.barcelona Pre-Register Domain - .barcelona Domain Information

(a) Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD.

The .barcelona TLD application is submitted by the Ajuntament de Barcelona (City Council of Barcelona) in name and on behalf of the .barcelona community.

The goals of the .barcelona TLD are to:

(a) facilitate digital communications from, to and within the .barcelona community;

(b) provide a platform for the development in the digital space of the .barcelona community.

(c) strengthen the image of the .barcelona community in the on-line and off-line world;

This is to be achieved by:

(i) actively designing and developing the .barcelona TLD name space with a focus on the needs of the .barcelona community, involving cultural, welfare, business and public stakeholders;

(ii) allowing registrations of second-level domains in the .barcelona TLD by individuals and organizations with a bona fide nexus to the .barcelona community and its area of influence.

(iii) operating the .barcelona TLD under the stewardship of the City Council of Barcelona as the most representatively democratically elected Institution representing the community. The .barcelona TLD Registry operator has the willingness to cooperate with Fundació puntCAT in order to operate the Registry with the highest standards of excellency and reputation achieved by .cat.

The widest objectives of .barcelona TLD are:

To offer a platform to channel the cultural and identity values and prestige of the City of Barcelona and its area of influence in the global environment. To offer new services to its citizens, visitors and all those interested in the City of Barcelona. To reinforce the e-government policies, open data and smart-city strategies the City is developing following the European Digital Agenda objectives. And to constitute a tool to enhance the leadership strategy of the City Council of Barcelona in different areas, such as: Mobile World Congress, the partnership with other urban communities undertaking the efforts referred in the previous points and the development of a Name Space Mandate to provide new services in urban planning and services for citizens and visitors.

Moreover, the .barcelona TLD will also contribute to increase diversity of the DNS, which is one of the objectives of the gTLD process. The .barcelona TLD will introduce a new and unique example of a domain who serves the area of influence of a global urban community purposes, with its citizens and visitors' needs as its main objective, thus contributing to reflect the cultural diversity on the global DNS.

(See responses under Question 20 below regarding community delineation.)

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

Describe whether and in what ways outreach and communications will help to achieve your projected benefits.

The key benefits of the .barcelona TLD are derived from the intrinsic link of the TLD string to the City of Barcelona and its area of influence, from the specifically dedicated policy to ensure full respect to the objectives of the TLD, from the ability to design and develop the name space mandate from inception and from the clear accountability to the the .barcelona TLD community, being the City Council of Barcelona its most representative Institution.

The specificity to the .barcelona community of the TLD string and the TLD policy enable registrants to communicate in a way that demonstrates their commitment to the .barcelona TLD community. A potential registrant interested in a given domain under .barcelona TLD is more likely to be able to register it because the potential of contention from other parts of the world is reduced due to the policies specifically targeted at serving the needs of the .barcelona community and its are of influence.

The ability to design and develop a planned portion of the name space creates a web of predictable and memorable names that will facilitate access to key resources for users. Predictability relates both the choice of the name and the content the user may expect from a name corresponding to a certain pattern.

The launch process and the community nexus compliance program are designed to achieve a high degree of relevance of the .barcelona domain names for the .barcelona TLD community. The focus on Barcelona's area of influence facilitates clear and easy delineation of the benefits of the TLD. Along with a policy providing strong intellectual property support, this benefits local and international trademark holders as well as local and international Internet users.

Answers to enumerated question points:

b) i.What is the goal of your proposed gTLD in terms of areas of specialty, service levels, or reputation?))

The goal of the .barcelona TLD in terms of specialty is the focus on the needs of the .barcelona TLD community. Service levels will match or exceed the high end of currently existing TLDs. The .barcelona TLD Registry will vigorously build and defend the reputation of the.barcelona TLD as an orderly and progressive TLD for the .barcelona TLD community.

The precedent experience of .cat's reputation as how a success can be measured with criteria based on the highest service levels to its community and an untarnished reputation as a conflicts-free space to the day, helps understand the benefits a TLD can bring to both its own community and the gTLD space as a whole.

The .barcelona TLD aims to the highest standards of quality. In order to protect customers and users, the TLD will comply with any Catalan law regarding consumer protection, product and services labeling, advertising and fair communication as well as with current linguistic protection laws.

b) ii.What do you anticipate your proposed gTLD will add to the current space, in terms of competition, differentiation, or innovation?))

