Application number: 1-1844-98392 for Aremi Group S.A.

Aremi Group S.A.

Avenue Gaston Diderich 5
Luxembourg L-1420
LU

+352 27 44 81

+352 27 44 81 01

Mr. Brian Winterfeldt

Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP

+1 202 429 6260

bwinterfeldt@steptoe.com

Charles de Jonghe dʹArdoye

Director, Aremi Group S.A.

+352 27 44 81

c.dejonghe@aremigroup.com

Société Anonyme

Applicant is a Luxembourg public limited company governed by the Law on commercial companies and articles 1832 to 1873 of the Civil Code: http:⁄⁄www.legilux.public.lu⁄leg⁄textescoordonnes⁄compilation⁄recueil_lois_speciales⁄SOCIETES.pdf

Not Available

Charles de Jonghe d’Ardoye
Director

Charles de Jonghe d’Ardoye
Director

ART

Not Available

While the string for which Applicant is applying, 〈.ART〉, is not an IDN and, therefore, does not contain characters which require mixed right-to-left or left-to-right functionalities, Applicant has nonetheless familiarized itself with the requirements and components of the IDNA protocol by reviewing the relevant RFCs and the relevant background information found on the ICANN IDN Wiki. Applicant has also consulted with its registry services provider, Neustar, and requested they test the 〈.ART〉 string for rendering issues; none were found. We have followed up with Neustar’s representatives, who have confirmed that there are no rendering issues for the 〈.ART〉 TLD.

Mission and Purpose

.ART is about art, all forms of art – performing, visual, literary and fine. If it is creative, it is .ART.

.ART is also about access to art, and is a place in which to discover and experience art. This pure focus is designed to generate significant opportunity for all who love the arts.

In .ART there will be no noise, just art.
 
For example, let’s say you are looking for information on Richard Smith, the English painter and printmaker. Through a general Internet search, you will not now immediately find readily available information about this artist. You would, however, find troves of information about Richard Smith the “finger picking virtuoso,” Richard Smith the “creative strategy consultant,” and Richard Smith the “Wales international rugby union player.” The results are overwhelming, confusing and time consuming.

The .ART TLD will remedy this. The .ART search will quickly zero in on the right Richard Smith – pure focus delivering the opportunity to locate the desired content.

The .ART TLD shall be a practical, accessible destination on the Internet to which patrons of the arts can navigate as a resource, knowing the central function of the domain is to foster and promote the arts. Again, in .ART, there will be no noise, just art. 

Applicant sees the presence of a specialized TLD for the arts as all the more important considering the Internet has long been a home for innovators and visionaries – for those who are inspired not only to create new ideas, but to imagine the many layers of new connections made possible by sharing and discussing these ideas – if only they had the proper communication tools. From the architecture of the Internet itself, to the visual design of websites, to the individual words and images comprising them, the fundamental building blocks of our information networks are infused with creative thought, and it is this expectation of creativity – of originality – that keeps us searching for all that will come next: a new release by a favorite author, an unexpected plot twist in a television drama, the latest blends of melodies and lyrics by a musical artist, the discovery of a previously unknown work by a painter who lived centuries ago, or the creation of an entirely new genre of art from today’s generation of artists.
 
The mission of .ART is to provide a unique online space in which creatively-inclined members of the Internet community, individuals and institutions alike, can share their works and ideas with those seeking creative content. Its purpose is, in time, to become the premier online destination for such creators and their broad spectrum of users. Domain names shall be available globally, though Applicant’s initial marketing efforts will be predominantly directed to .ART potential registrants in the United States and Europe. Applicant will conduct research in additional international markets following delegation of the TLD with a goal of expanding its international presence and ensuring artistic inclusion. Ultimately, Applicant plans to serve as much of the global Internet community as possible while operating a viable and ICANN-compliant registry business.

18(b)(i):

Specialty
With a three-letter identifier that is simple, distinctive, and memorable, .ART is intended as a virtual space in which to house works, thoughts, and ideas at the intersection of creativity and communication. Its broad spectrum will serve as a home for all who feel an affinity for the creative, whether as creators themselves or as appreciators, observers, critics, or academics. Those who wish to develop and use websites at .ART may include, for example: professional artists; hobbyist performers of theater, dance, or music; local artisans marketing and showcasing their unique wares; institutions; galleries; families sharing and archiving their children’s creations; and students and scholars of all forms of arts. With the technological framework in place, imagination is the only limit to the collaborative, networked canvas that is .ART.

