selected TLDs in multiple languages and character sets; and
4. Providing a financially robust corporate umbrella under which its new TLDs will be protected and can thrive.

ABOUT DONUTS’ RESOURCES
Donuts’ financial resources are extensive. The company has raised more than US$100 million from a number of capital sources including multiple multi-billion dollar venture capital and private equity funds, a top-tier bank, and other well-capitalized investors. Should circumstances warrant, Donuts is prepared to raise additional funding from current or new investors. Donuts also has in place pre-funded, Continued Operations Instruments to protect future registrants. These resource commitments mean Donuts has the capability and intent to launch, expand and operate its TLDs in a secure manner, and to properly protect Internet users and rights-holders from potential abuse.

Donuts firmly believes a capable and skilled organization will operate multiple TLDs and benefit Internet users by:

1. Providing the operational and financial stability necessary for TLDs of all sizes, but particularly for those with smaller volume (which are more likely to succeed within a shared resources and shared services model);
2. Competing more powerfully against incumbent gTLDs; and
3. More thoroughly and uniformly executing consumer and rights holder protections.

THIS TLD
This TLD is attractive and useful to end-users as it better facilitates search, self-expression, information sharing and the provision of legitimate goods and services. Along with the other TLDs in the Donuts family, this TLD will provide Internet users with opportunities for online identities and expression that do not currently exist. In doing so, the TLD will introduce significant consumer choice and competition to the Internet namespace – the very purpose of ICANN’s new TLD program.

This TLD is a generic term and its second level names will be attractive to a variety of Internet users. Making this TLD available to a broad audience of registrants is consistent with the competition goals of the New TLD expansion program, and consistent with ICANN’s objective of maximizing Internet participation. Donuts believes in an open Internet and, accordingly, we will encourage inclusiveness in the registration policies for this TLD. In order to avoid harm to legitimate registrants, Donuts will not artificially deny access, on the basis of identity alone (without legal cause), to a TLD that represents a generic form of activity and expression.

DONUTS’ APPROACH TO PROTECTIONS
No entity, or group of entities, has exclusive rights to own or register second level names in this TLD. There are superior ways to minimize the potential abuse of second level names, and in this application Donuts will describe and commit to an extensive array of protections against abuse, including protections against the abuse of trademark rights.

We recognize some applicants seek to address harms by constraining access to the registration of second level names. However, we believe attempts to limit abuse by limiting registrant eligibility is unnecessarily restrictive and harms users by denying access to many legitimate registrants. Restrictions on second level domain eligibility would prevent law-abiding individuals and organizations from participating in a space to which they are legitimately connected, and would inhibit the sort of positive innovation we intend to see in this TLD. As detailed throughout this application, we have struck the correct balance between consumer and business safety, and open access to second level names.

By applying our array of protection mechanisms, Donuts will make this TLD a place for Internet users that is far safer than existing TLDs. Donuts will strive to operate this TLD with fewer incidences of fraud and abuse than occur in incumbent TLDs. In addition, Donuts commits to work toward a downward trend in such incidents.

OUR PROTECTIONS
Donuts has consulted with and evaluated the ideas of international law enforcement, consumer privacy advocacy organizations, intellectual property interests and other Internet industry groups to create a set of protections that far exceed those in existing TLDs, and bring to the Internet namespace nearly two dozen new rights and protection mechanisms to raise user safety and protection to a new level.

These include eight, innovative and forceful mechanisms and resources that far exceed the already powerful protections in the applicant guidebook. These are:

1. Periodic audit of WhoIs data for accuracy;
2. Remediation of inaccurate Whois data, including takedown, if warranted;
3. A new Domain Protected Marks List (DPML) product for trademark protection;
4. A new Claims Plus product for trademark protection;
5. Terms of use that prohibit illegal or abusive activity;
6. Limitations on domain proxy and privacy service;
7. Published policies and procedures that define abusive activity; and
8. Proper resourcing for all of the functions above.

They also include fourteen new measures that were developed specifically by ICANN for the new TLD process. These are:

1. Controls to ensure proper access to domain management functions;
2. 24⁄7⁄365 abuse point of contact at registry;
3. Procedures for handling complaints of illegal or abusive activity, including remediation and takedown processes;
4. Thick WhoIs;
5. Use of the Trademark Clearinghouse;
6. A Sunrise process;
7. A Trademark Claims process;
8. Adherence to the Uniform Rapid Suspension system;
9. Adherence to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy;
10. Adherence to the Post Delegation Dispute Resolution Policy;
11. Detailed security policies and procedures;
12. Strong security controls for access, threat analysis and audit;
13. Implementation DNSSEC; and
14. Measures for the prevention of orphan glue records.