The .barcelona TLD fills a large gap in terms of consumer choice. From a competition standpoint, it creates a level playing field with respect to the market power of large unspecific TLDs.

It is naturally differentiated both by its scope, by its governance model and by its intrinsic meaning, from other TLDs. A city TLD is by definition one of the most suitable tools to widen and raise the profile of the diversity and variety of usages on the Internet.

Innovation is greatly enhanced by the proactive structured development of the name space. The development process involves an open procedure with calls for proposals for purpose-built localized services based on designated portions of the .barcelona TLD name space. This approach helps use innovative potential worldwide for the benefit of the .barcelona TLD community and for the advancement of the global Internet.

b) iii.What goals does your proposed gTLD have in terms of user experience?))

Compared to most existing TLDs, the .barcelona TLD user experience will greatly enhance predictability and memorability of domain names. The community-based focus, the orderly development process and strong intellectual property support ensure that users will generally find the services they are looking for under the names they intuitively tend to use for them.

User experience is improved by the singular specificities of a city TLD, that will provide its community and to those willing to address online communications specifically targeted to this community the means to identify such communications under a TLD explicitly designed to this purpose.

Users will have greater comfort on the context of naming variants: in key portions of the .barcelona TLD name space, alternative names and variants (redirected to the canonical forms) will be systematically reserved and available for activation. Please refer to Q44 for and the IDN table attached there for more details.

Users in the .barcelona TLD community will get increasingly used to the predictability of .barcelona TLD domain names. As a result, they also avoid stumbling upon typo-squatting, robotized pay-per-click traps or domain-for-sale pages.

User experience in terms of customer peace of mind of visitors to the .barcelona TLD commercial web pages has to be safe and the Registry will ask for compliance with any Catalan law regarding consumer protection, product and services labeling, advertising and fair communication.

b) iv.Provide a complete description of the applicant's intended registration policies in support of the goals listed above.))

Registrations under the .barcelona TLD are restricted to bona-fide members of the .barcelona community, and subject to the further requirement that the registrant's actions in the .barcelona TLD community, as well as the registrant's use of the registered domain name, must be:

(i) generally accepted as legitimate; and

(ii) beneficial to the cause and the values of the .barcelona community; and

(iii) commensurate with the role and importance of the registered domain name; and

(iv) in good faith at the time of registration and thereafter.

The registration policies are differentiated between Pre-launch phase, Launch phase and General Availability.

1, Pre-launch phase

During Pre-launch, projects and content provision commitments are actively sought and negotiated, especially for key public-interest portions of the name space. All potential registrants and mandate holders are subject to screening and thorough pre-validation. For more details on the pioneer and the name space program, please see response to Q18 c) below

2.Launch phase

During the Launch phase, all registrations are thoroughly pre-validated; Launch phase pre-validation depends on priority status but will always involve community nexus. For further details about the community nexus, please see response to Q20 e) below. The Launch phase includes 3 categories for registrants with prior rights, and a fourth one, which is in fact, a Landrush, running in parallel in time, but being the lowest in priority. The categories are the following according to hierarchy:

Entities which have a specific vocation in promoting the welfare of the .barcelona community, including Public Administrations with competences in the territory of the city of Barcelona.
Trademark and other distinctive signs rights holders. This includes trademarks validated by the Trademark Clearinghouse designations of origin,
Entities with their legal seat in Barcelona. This category is restricted to legal entities, and does not allow "fantasy names"
No prior rights. Eligible registrants not able to claim any of the priorities listed above will be able to apply during the whole duration of the Launch phase, as a preparation for an orderly and transparent Landrush.

3. Post-launch: General Availability
At General Availability, community nexus is subject to post-validation by way of an extensive compliance program based on the same criteria that form the basis of the TLD: the welfare of the .barcelona community. The ongoing compliance program will regularly be adapted to current needs based on experience and audit findings. Community nexus validation combined with strong protection of trademarks helps stamp out cybersquatting and abusive registrations

b) v.Will your proposed gTLD impose any measures for protecting the privacy or confidential information of registrants or users? If so, please describe any such measures.))