Allowing these users the ability to create .ART domain names and websites gives them the ability to customize their domain and website names and signal to the general population of Internet users that their websites are art-related, without having to incorporate a non-art-related term such as .com, .net, or .biz. Built into a wider process of web optimization and marketing, the inclusion of the ‘art’ keyword will likely have positive implications for website promotion purposes.

This specialization simultaneously makes it easier for Internet users who are looking for arts-related information to locate this information more efficiently. The appendage of the .ART TLD indicates to users what they can expect to find at that website. It also has another added benefit in that web addresses will become shorter – one impact of a dearth of ‘good’ web addresses has been for them to get longer over time. Using the .ART TLD not only means sites can benefit from having an important keyword in their web address, but it will also be much faster to type in the address. This will increase traffic to these websites, promote competition, and facilitate use by mobile users who prefer shorter domain names.

Service Levels
The goal of the .ART Registry is to offer domain name registration services at the highest level. Primarily, this entails contracting with and using proven industry experts to provide the highest possible level of quality in registry and registrar services.

Providing the highest possible service levels includes working with the registry service provider (Neustar) to deliver a protected, trusted, and always-on registry infrastructure needed to reliably host and operate second-level domains in the .ART TLD.

This also includes working with our registrars to ensure that consumers will receive secure, fast, and reliable domain name registrations with high-level customer service.

Finally, the Registry will provide the highest level service to trademark and other legal rights owners as well as second-level domain owners by responding to abuse complaints on a 24 hours per day, 7 days per week basis, providing rapid and efficient takedown services when warranted, promptly abiding by the decisions and judgments of UDRP and URS panels, and being responsive to requests by other governmental, judicial and law enforcement bodies, in accordance with ICANN consensus policies.

Reputation
The goal of the .ART Registry is to achieve the highest possible reputation gained through superior customer service and efficient recognition by Internet users of subject matter-related domain names and content. The Registry will strive to achieve this reputation through secure, fast, and reliable customer service throughout the registration life cycle of all second-level domains in the TLD, and by creating a safe and secure registry that avoids abusive domain name practices.

In addition, the .ART registry will market its Internet space to potential registrants and users with an inclination for all types of creative expression. As such, .ART will build and maintain a reputation as a unique destination for creative online content.

The Registry will strive to be known for ensuring only non-fraudulent registrants maintain domain names in the TLD, for reflecting a culture of affinity for the arts, for a thick and reliable WhoIs, and for being responsive to legal rights owners and others who may have complaints regarding potentially abusive registrations. In all, the Registry will strive to be known as an exemplary and model domain name services citizen.

18(b)(ii):
According to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) report “Artists and Art Workers in the United States: Findings from the American Community Survey (2005-2009) and the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (2010),” there are 2.1 million artists in the U.S. alone, which accounts for 1.4 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Eurostat released a pocketbook on ʺCultural Statisticsʺ in April 2011 stating an equally impressive figure of 3.6 million people employed in the five main cultural sectors of economic activity, representing 1.7 percent of total employment. Accordingly, these statistics alone suggest an interested audience of approximately 5.7 million people that Applicant could reach to promote the TLD at the outset, plus relevant retail and manufacturing channels. In addition, these and other similar studies, referenced in more detail below, support Applicant’s assumptions related to its registration forecast in that the studies also indicate a strong correlation and growing connection between “art” and “artists” and the Internet. 

For example, in the context of discussing musicians, art fairs, and literary festivals, a 2007 report to the U.K. government presented by the Work Foundation (Staying ahead: the economic performance of the UK’s creative industries) cites the use of interactive websites by millions of British people as not merely a way to interact, but also as a way to express themselves creatively. The same report also highlights the enhanced accessibility of creative offerings via the Internet, and likewise the opportunities for offering creative products through different channels, i.e., the Internet. 

In the U.S., a 149-page report released in June 2010 by the NEA, explores the influence of technology and arts participation and provides specific statistics regarding arts participation through the Internet. The data, collected in 2008 before even the latest Internet advancements, revealed that thirty-seven percent of U.S. adults used electronic media to view or listen to a benchmark arts activity (e.g., classical music, opera, musical or non-musical plays, ballet, jazz, art museums⁄galleries) in the 12 months ending in May 2008, slightly more than the percentage of adults that attended a benchmark activity (35%) during the same time period. Overall, the findings showed that people in the U.S. are participating in the arts through electronic media at higher rates than through live attendance. 

