Describe the mission / purpose of your proposed gTLD

The .CLICK Top-Level Domain

ʺClickʺ was the action that brought you to this web page. For the typical Internet user, clicking is among the most common activities performed online.

ʺClickʺ has entered the worldwide vocabulary as the way to reach a website. It is among the primary means of Internet navigation.

Uniregistry intends to take this common Internet navigation tool and allow registrants to label their content with this clear and simple word.

The creation of .CLICK will create competition in the namespace and allow registrants to shorten their existing website name with a snappy and memorable marketing identity and marketing tool.

Whether providing a source for information or an online portal for sales, .CLICK will be a dedicated, neutrally-operated registry platform for registrants worldwide.

For a significant number of registrants, the most important factor in labeling their content is having a semantically valuable second-level domain name, typically a generic single-word or two-word combination. For these registrants, who have seen the names they would find most desirable previously registered in legacy top-level domains such as .COM, .NET and .INFO, the new .CLICK will provide a strong and memorable alternative to the right of the dot.

Historically, the power of domains names has been at the second-level. Generic words and phrases are powerful labels when the correspond directly to the information, goods or services described on the associated website. While niche top-level domains with strong semantic meaning will be one important development in the future of naming for Internet-based resources, Uniregistry believes that registrants will continue to benefit from broad, all encompassing namespaces like .CLICK.

.CLICK will be a specialty gTLD, with a flat pricing structure and fixed renewal costs, with no material price increases for the first five years. This moderately priced namespace is designed to offer registrants an attractive, competitive registration alternative or complement to existing registrations for the purpose of specialized content.

The registry will strive to bring value to both the users seeking information and the registrants who are offering that information by providing directory services, traffic-generation toolkits, and search-related functionality from central registry-operated resources designed to promote the .CLICK top-level domain and the companies, organizations, and individuals choosing to register .CLICK names.

The registry will implement safeguards to intellectual property interests, while fostering socially and commercially productive growth of its name-space for registrants, stakeholders, and Internet users.

About Uniregistry

Uniregistry Corp. is a new venture formed by established domain name industry veterans to serve as the delegated registry services provider for the .CLICK top-level domain.

The mission and purpose of Uniregistryʹs .CLICK gTLD is to be the pre-eminent general and generic Top Level Domain (GTLD) choice for registrants seeking a memorable, generic top-level domain for the registration of their Second Level Domain (SLD) name.

We want registrants in .CLICK to build their Internet services on a platform designed for long-term security, stability, and predictability in Internet naming. We will provide a sound foundation for registrants and their registrars by offering world-class technical infrastructure, excellence in organizational management, and low-cost, predictable pricing.

Consistent with the policies defined by ICANNʹs original Consensus Policy, ICP-1, that GTLD registries ʺare trustees for the delegated domain, and have a duty to serve the community,ʺ we believe that the registry should be managed both for the benefit of the individuals and companies that will choose to register domain names as well as Internet users worldwide. The honor of serving these constituents carries with it the obligation to work closely with ICANN, its component bodies and supporters, governments, and the registrants that will choose a .CLICK domain name for their Internet identity.

Uniregistry founders have a rich history of service to domain name registrants and have channeled their efforts and long-standing culture of service into this application. Their vision for serving Uniregistryʹs registrants and users and the broader Internet Community is to:

– Establish and execute against high technical standards for registry reliability, security, and stability;
– Bring transparency and neutrality to all registry policies, rules, pricing, and processes;
– Provide increased registration choices and functionality to registrants;
– Research and enable technical achievements in the domain name system (ʺDNSʺ) to foster the development of new services and enhanced security; and
– Put the domain name registrantʹs and end-usersʹ interests in a secure, stable, and predictable service at the heart of all its efforts.

Uniregistry plans to succeed by offering the benefit of domain name selection, at low fixed costs, to a wide spectrum of specialized interests among the potential registrant population worldwide. We believe that a variety of niche market gTLDs, each serving its focused group of registrants will create a stable foundation for a new registry and create material pricing competition for the benefit of all registrants.

Registry operations will be performed by Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. (ʺISCʺ). ISC is the worldʹs preeminent expert in implementation and operation of the Domain Name System and related technologies. ISCʹs domain name software is the reference standard against which all other domain name systems are measured. ISC has been a vanguard in the expansion of the Internet.

ISC has been, and continues to be, one of the worldʹs most important organizations entrusted to provide the Internetʹs essential infrastructures, deeply involved in the development of DNS, DNSSEC, IPv6, DHCP, and BIND. ISC operates the F-root server, one of the 13 root server complexes on the Internet. Since shortly after its founding in 1994, ISC has maintained 100% up-time for F-root and today the servers that implement F-root process approximately 25% of the Internetʹs root traffic. ISC has one of the worldʹs largest operational deployments of DNSSEC. Members of ISCʹs team are among the small group of trusted holders of global master DNSSEC key components.