The City Council of Barcelona recognizes first-hand that this is a relevant issue and an evolving area of law in which there is no international standard. The protection of privacy and confidential information of registrants and users will comply with applicable Law, in particular the European Data Protection framework and the Catalan and Spanish Personal Data Protection legislation. Within the bounds of applicable regulations, the Registry will implement anti-data mining measures by way of rate limitation, authenticated access or white-listing/black-listing, as well as tools to prevent unauthorized recourse to repetitive automated access.

The City Council of Barcelona also intends to incorporate contractual language in its Registry Registrar Agreement (RRA) modeled after language which has been included in the template Registry Agreement and which has been successfully utilized by existing ICANN gTLD Registry operators. Specifically, Registry Operator shall notify Registrar of the purposes for which Personal Data submitted to Registry Operation by Registrar is collected, the intended recipients (or categories of recipients) of such Personal Data, and the mechanism for access to and correction of such Personal Data. Registry Operator shall take reasonable steps to protect Personal Data from loss, misuse, unauthorized disclosure, alteration or destruction. Registry Operator shall not use or authorize the use of Personal Data in a way that is incompatible with the notice provided to registrars. Registry Operator may from time to time use the demographic data collected for statistical analysis, provided that this analysis will not disclose individual Personal Data and provided that such use is compatible with the notice provided to registrars regarding the purpose and procedures for such use.

Finally, the City Council of Barcelona will propose to ICANN, through the Registry Agreement negotiations, a Whois service that allows individual registrants to opt-out from publishing their personal contact data, as other existing gTLD Registries have done. If this option is not available during the contractual negotiations, The City Council of Barcelona would submit such proposal after delegation, though the New Registry Services procedure.

((Describe whether and in what ways outreach and communications will help to achieve your projected benefits.))

Use of outreach programs to achieve TLD goals: the .barcelona TLD has outreach programs adapted to each phase of its introduction.

The pre-launch negotiations involving calls for projects that foster the intuitive usability of the .barcelona TLD with a focus on the needs of the .barcelona TLD community. Once these domain names are active, they become an outreach mechanism in their own right because they establish the touch-and-feel of the .barcelona TLD in the minds of the users.

The launch phase will involve outreach mechanisms that specifically leverage participation by the local public services, locally relevant trademarks and local actors.

Promotion codes distributed through community-specific channels are a form outreach available at any time. They are also a low-cost method to achieve community nexus and to prevent abusive registrations.

(c) What operating rules will you adopt to eliminate or minimize social costs (e.g., time or financial resource costs, as well as various types of consumer vulnerabilities)? What other steps will you take to minimize negative consequences/costs imposed upon consumers?
Answers should address the following points:
i.How will multiple applications for a particular domain name be resolved, for example, by auction or on a first-come/first- serve basis?
ii.Explain any cost benefits for registrants you intend to implement (e.g., advantageous pricing, introductory discounts, bulk registration discounts).
iii.Note that the Registry Agreement requires that registrars be offered the option to obtain initial domain name registrations for periods of one to ten years at the discretion of the registrar, but no greater than ten years. Additionally, the Registry Agreement requires advance written notice of price increases. Do you intend to make contractual commitments to registrants regarding the magnitude of price escalation? If so, please describe your plans.

The Pre-launch, Launch and General Availability phases of the .barcelona TLD are designed to minimize social costs and negative externalities.

The community-based approach of the .barcelona TLD (please see answers to Q20 below for more details), with its rules for Eligibility, Name Selection, Accepted Use and vigorous Enforcement practices (see answer to Q29 below for additional details) ensure that trademark owners and other right holders will not face the usual costs of monitoring, and defending against abuses. Nor would they feel impelled to defensively register their names, identities, products, services or brands in the .barcelona TLD to prevent abuses.

The .barcelona Registry will furthermore implement vigorous and comprehensive general malicious conduct (see answer to Q28 below for additional details) prevention and mitigation policies to minimize the number, importance and effects of abuses harming the general users.

The different registration phases protect potential registrants and potentially affected parties while maximizing the value of the name space to its registrants and users.
This approach is based on the premise that extensive screening efforts by the Registry in the early stages will create a fair and orderly name space with lower compliance costs in the long term.

