.vlaanderen Pre-Register Domain - .vlaanderen Domain Information

Response to Question 18a - Mission/Purpose

Applicant is introducing the application for the .vlaanderen gTLD with the support of the Government of Flanders.

Applicant (DNS.be vzw) is the registry operator for .be, the country code TLD for Belgium. Belgium is a federal state that consists of a federal governmental level (representing the country) and several regional governmental levels (representing the different regions Flanders (Vlaanderen), Brussels (Brussel/Bruxelles) and Wallonia (Wallonie)) and each having distinct competences. Both the federal level and the regional levels have their own Governments and Parliaments, responsible for policy making and execution. The federal level is competent for matters such as defense, justice, foreign policy, interior/home affairs and social security while the regional levels have authority for matters such as economic affairs, foreign trade, energy, housing, education, employment, environment, social welfare, transport, culture and sport.

The Government of Flanders (also known as Flemish Government), representing the region of Flanders, decided to participate in the new gTLD application program with the aim of having the gTLD .vlaanderen attributed to the Applicant. The Government of Flanders published an official request for proposals (RFP) on 23 December 2011 in order to award a service concession contract to a private partner. The private partner would be responsible for applying for the gTLD .vlaanderen through ICANN's new gTLD program and - if attributed by ICANN - for managing the gTLD as its registry operator for a (extendable) period of 10 years. DNS.be vzw responded to the RFP by submitting a proposal and was subsequently selected by the Government of Flanders and awarded the service concession contract on 20 March 2012.

According to the Applicant, the purpose of the TLD is manifold, as will be further explained below:

i. enable inhabitants, companies, organizations and local government institutions the usage of specific domain names that are closely linked with the geographical region in which they are residing;
ii. enhance the digital presence of the region of Flanders;
iii. strengthen the visibility of Flanders as a region and as a brand name;
iv. allow interested parties from within and outside the region of Flanders to make use of the new gTLD in order to reach potential customers of the region with their offer for services or goods;
v. having a gTLD, matching its geographical name, at its disposal will allow the autonomous region of Flanders to further develop its identity both on-line as off-line.

Response to Question 18b - Mission/Purpose

According to the Applicant, the proposed gTLD has clear goals, offering more choice and enhanced competition, resulting in a number of benefits for registrants and Internet users. At the same time, a clear and open registration policy has to guarantee a fair, broad and non-discriminatory access to the new gTLD in full conformity with national and supra-national rules and regulations. The new gTLD will be operated on a strictly not-for-profit basis thus allowing the community to take full advantage of its existence. This will lead to fair prices for domain name registrations and renewals and re-investment of resources of the Registry Operator in further enhancement (technical, operational, marketing) of the proposed gTLD.

i. The goal of the .vlaanderen gTLD is to provide users and registrants (both private persons and businesses) with the possibility to choose for a domain name registration with an obvious link to and entirely matching with the geographical region of Flanders.

ii. From the Applicant's perspective, .vlaanderen will bring a high degree of recognition and specialization to the currently existing name space. Where in most cases the specific connotation that has been initially given to the gTLDs (or even ccTLDs) has disappeared, the .vlaanderen top-level domain will be unambiguously linked to the region of Flanders and will provide a unique online identifier for local governments, businesses and private persons from within that region. Alternatively, it will also provide the resources for businesses and private persons from outside the region of Flanders but with a clear link to the region (e.g. expatriates) to get in touch with the community of that region. As many domain names are already registered in the national .be top-level domain (private individuals and businesses from Flanders taking the largest part of those registrations) the new .vlaanderen TLD will provide many users with a new chance to register those domain names that are linked to their interests or business.

iii. As mentioned in the vision / mission statement before, some of the key reasons why Applicant is applying for .vlaanderen are:
1. Direct link between proposed TLD and the region of Flanders, enabling its inhabitants, businesses and government entities to apply for a domain name with local character;
2. Enhance digital presence of the region of Flanders and strengthen its visibility and identity;
3. Assurance for users and registrants that TLD will be operated in their best interest given the not-for-profit model and the fact that the national ccTLD operator will be the registry operator for .vlaanderen;