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

User Benefits

Uniregistry will offer .CLICK as an intuitively relevant top-level domain serving registrants seeking a quality generic alternative to legacy top-level domains.

We will provide affordable, predictable, transparent pricing; freedom to utilize names without micromanagement from the registry administrator; and transparent rules to prevent rights infringement and abuse.

Competition, Differentiation, and Innovation

Uniregistryʹs .CLICK gTLD will increase competition by offering a specialized, semantically meaningful alternative to existing gTLDs. New gTLDs, like .CLICK, allow businesses, organizations and individuals to identify their Internet presence with an easy to register and memorable name without having to purchase the name on the secondary domain name market in the current limited TLD offerings.

The registry will compete with other new market entrants on price, better top-down administrative management, and marketing.

The launch of a number of new, specialized, meaningful and distinctive strings as TLDs will facilitate bottom-up innovation of the naming system. Indeed, the value of each TLD will increase as more are added, because the ability of the SLD.TLD combination string to convey distinct information regarding the target site or service will increase.

Uniregistry plans to offer fixed, flat rate, predictable, and transparent pricing for all registrants in all parts of the world. Our business models do not contemplate price increases or variable pricing over the consumer price index (cpi) in the first five years of operation. We plan to maintain low, affordable prices as a core tenet of our culture of service to our .CLICK registrant population.

Uniregistry does not have any interest in any user group or industry segment signified by the .CLICK TLD. Uniregistry believes that registrants are best served by a neutral registry service without conflicts of interest. Interested entities or cartels composed of market participants seeking to run registries for their markets present a real risk of discriminatory operation of the TLD to the exclusion or detriment of competitors.

We do not believe delegation of a generic TLD to a participant in the designated industry, or to a favored group among several in what may be defined as a community, is appropriate, desirable, or serves the basic values of a free, fair and open Internet. Uniregistry will operate as a neutral registration platform, favoring no specific registrant or group of registrants.

User Experience

Our goal is to provide the highest quality experience for registrants and users. The technical infrastructure behind the registry is built and maintained using systems, software, and procedures from the Internet Systems Corporation (ISC). Internet Systems Corporation (ISC) is the premier provider of domain name registration and publication systems.

ISC maintains and extends the Berkeley Internet Name Daemon (BIND), the most widely deployed domain name server software on the Web. ISCʹs software is the reference standard against which all other domain name systems (DNS) are measured. ISC operates the F-root server, one of the 13 root servers, which facilitate the function of the Global Internet. ISC is an Internet-vanguard: they were among the first to feature multiple exchange points. ISC was first to deploy ANYCAST routing technology to allow a single virtual root server (or any DNS server) to be replicated around the world and was also was among the first to deploy Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). ISC has one of the worldʹs largest operational deployments of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC).

As a result of its contract with ISC, all aspects of the Uniregistryʹs hardware and software implementation are designed and built to be robust, replicated, and recoverable. Uniregistry hardware uses redundant elements such as power supplies, Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) storage, and Error Correcting Code Memory (ECC). All network connectivity uses redundant interfaces, geographically differentiated pathways, and automatic fallbacks. Our databases are built using an architecture that uses master servers with hot standbys, meaning database files can be backed up or moved without stopping services.

All systems will be monitored 24x7x365 by a worldwide array of hardware and performance monitors backed by people at a central Registry Operations Center (ROC). Uniregistry transactions are time-stamped and logged in journals that may be used for audits or data reconstruction.

The partnership between ISC and Uniregistry will allow our gTLD to offer technical excellence at exceptionally affordable pricing.

Registration Policies in Support of the User Experience Goals

Uniregistry believes that first-come first-served is the most fair and inexpensive way to allocate registrations to the public. We plan egalitarian, flat-rate pricing made possible by the long-term payback horizon of our lead investor. Uniregistry plans to implement rate limited registration queues made equitable through a randomized, round robin acceptance of orders. This will make land-rush allocation of SLD registrations more balanced for all participants.

Uniregistry plans to improve the registration and ownership experience of registrants. These plans include ongoing post-registration redemption rights for outgoing registrants with a no-charge, 180 day suspension of expiring domain names to permit former registrants a long window to recover their accidentally expiring or forgotten SLD names, and to protect their residual reputation from harm or confusion with successive registrants. After names expire and an extended redemption period has passed, Uniregistry will delete names within a randomized one month window to avoid gaming of the deleted name stream by speculative entities with superior technical skills. Random deletion coupled with a registration query rate limit will permit would-be registrants of all levels of technical ability an opportunity to register their preferred SLD. Uniregistry plans to implement a ʺmust deleteʺ policy to work against such registrar warehousing of the expiring name stream and to give registrants of all levels of sophistication an opportunity to register their expiring name of choice.