In phases and areas where the first-come-first-served principle tends to yield
perverse results, alternative modes are used. These include:

1) A pioneer name program and name space mandate program. These programs adjudicate domain names based on an open and transparent project selection process. This process is highly economical in terms of social costs and yields substantial external benefits.
The pioneer name and name space mandate programs are part of the the .barcelona TLD outreach program. It begins before delegation of the TLD. In terms of workload, it mainly affects proposers who themselves are required to demonstrate support for their projects. Support will be required to come from the segment of the community concerned with the respective portion of the name space. Given the high value of the resulting on-line resources for the community and the public interest, and given the economic benefits that can be derived from their operation, the administrative effort is largely justified. To further protect affected parties, all adjudications in this phase have a safety-valve clause, allowing for later adjustments based on community input. The principle of the safety-valve is that affected parties can obtain adjustments to a component of a mandate if they propose (and commit to) an improved use of the underlying domain names from a public interest perspective.

2) Launch phase: there will be a long, single launch phase (simultaneous sunrise and landrush) based on domain applications. Domain applications are not domain registrations: multiple applications are accepted for any domain name. (By contrast, only a single registration can exist for a given domain.)

All applications are published on the Whois service. Applicants mark their prior rights, if any, in the application. There are four categories: entities which specific goal is to promote the welfare of the .barcelona community; trademark-based applications; legal entities with their legal seat in Barcelona; and no prior rights.

For a given domain, the highest priority applications will be validated with respect to the claimed priority right. If there is more than one application for the same domain in a given category (or subcategory), a contention resolution process begins. The contention resolution process allows agreement between contenders (withdrawal and refund of application), random selection (if all contenders agree), mediation and arbitration and, as a tie-breaker of last resort, auction. In most circumstances, the agreement or auction are the cheapest solution for affected parties and are likely to be selected. The options available are thus designed to promote quiet resolution at minimal effort, yet allowing the appropriate differentiated handling of exceptional cases where the quiet mechanisms (withdrawal and auction) could lead to perverse results.This mechanisms have arguably the lowest social costs and the highest public benefits while protecting individual stakeholders from excessive burdens.

Answers to enumerated question points:

c) i. How will multiple applications for a particular domain name be resolved, for example, by auction or on a first-come/first- serve basis?))

As described above, during pre-launch and launch phase, the first-come/first-served principle is NOT applied. An optimized contention resolution process will be established by the Registry Operator, taking into consideration the public interested mandate embodied by the City Council of Barcelona, and the extremely successful and conflicts-free launch .cat experience, as was managed by Fundació puntCAT. .barcelona TLD will be a secure and trusted name space.

c) ii. Explain any cost benefits for registrants you intend to implement (e.g., advantageous pricing, introductory discounts, bulk registration discounts).))

The focus of the .barcelona TLD is bottom-line cost to registrants and stakeholders, not the direct per-unit cost. The bottom-line cost is greatly reduced by avoiding contention between legitimate community-based applicants and speculators.

c) iii. Note that the Registry Agreement requires that registrars be offered the option to obtain initial domain name registrations for periods of one to ten years at the discretion of the registrar, but no greater than ten years. Additionally, the Registry Agreement requires advance written notice of price increases. Do you intend to make contractual commitments to registrants regarding the magnitude of price escalation? If so, please describe your plans.))

The .barcelona Registry is committed to provide domain name registration services in accordance with the requirements, notices and periods set forth in the Registry Agreement. The .barcelona TLD will be based on predictability regarding pricing. The .barcelona TLD Registry-Registrar Agreement will not contain specific or non-standard clauses regarding price escalation between the .barcelona Registry and its registrars.

The .barcelona TLD business plan is designed to avoid any future necessity to increase registration price in real terms. The fundamental principle is prudence: starting from conservative price levels and gradually lowering them. This method ensures sufficient financial reserves, favors optimal allocation of domain names, helps prevent misuse and supports an orderly registration process.