iv. The Applicant intends to implement the following policies and procedures with respect to the registration of domain names in the .vlaanderen top-level domain including but not limited to:
1. Reservation and exclusion of domain names. These names include:
a) descriptive names, referring to the actual day-to-day business activities of the Applicant;
b) geographical names, referring to the government entities or public authorities within the Flanders region;
c) domain names considered illegal, harmful or not suited for public usage can be put on an exclusion list and will not be available for registration;
2. Launch of the TLD:
a) Sunrise: allow government entities, physical persons, organizations and companies that meet the eligibility requirements in force at that point in time to choose the domain names that are identical to their rights (trademarks, trade names, geographical names, etc.);
b) General availability: other available domain names may be registered by physical persons, organizations and entities that meet the eligibility requirements in force at that point in time to choose the domain names in accordance with the applicable terms and conditions.
3. Security measures regarding quality of whois data:
a) Screening of whois data of newly registered domain names: upon registration all whois data linked to new domain names will be examined on obviously false, fraudulent or missing information in order to discourage fraudulent or suspicious registrations;
b) Screening of whois data of registrations made by non-Belgian users: upon registration all whois data linked to new domain names of users from outside Belgium will be examined in order to verify the accuracy of the provided contact information;
c) If the examination under a) or b) reveals fraudulent or inaccurate information that obstructs the identification of the domain name holder, Applicant will initiate a breach procedure allowing the registrant to complement and correct his contact information where needed within a time period of 14 days. If registrant fails to correct his contact information, the domain name will be deleted by Applicant.

v. Given the fact that the Applicant is an organization that is established in Belgium, it is subject to both national and European privacy and data protection rules and practices. Applicant intends to provide users and registrants of .vlaanderen the same level of protection that is also in place for users and registrants of .be domain names. In that perspective a distinction will be made between corporate registrations (registrations for companies, organizations, government agencies and other legal persons) and private registrations (registrations for private individuals). While full whois disclosure is intended for corporate registrations, private registrants will be allowed to opt out for full whois disclosure of the personal data linked to their domain name registrations. Nevertheless, all registrants will have the full obligation to provide (during registration of the domain name) and maintain (as long as they remain registrant of the domain name) full and accurate whois data. This is necessary in order to allow Applicant to disclose the contact data of the registrant in situations where the applicable data protection rules allow such a disclosure e.g. when a third party wants to start a litigation against the registrant for alleged breach of specific rights the third party could have in relation to the domain name registered by the registrant. Disclosure of the personal data requires the party seeking such a disclosure to follow a specific procedure and file a motivated request with Applicant. After legal examination and verification of the motivation of the requestor, personal data may be communicated to requestor by Applicant. The obligation to provide and maintain accurate whois data in combination with the enhanced protection for private registrants is specifically aimed at preventing practices whereby registrants deliberately provide inaccurate or fake personal data at the time of registration. Such occurrences would jeopardize the overall quality and reliability of the databases managed and operated by Applicant and might have a negative influence on how the .vlaanderen TLD would be perceived by users.

The Applicant intends to achieve the above listed benefits by reaching out and communicate in the following ways:

- The Government of Flanders and the Applicant will establish working groups and committees to determine the details of the registration policy, the rules for sunrise phases and applications, possible exclusion of domain names (exclusion list), protection of rights mechanisms such as alternative dispute resolution (ADR), pre-sunrise reservation possibilities for governments. All policies agreed upon will be communicated in a broad way in order to assist registrars and registrants and help them prepare their applications and registration requests. As the Applicant is the registry operator for the .be ccTLD, it already has a solid reputation and will not have to face difficulties in getting widespread attention for the communication of policy details for the new gTLD;
- The Applicant is under contract by the Government of Flanders to operate the new gTLD on a pure not-for-profit model and Applicant is in itself a not-for-profit entity. This means that the growing number of new registrations and renewals will create additional income over time while costs stay more or less at the same level. This will allow Applicant to lower the set fee levels for new registrations and renewals. By lowering the fee levels, access to the new gTLD will be further widened, providing also very small businesses and individual users opportunity to register domain names;
- The Government of Flanders has a very clear determination to use the new gTLD as the primary TLD for all its administrations, agencies, ministries, etc. This means that those entities will gradually migrate from the .be domain names towards the .vlaanderen equivalents. The Government of Flanders will of course make usage of .vlaanderen in all publications and statements, both internally as addressed to the public at large. This will assist in making the new gTLD visible and tangible for registrants and Internet users;
- The Applicant has introduced - in its answer to the request for proposals - a communication plan to support the launch of the new gTLD and has allocated the necessary financial resources for this marketing/communication effort. As the level of registrations increases, a part of the additional income will be re-invested in follow-up marketing campaigns. It is notable that the Applicant has already a partnership in place with a media agency that enables access to publicity adds of official Belgian (both Flemish as French) TV-networks oriented towards the large audience (messages of public benefit);
- The Government of Flanders has a specific and global action plan (ViA, which stands for Vlaanderen in Action) with the ambition to rank Flanders amongst the absolute top performing regions of Europe by 2020. The Government's intention to apply for the .vlaanderen gTLD is also part of the program's objectives and underlines the clear determination to develop the proposed gTLD in an active way with the aim to create added value for individuals and businesses in the region of Flanders.