DONUTS’ INTENTION FOR THIS TLD
As a senior government authority has recently said, “a successful applicant is entrusted with operating a critical piece of global Internet infrastructure.” Donuts’ plan and intent is for this TLD to serve the international community by bringing new users online through opportunities for economic growth, increased productivity, the exchange of ideas and information and greater self-expression.

gTLD	Full Legal Name	E-mail suffix	Detail
.网店	Global eCommerce TLD Asia Limited	namesphere.asia	View

According to alexa.com, a leading provider of free global web metrics, taobao.com, China’s largest online e-commerce site, overtook Amazon and Ebay in 2010 to become the world’s number one online shopping site in terms of unique visitors. What is perhaps even more surprising to many in the west is that the website is not very accessible to the rest of the world because it does not provide English language support.

This comes as no surprise considering that with over 500 million users online, China is already the country with the most Internet users by far; the United States is at a distant second, with less than half of that at about 245 million Internet users. In addition to the 1.3 billion population in mainland China, there are another 30 million Chinese in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, and over 40 million Chinese overseas. The Chinese market, fuelled by the continued development of China, is a global one.

Even though it is one of the world’s oldest languages, the interest around the world in the Chinese language has been nothing short of a renaissance. It is reported that millions of (non-Chinese) people around the world are learning Chinese and China is exporting 5,000 teachers every year. With the continuing rapid growth of the economy and e-commerce in China extending to Chinese communities around the world, there is strong potential for a new Chinese IDN gTLD focused in the e-commerce field.

The vision of the .网店 TLD is that the introduction of a dedicated Chinese IDN TLD provides a platform that facilitates trade and mutual benefit between Chinese shops and shoppers connecting with shops and shoppers around the globe.

The mission and purposes of the .网店 TLD are:

1. To develop the namespace into an open global platform for Chinese speaking shops and shoppers around the world;

2. To operate a secure, stable and trusted Chinese IDN gTLD with a reputation as a reliable online shopping destination on the Internet;

3. To bridge Chinese online shops and shoppers with the world and to open a window for global shops and shoppers into the Chinese Internet marketplace; and,

4. To serve the global Chinese language community, promote accessibility of the Internet to the majority of Chinese users whose primary spoken and written language is Chinese with a dedicated Chinese IDN gTLD for e-commerce activities.

Based on the broad but dedicated nature of the .网店 TLD, the Registry aspires to become the domain of choice for companies developing e-commerce services serving the Chinese language community.

In addition to its mission and vision as a new gTLD, Global eCommerce TLD Asia Limited (‘the Registry’) believes in its responsibility as a responsible industry participant to advance competition, enhance consumer trust and promote consumer choice with the development of the TLD:

A. Advance Constructive Competition

The release of IDN TLDs in this new gTLD round is expected to add a significant level of overall competition to the market for domain registrations by introducing an option to register full Chinese domain names based on a Chinese IDN gTLD. The .网店 TLD seeks to especially target to capture the segment of the global market that wishes to connect with the increasingly affluent Chinese consumers.

Furthermore, as a focused and attractive TLD string for Chinese speakers, the .网店 TLD aspires to attract a good portion of registrations from amongst new adopters such as small Chinese mom-and-pop shops that are just getting online.

B. Enhance Consumer Trust

The success of the .网店 TLD will be built on consumer trust. The Registry , supported by ARI Registry Services as its registry back-end services provider and DotAsia Organisation (through Namesphere) as its registry front-end services provider, will put in place world class Abuse Prevention & Mitigation (APM) and Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs) ensuring a trusted domain space. Further details of APM and RPMs beyond ICANN minimum requirements are discussed in response to Q28 & 29.

C. Promote Consumer Choice

Besides being a domain of choice for Chinese shops and shoppers, the Registry believes that the establishment of an open namespace dedicated to e-commerce services provides registrants and companies with a choice over existing generic namespaces as well as being tied to specific e-commerce platforms. That enhances consumer choice by allowing companies to more easily choose and switch between e-commerce platforms and not be tied to any one provider. Companies can also retain the traffic of their users visiting the domain directly, i.e. even if they switch providers, they will not lose the traffic to their domain name.