Protecting the Privacy or Confidential Information of Registrants or Users

Uniregistry will work to ensure that registrant information is protected in the manner required by law in relevant jurisdictions. Uniregistry believes well-managed and accurate WHOIS is critical to the success and prosperity of a new namespace and proposes a WHOIS system of unparalleled reliability and accuracy. It also intends to launch an innovative registrant-centric, enhanced two-way ʺwhoisʺ (WHOIS) lookup service to protect registrants, Intellectual Property (IP) interests, and the public alike. This ʺgive-informationʺ to ʺget-informationʺ WHOIS facility will protect the privacy of registrants and the confidential information of registrants and users. It will allow registrants increased transparency about the use of their WHOIS data while at the same time providing accurate information to users of the WHOIS system.

Outreach and Communications

Uniregistry has a unique relationship with a large network of sites that market domain names in existing TLDs. We will leverage that relationship to increase awareness of the .CLICK top-level domain. In addition, we will reach out to registrars by offering a percentage of first dollar gross sales as a marketing fee for registrants.

What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs?

Operating Rules To Reduce Social Costs, and Assignment of Domain Names

New TLDs ought to serve all registrants equally on a first-come, first-served basis, while reserving the opportunity for incumbents to optionally enhance the existing goodwill of their established identities or, alternatively avoid dilution of their Internet identity, without having that choice forced upon them.

Uniregistry believes introduction of new TLDs should not be an opportunity for registries to engage in what is viewed by some as extortion of payment for brand protection. Our financial projections do not include, expect, nor rely upon an assumed profit from defensive registrations. Prior to general registration availability, Uniregistry will conduct a Sunrise period during which names may be reserved or registered on the basis of trade or service marks validated by the Trademark Clearinghouse.

Brand owners who are not interested in using the TLD should not be charged a premium nor risk implicitly threatened consequences of non-registration. Hence, we will offer the opportunity to block trade or service marks in the .CLICK TLD strictly on a cost-recovery basis. While the Trademark Clearinghouse provides an economy of scale for Sunrise programs across registries, Uniregistry will provide further burden reduction with a ʺonce and for allʺ unified multi-TLD Sunrise registration application process. A single Sunrise application can be designated to cover all future TLDs which Uniregistry is entrusted to manage, such that delegation of other TLDs to Uniregistry decreases the net cost, time and inconvenience to any parties engaged in intellectual property protection.

Domain names not allocated during the trademark sunrise process or registry reserved in accordance with ICANN policies and GAC advice, will be made available to all registrants equally on a first-come, first-served basis. At launch, Uniregistry intends to implement randomized and equitable rate-limited registration queues to both handle the load at the registry and also ensure that registrants and their registrars have equal opportunities to register their preferred domain names. Uniregistryʹs business model also does not assume or rely upon reservation and sale of ʺpremium namesʺ or other forms of domain speculation.

Cost Structure and Increases

Uniregistry will offer flat-rate, affordable pricing. It intends to offer certain co-marketing rebates and incentives to all registrars, some of which may be returned to registrants as introductory or bulk registration discounts at the discretion of the registrar.

While not a ʺcommunityʺ application, Uniregistry views its prospective domain registrants as a community to be served, and not exploited. Uniregistry intends to make a contractual commitment to registrants and their registrars not to increase registry prices above cost of inflation for the first five years after launch of the registry. Our initial pricing model allows registry prices to find a market value that may be substantially below our projections, which are based on conservative assumptions of registration volume, rather than locking in a captive market with a deceptively low initial registration cost.

Uniregistry does not believe that registry fees should rise when the costs of other technology services have uniformly trended downward, simply because a registry operator believes it can extract higher profit from its base of registrants. While competition in registrar services by ICANN caused an initial and substantial drop in retail domain registration prices, the fees for registry services have increased over the same span of time. Those increases have not been justified by increased Internet traffic, and thus zone server operational cost, since the cost the underlying technology has trended down while performance has increased. We do not believe registry fees should follow a different trend than comparable technological services. Uniregistryʹs management includes individuals who participated in anti-trust litigation which was brought to combat increases in existing TLD registry charges they believed to be unjustified, and we have no intention of following that path. We believe our best opportunity for prosperity is to offer a reliable, differentiated TLD which will attract increasing numbers of registrants.

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