Response to Question 18c - Mission/Purpose

i. The Applicant will organize the registry operation for .vlaanderen in such a manner that it will minimize the likelihood of having disputes about multiple applications for a particular domain name. This can be achieved in the following ways:

1. Prior to the launch of the Sunrise Period for the .vlaanderen top-level domain, the Government of Flanders and the Applicant will decide whether or not to work with exclusion- and/or reservation lists. An exclusion list would enumerate all .vlaanderen domain names that are blocked from registration and will not become available (not during the Sunrise Period and not after the start of the normal registration process). This list could contain words, expressions or phrases that are considered harmful, illegal or inappropriate in public use. A reservation list could be established for multiple purposes. It could provide opportunity for the Applicant to reserve for itself a number of domain names corresponding to its function as registry operator e.g. nic.vlaanderen or registry.vlaanderen. It could also provide the different government entities the same possibility to reserve for themselves a number of domain names that correspond with the name of their organizations or their geographical descriptions. Important is that the existence of such lists need to be communicated to registrars and public at large well in advance of the start of the Sunrise Period so that it becomes clear that those domain names are unavailable;

2. Prior to the start of normal registrations based upon the "first come, first served" principle, there will be a multi-phased Sunrise Period. During phase 1 holders of national and European established trademarks, governmental entities seeking to protect their geographical or social name and entities disposing of a protected designation of origin or geographical indications, will be able to apply for the domain name corresponding to the rights they wish to claim. In phase 2 registrants will be able to apply for domain names corresponding with their trade name or company name. Finally, it is also under consideration to provide a 3rd phase during which private individuals would be allowed to apply for the domain name corresponding with their family name. In all phases of the Sunrise Period, applicants will have to substantiate the applied for domain names with legal proof of the rights they wish to claim. The invoked rights will need to match exactly with the domain name for which the application is introduced and all applications will be validated by an independent reviewer that will perform that function under contract awarded by the Applicant. Sunrise applications will receive a time stamp and will be validated in chronological order as far as the applicant manages to accompany his application with the required legal proof for the right he wishes to invoke;

3. At the start of the normal registration process, subject to the actual domain name registration policy adopted by the Applicant and in force at the time of registration, domain names will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. As registry operator for .be and as operational, technical partner during the start-up of the .eu TLD, Applicant has acquired the necessary experience to cope with high volume demands for registration of domain names and will deploy adequate technical resources for the start of the so called Landrush phase avoiding to the maximum extent possible any loss of time, elevated costs or high degrees of frustration for individual or business users wishing to register a .vlaanderen domain name.

4. It is to be noted that Applicant does not seek to introduce procedures or methods enabling reservation of domain names or so called waiting-list services. Applicant has considerable experience with Sunrise and Landrush procedures (both for .be and for .eu) and has noticed that service offers enabling applicant-registrants to make a reservation for a specific domain name often involve high costs without any guarantee that the desired domain name can be obtained during the sunrise period or afterwards at the start of normal registrations.

ii. The Applicant is a not-for-profit organization and is under its' concession contract with the Government of Flanders obliged to operate and manage the .vlaanderen TLD on a not-for-profit basis. This means that revenues coming from new registrations and renewals will be directly linked with the costs of operating the TLD without any aim of generating profit for the Applicant. It is Applicant's view that fees for new registrations and renewals could decrease considerably when the registration of domain names takes up. Under its concession contract with the Government of Flanders, Applicant has made following commitments:
- At the start of the normal registrations the fee for a new domain name registration would not exceed a cost of 20 euro (fee charged to registrars, not necessarily retail price for registrants);
- Throughout the concession period, a gradual decline of registration/renewal fees from 20 euro to 5 euro is anticipated in as much as the number of registered .vlaanderen domain names rises from 60.000 to 225.000;
- Applicant will benchmark its fees for registration and renewal on a yearly basis against the fee levels of registry operators or TLD's of comparable scale and inform the Government of Flanders hereof.

iii. The Applicant does not intend to provide specific clauses concerning fee levels and possible price mechanisms in the Registration Terms & Conditions for registrants. This would force Applicant to change the Terms & Conditions each time one of the fee levels is altered. Obviously, Applicant will follow all provisions from the registry agreement concerning pricing of its services. As explained above, Applicant anticipates gradual price declinations in function of the number of registrations. Moreover, Applicant has committed through the concession agreement with the Government of Flanders to perform a price evaluation as soon as 2 years after the start of the normal registration process (Landrush). Till that moment the maximum fee for registrations and renewals is 20 euro. In the event that the total number of domain names would be lower than 30.000 after two years of operation (unlikely and worst case scenario), Applicant cannot raise its fees for registration and renewal beyond a 35 euro maximum.

