Dear Harold,We appreciate the chance to answer more formally the Non-Commercial
Constituency's questions posed to Global Name Registry (GNR) and other applicants
during the Bucharest Meeting, so that everyone interested may know our response.
1)
How will you market .org to differentiate it from other TLDs? In particular, how
will you persuade registrars to abide by your marketing plan?
Global Name Registry
proposes several marketing initiatives to differentiate .org from other TLDs.
First, the most important initiative will be the launch of the .orgcentre, a success
centre for .org registrants that will be an open resource center available exclusively
for the benefit of the .org community and for the purpose of reaching out to .org
constituents to determine their needs and interests. No other TLD or applicant
takes the approach of helping registrants build upon the foundation of their domain
names, as opposed to simply registering a name.
Second, to encourage Registrars
to market the TLD consistently, GNR will provide comprehensive marketing toolkits
to all Registrars, which will contain guidelines and content for the communication
and marketing of .org, and for promoting the vision of .org as creating "Community
Capital." Further, GNR will incentivize Registrars to utilize these toolkits
and launch marketing programs that support this vision of "Community Capital."
This will be done through a Cooperative Marketing Fund in which GNR and the Registrars
will collaborate and share costs on marketing efforts that are consistent with the
concept of creating Community Capital.
2) How will you interact with the community?
What structures exist for input from the community, not merely for issues of policy,
but for more run-of-the-mill matters?
Global Name Registry proposes three initiatives
to interact with the community:
First, the creation of a .org Steering Committee
will allow the Registry to get feedback directly from the Non-Commercial Constituency
and the .org community on issues concerning not only policy, but also day-to-day
matters. The Steering Committee will consist of the leadership of the
ICANN Non-Commercial Constituency and Global Name Registry, with the goal being to
take advantage of existing expert resources, rather than risking creating a new structure
that may not work as effectively. The Steering Committee will meet 3-4 times
a year, coinciding with ICANN meetings when possible. The meetings will be
open to all members of the ICANN community and the .org community.
Second, the
.orgcentre will continuously solicit input from .org registrants worldwide in order
to improve the value of the resources it offers and to ensure that such resources
are responsive to the evolving needs of the .org community. This information
will be generated with the help of research organisations, such as Research International,
and feedback from the Steering Committee and broader ICANN community. Research
and feedback are intended to be inclusive, covering general policy issues as well
as more mundane matters affecting .org registrants. The .orgcentre in particular
will focus on issues that some registrants may call "run-of-the-mill," but others
may see as vitally important to their growth, expansion and expression.
Third,
the Causeway Community Foundation (CCF) will allow .org registrants a direct voice
in the distribution of funds to benefit the Internet community. Registrants
will be able to participate in the selection of projects and worthy causes
that they believe will benefit this broader community, such as supporting the participation
of the Non-Commercial Constituency in ICANN and providing travel scholarships to
representatives of non-profit entities to attend ICANN meetings. Global Name
Registry believes that the creation of the CCF is preferable to a fund that supports
only a narrow set of interests, or projects that are unrelated to the Internet community.
3) What will the transition look like from the end-user point of view? In
particular, if certain services will be suspended during the transition, how will
you notify registrants? If procedures exist for emergency updates of information,
how will these work?
Global Name Registry has extensive experience with data migration,
both across continents and across technical platforms. We will ensure a transition
that is virtually unnoticeable to the end user.
Under our transition plan, the
most important services, DNS and Whois, will remain 100% active during the entire
transition. The only service that will require downtime is the SRS, which will be
unavailable for no more than 24 hours (most likely less). This downtime will
be scheduled during a low-traffic period, such as a weekend.
To provide continuity
of registrations, and remove risk for registrants, Global Name Registry will aim
to ensure that no registration will expire during this downtime and the following
seven days.
If there are any further questions we can answer, or information
we can provide, please let me know.
Sincerely,
Andrew K. Tsai
CEO
Global
Name Registry