(a)Provide the name and full description of the community that the applicant is committing to serve. In the event that this application is included in a community priority evaluation, it will be scored based on the community identified in response to this question. The name of the community does not have to be formally adopted for the application to be designated as community-based. The .barcelona TLD application is submitted by the City Council of Barcelona on behalf of the .barcelona community, and will serve the needs of the .barcelona community, comprising individuals with residence in the City of Barcelona and legal entities with a bona fide presence, direct or indirect, in the Barcelona area or in Barcelona as the capital of Catalonia. Concrete expressions of these bona fide presence and how eligibility requirements criteria will be determined, could be, among others, the following: - residence in Barcelona, or - the pursuit of lawful business activities in the Barcelona area, or - the pursuit of cultural activities in the Barcelona area, or - any other kind of direct or indirect presence that is generally accepted as legitimate for, and conducive to the welfare of, the Barcelona community. Registration of domain names under the .barcelona TLD is restricted to members of the .barcelona TLD community and subject to the further requirement that the domain name registrant's presence in the Barcelona area and the registrant's use of the domain name must be: - of a kind that is generally accepted as legitimate and - conducive to the welfare of the .barcelona community and - of commensurate quality to the role and importance of the respective domain name where applicable as according to the name space mandate policies as developed by the Registry Operator of the .barcelona TLD, and - abide to the Catalan law regarding consumer protection, product and services labeling, advertising and fair communication, and - compliant with current linguistic protection laws, and - based on good faith at the time of registration and thereafter. Answers to enumerated question points: •How the community is delineated from Internet users generally. Such descriptions may include, but are not limited to, the following: membership, registration, or licensing processes, operation in a particular industry, use of a language.)) Being the objective of .barcelona TLD to serve the .barcelona community, the community is defined by those residents and Internet content creators and end users using on-line communications in Barcelona or related to the Barcelona area of influence. •How the community is structured and organized. For a community consisting of an alliance of groups, details about the constituent parts are required.)) The .barcelona community is a longstanding multi-stakeholder, multi-layered structure of humane, economic, cultural, and industrial relations around the City of Barcelona as the capital of Catalonia. The City Council of Barcelona is its main representative democratically elected Institution. •When the community was established, including the date(s) of formal organization, if any, as well as a description of community activities to date.)) The community understood as a urban humane structure has its roots in the 200 BC, as a roman settlement, and has had an uninterrupted continuity since then. •The current estimated size of the community, both as to membership and geographic extent.)) Membership is not applicable due to the nature of the community. The community and its influence has spread well beyond its strict modern City limits of only 100 square kilometers. Barcelona City has 1.700.000 inhabitants, being the 11th most populated in the European Union, and has an immediate area of influence around 4 million more. Its GDP in 2008 was €117 billion, and itʹs the 4th most visited City in Europe.

(b) Explain the applicant's relationship to the community identified in 20(a). Explanations should clearly state: i) Relations to any community organizations. ii) Relations to the community and its constituent parts/groups. ii) Accountability mechanisms of the applicant to the community. b) i. Relations to any community organizations. The City Council of Barcelona, the democratically elected Institution representing its citizens ensures the democratically and social legitimacy of the .barcelona TLD b) ii. Relations to the community and its constituent parts/groups. The City Council of Barcelona and Fundació puntCAT do and will collaborate with a wide array of community organizations for economic development, welfare, culture, education. This includes cooperation with community organizations that specialize in the development of the digital economy, mobile communications, smart cities, open data, e-government and information society. b) iii. Accountability mechanisms of the applicant to the community. The local government of the City of Barcelona is democratically elected by the residents. The governance process for the .barcelona TLD will be set up by the will include appropriate consultation mechanisms for public authorities and private stakeholders. As the City Council of Barcelona itself assumes the stewardship of the .barcelona TLD, the ultimate line of accountability from the .barcelona TLD governance body goes through the office of the elected Mayor and Deputy Mayors to the electorate.

(c) Provide a description of the community-based purpose of the applied-for gTLD. Descriptions should include: c) i. Intended registrants in the TLD. Members of the community as described above. c) ii. Intended end-users of the TLD. The intended end-users are as varied as anybody with a certain interest in the .barcelona TLD community and its activities and the contents available under any .barcelona TLD domain name. c) iii. Related activities the applicant has carried out or intends to carry out in service of this purpose. All the activities developed so far by the the City Council of Barcelona have been focused on raising awareness in regard to the development of the .barcelona TLD space, and thus, consulting with Fundació puntCAT was agreed, due to its know-how and proved experience in the management of a community TLD. The activities of the the City Council of Barcelona from the delegation of the TLD onwards will be twofold: To foster the development of the .barcelona TLD space for the benefit of the .barcelona TLD community, and to promote the development of the .barcelona TLD name space for the benefits of the citizens and visitors of the City of Barcelona and other members of the community as previously described, being both objectives clearly are hand in hand with each other. c) iv. Explanation of how the purpose is of a lasting nature. The purpose of the .barcelona TLD is indeed of a lasting nature. The City, as referred in 18 and in 20 b), had a centuries' longstanding existence and continued presence, and a firm and vibrant community with well established links to globalized world.