Response to Question 22 - Protection of Geographic Names

Introduction

Applicant envisages to undertake considerable effort with regard to the protection of geographic names on the second level of the .vlaanderen gTLD. Given that the applied for gTLD is in itself matching with the territory of an important geographic region in Belgium, and is supported by the relevant Government of that territory, it would be very problematic to overlook the protection of geographic names within the proposed gTLD and to omit the creation of rules and procedures related to the release and/or reservation of such names.

Applicant wants to foresee three distinct levels of protection:
1) Protective measures installed prior to the start of operations;
2) Protection during the multi-phased Sunrise Period;
3) Procedures providing protection after the start of the registrations on "first come, first served" base.

The proposed measures for protection refer to the principles laid down in Specification 5 of the new gTLD Registry Agreement, those described in the GAC's document "Principles regarding New gTLD's" and current practices already in place for the .be ccTLD.

1) Protective measures installed prior to the start of operations

Applicant wants to deploy a number of protective measures concerning geographic names prior to the start of the Sunrise Period and - in a later phase - the normal registrations on "first come, first served" base. It is the intention to maintain these protective measures even after a number of years will have elapsed since the start of normal registrations in the gTLD. The proposed measures involve the blocking of certain geographic names and strings.

Applicant will exclude certain names from registration and will provide clear and detailed provisions in the Registration Terms & Conditions. Specifically with regard to geographic names and references, Applicant wishes to reserve or block all 2-character labels. A large number of possible 2-character labels matches with previously defined ISO 2-character descriptions for country codes. Other possible 2-character labels have no country code counterpart but it is not excluded that new country codes will be attributed by the ISO Maintenance Agency in the future. It is therefore appropriate to extend the level of protection in order to prevent potential conflicts in the future. This can be achieved by reserving or blocking all 2-character labels. In accordance with Specification 5 of the proposed gTLD Registry Agreement, Applicant will only release possible 2-character names to registrants that can demonstrate authorization (or a formal no objection statement) from the relevant Government or ccTLD registry manager that is corresponding with the 2-character label.

Applicant will also exclude from registration on second level (and - if applicable - on any other level within the TLD that would be under operation of Applicant) the following names:
- Short form country and territory names contained on the ISO 3166-1 list, including the European Union. All names on the version of the ISO 3166-1 list available at the time of establishing the exclusion list, will be integrated. Further names could be added, provided that they have not already been registered before being added to the ISO 3166-1 list;
- Names of countries that appear in the Technical Reference Manual for the Standardization of Geographical Names of the United Nations;
- Names of the United Nations member states in the 6 official UN languages (in as much as this is applicable for .vlaanderen which will not allow registrations in other scripts than Latin).
Applicant does not seek to block those country and territory names on a permanent base. In strict conformity with the provisions of Specification 5 of the new gTLD Registry Agreement, such names could be delegated to anyone who applies for them, provided that agreement is reached with the relevant government or if specific policy procedures would be adopted by ICANN upon review of the GAC.

2) Protection during the multi-phased Sunrise Period

Applicant envisages a multi-phased Sunrise Period that goes beyond the sole protection of trademark holders. During the first phase of the Sunrise Period local governments and government entities, public authorities and intergovernmental organizations will have the opportunity to apply for domain name registrations that are matching with their names (geographical name or name of organization) or acronyms.
Alternatively and subject to discussions with the Flemish Government, Applicant could provide a pre-Sunrise Phase for above mentioned category of right holders in order to avoid any collision with trademark holders wishing to apply for identical domain names during the first phase of the Sunrise Period.

3) Procedures providing protection after the start of the registrations on "first come, first served" base

Finally, it should be noted that Applicant wants to implement a UDRP mechanism with broad scope and low access. Applicant has put in place an innovative and efficient UDRP system for the .be ccTLD and would like to import its benefits for the new proposed gTLD. Among other things, the UDRP for .be offers governments equal rights to initiate procedures and claim back domain names upon which they can vest certain rights as to holders of trademarks. In that perspective it is noteworthy to mention that the Belgian Federal Government managed to claim back the domain name belgie.be (country name of Belgium in Dutch language). The same possibilities exist for governments of all levels as well as other public authorities with regard to the protection or recovery of domain names matching with their geographic name, name of organization, acronym or other protected right under the rules for the .be alternative dispute resolution procedures.