(d)Explain the relationship between the applied-for gTLD string and the community identified in 20(a). Explanations should clearly state: relationship to the established name, if any, of the community. relationship to the identification of community members. any connotations the string may have beyond the community. d) i. Relationship to the established name, if any, of the community. The name of the gTLD string matches the name of the community, based on the name of the City. d) ii. Relationship to the identification of community members. The identification is immediately recognizable, being the name of the TLD that of the community, and its unique and well-known significance and use. d) iii. Any connotations the string may have beyond the community. The word "BARCELONA" has no other meaning in Catalan. Neither in Spanish, French, English, nor in any other relevant language. It may have different meanings in other languages unknown to the applicant, but completely irrelevant to the community or to the purposes of the TLD.

. (e) Provide a complete description of the applicant's intended registration policies in support of the community-based purpose of the applied-for gTLD. Policies and enforcement mechanisms are expected to constitute a coherent set. Descriptions should include proposed policies, if any, on the following: i..Eligibility: who is eligible to register a second-level name in the gTLD, and how will eligibility be determined. ii. Name selection: what types of second-level names may be registered in the gTLD. iii. Content/Use: what restrictions, if any, the Registry operator will impose on how a registrant may use its registered name. iv. Enforcement: what investigation practices and mechanisms exist to enforce the policies above, what resources are allocated for enforcement, and what appeal mechanisms are available to registrants. e) i. Eligibility: who is eligible to register a second-level name in the gTLD, and how will eligibility be determined. Eligibility requirement policies will be developed according to the definition of the .barcelona TLD community, and a diversity of proceedings will be implemented to ensure accommodation of all its bona fide legal members. Registrations under the .barcelona TLD are restricted to those fulfilling these two requirements: a) bona-fide membership of the .barcelona community on the Internet, as described above in 20 a). b) subject to the further requirement that the domain name registrant's presence in the Barcelona area and the registrant's use of the domain name must be: - of a kind that is generally accepted as legitimate and - conducive to the welfare of the .barcelona community and - of commensurate quality to the role and importance of the respective domain name where applicable as according to the name space mandate policies as developed by the Registry Operator of .barcelona TLD, and - abide to the Catalan law regarding consumer protection, product and services labeling, advertising and fair communication, and - based on good faith at the time of registration and thereafter. These conditions must always be fulfilled. The strength of the validation is kept in line with the importance of the underlying domain name based on the assumption that a typical user would reasonably make. To facilitate validation, registrants are required to state their intended use of the registered domain name. A false statement of intended use is an indication of bad faith and can be the basis for the suspension of the domain name. The validation may be assisted through pre-identification of potential registrants using existing community channels, through membership of qualified Organizations or the distribution of Promotion Codes to members. After the launch phase, the validation mode goes from pre-validation to post-validation, with statistically targeted random validation, backed up by an ongoing enforcement program. e) iii. Name selection: what types of second-level names may be registered in the gTLD. The fundamental rule on which name selection is based is part of the policy principles: the domain names may be registered considering the registrant‘s relationship to the .barcelona TLD community, and the use of the domain name must be commensurate to the role and relevance of the domain name. The role and importance of the domain name registrations is based on the meaning an average user would reasonably make of a domain name in the context of the .barcelona TLD community. e) iii. Content/Use: what restrictions, if any, the Registry operator will impose on how a registrant may use its registered name. The City Council of Barcelona, as the Registry Operator, will adopt policies to ensure that the use of the domain names are: a) generally accepted as legitimate according to the Laws b) conducive to welfare of the .barcelona community. c) based on good faith at registration and thereafter. This will be verified according to: 1) the intended use statement supplied by the domain registrant at the time of registration and/or the explicit agreement to the terms and conditions including the .barcelona TLD use policies. 2) an ongoing enforcement program. e) iv. Enforcement: what investigation practices and mechanisms exist to enforce the policies above, what resources are allocated for enforcement, and what appeal mechanisms are available to registrants. The purpose of the enforcement program is to protect the credibility of the .barcelona TLD for its local and international public. In particular, upholds the community-based purpose of the .barcelona TLD and helps prevent misuse or malicious behaviour. The enforcement program is based on statistically targeted random investigations and on a complaint follow-up process. The statistical targeting is strongly automated and involves the use of search engines and the analysis of Registry data related to behaviour of registrants. Depending on the type of misuse to be investigated, web site content or content sent to victims of abuse will reviewed and analyzed by investigators. Enhanced investigation takes place if the registrant has a bad track record in terms of compliance with the rules of the .barcelona TLD. Other violations of public record (such as UDRP or URS cases) will also be taken into account. . If content or use of an existing .barcelona TLD domain demonstrate that the registrant has shown bad faith by stating a false intended use, the domain name is suspended. If a registrar is complicit with systematic violations of the .barcelona TLD policies or causes an unacceptable burden for the validation and enforcement program by negligence, the Registry can restrict that registrar's access to the new registrations, subject its inventory of .barcelona TLD domains to enhanced investigation and require it conduct its own post-validation program. An appeals process will be available for all administrative measures taken in the framework of the enforcement program. The first instance of the appeals process is managed by the Registry service provider. The City Council of Barcelona will engage the relevant ADR providers in the City to establish a second instance appeal process.

Q22 - Protection of Geographic Names

1. Reserved List of Geographic Names
In accordance with Specification 5 of the proposed TLD Registry Agreement published as Attachment to Module 5 of the Applicant Guidebook by ICANN, and with Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) advice on geographic names at the second level, the .barcelona Registry will put the following names on the reserved list, therefore making them unavailable for registration or any other use:

* the short form (in English) of all country and territory names contained on the ISO 3166-1 list, as updated from time to time, including the European Union, which is exceptionally reserved on the ISO 3166-1 list, and its scope extended in August 1999 to any application needing to represent the name European Union;
* the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, Technical Reference Manual for the Standardization of Geographical Names, Part III Names of Countries of the World; and
* the list of United Nations member states in 6 official United Nations languages prepared by the Working Group on Country Names of the United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names.

Technically, this is achieved by using the advanced domain name rule engine that is part of the CORE Registration System and described in detail in the answer to Question 28. As laid out there, the underlying set of checks can be tuned to block registrations of .barcelona names based on various syntactic rules, multiple reserved names lists, and patterns. Prior to the launch of the .barcelona TLD, the rule engine will be configured in accordance with the reserved list mandated by Specification 5, which means that the listed names are not available for registration by registrars.


2. Additional protected names
The .barcelona Registry intends to translate all the list containing the names in the lists above to Catalan, besides English and the other five official UN languages, as Catalan is an official local language. Otherwise those names would not be effectively protected in relevant and meaningful way for the community served by the .barcelona TLD.

3. . Exceptions
However, the .barcelona Registry recognizes that there may be cases where a request to register and use a geographic name at the second level should be considered legitimate, valid and useful.
Examples of such cases are:
* the local consulate wishing to use that name for itself, with the agreement of its Government;
* the countryʹs or territoryʹs relevant authorities wishing to use it, e.g. for touristic or cultural promotion purposes;
* other legitimate purposes.

For registration requests from the relevant public authority, the.barcelona Registry will put in place the procedure agreed between the GAC and Afilias for the .info gTLD, as referenced in the letter written by Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi, GAC Chair, on Sept 9, 2003; see
https://gacweb.icann.org/download/attachments/1540128/dotinfocircular1.pdf.

The current procedure is:
Technically, the registrar needs to use the authorization code supplied by the registrant as the domain authinfo in the EPP ʹʹdomain:createʹʹ request, which will let the request bypass the rule engineʹs blocking mechanism and permit the registration.

4. Additional monitoring
The .barcelona Registry does not plan to monitor use of geographic names below the second level (i.e. subdomains used by a .barcelona TLD domain name registrant), as those procedures are both difficult and ineffective. Available dispute resolution mechanisms are a more adequate resolution procedure in cases where third or higher level domains unduly use country or territory names.