The .ART TLD shall also serve as a central meeting place where professional and hobbyist artists, be they musicians, poets, painters, sculptors, fashion designers, choreographers, dancers, actors, architects, interior designers, performance artists, etc., can provide to the marketplace a showcase of their creations. In addition, it can serve as a space to share ideas and information about all works of art.

Differentiation
The .ART TLD is unique in terms of the class of persons, entities, and institutions it shall seek to benefit. There is no current TLD that is similar to the .ART string itself in sight, sound, or meaning. The .ART TLD will be a clear signal to website visitors that the site they are visiting is arts-related. As a result, the .ART TLD will have the opportunity to flourish, to become recognizable, and to provide a trusted source for an array of arts-related goods, services and information, offering a platform that is specialized while broad in appeal.

Innovation
The .ART TLD shall promote innovation on several levels. First, the registration policies and procedures will ensure that the persons or entities operating second-level domains in the .ART TLD are doing so in a non-abusive manner. This will permit users and customers to interact more safely with potential vendors, trusting that their personal information will not be misused. This shall also permit service providers to offer unique services that would otherwise not have been possible in current TLDs in which it can be difficult for users to determine whether a site should be trusted. Second, individual artists, dealers or agents, corporations, and benefactors will have attached to their names, trademarks, etc. the .ART TLD address that will permit targeted marketing and branding opportunities, thus increasing the probability that their target users will find them immediately rather than being misdirected to unrelated websites and content. Third, Applicant plans on promoting collaboration among .ART second-level domain registrants such that the .ART TLD becomes a recognizable symbol of trust within the arts-related communities the world over. 

18(b)(iii):
The goals of Applicant for the .ART TLD are to provide a trusted and secure environment wherein artists, their supporters, critics, institutions, and others can flourish. A user’s experience of the .ART TLD shall come to be synonymous with reliability and the provision of genuine arts-related goods and services. In addition, Applicant plans on engaging in research and development with regard to innovative registry services that may enable further collaboration between registrants and users of a TLD by adding enhancements to WhoIs functionality and utilizing social media platforms to promote the exchange of ideas within the .ART TLD. Such research will allow Applicant to work with ICANN to incorporate new registry services into the .ART TLD as technology evolves.

18(b)(iv):
Registration Policies

I. Introduction
Inherent in the concept of art is the idea that the artist requires freedom to express his or her creative ideas. Without freedom of expression there is no art. However, as with any society, without rules or policies there is no way for people or their artistic creations to coexist peacefully. The policies of the .ART TLD will serve to balance the needs of (1) freedom versus (2) security and protection.

II. General Policy
As discussed previously, the .ART TLD is intended to serve as a home for all who feel an affinity for the creative, whether as creators themselves, as dealers or agents, as corporate owners or promoters of the arts, or as appreciators, observers, critics, or academics. Applicant may, by published policy amendments, establish stricter requirements depending on demand and the nature of the registrants in the TLD. In addition, in the event any changes are made to the scope of the targeted .ART users, Applicant will promptly act in accordance with its agreement with ICANN and follow all necessary requirements and guidelines.

The policies discussed herein are subject to the policy requirement set forth by ICANN in the Applicant Guidebook and elsewhere, and the rights protection policies discussed in response to other questions in this application.

III. Name Selection Policies
There are two types of name selection policies: (1) those that are set forth by ICANN in the Applicant Guidebook (such as disallowing two-letter second level domains) and (2) policies that emanate solely from Applicantʹs delegated authority to control the .ART TLD. This section focuses solely on the policies within the sphere of Applicantʹs authority.

Applicantʹs name policies will of course be limited by its anti-abuse and rights protection policies discussed in response to other questions of this application, specifically, Questions 28 and 29 below. Subject to the policies set forth by ICANN and applicable rights protection mechanisms, the .ART TLD will strive for openness and a wide variety of domain name registrations. As such, Applicant will accept registration applications on a “first-come, first-served” basis for all second-level domains except domain names violating the anti-abuse policies set forth in the response to Question 28. In the event an application is not deemed to meet the requirements of Applicantʹs registration criteria (for example, due to violating anti-abuse policies), then such .ART domain name will remain in the general pool of available names. 

Applicant will also have the discretion to develop additional policies on the use of domain names. Such restrictions shall apply to any domain name registration that occurs after such restrictions come into effect, and may be applied to existing registrations with adequate notice. Restrictions may include, but are not limited to, a requirement to develop a website that uses the registered name within a certain time frame following registration (to ensure that each registered name ultimately resolves to a working website and to encourage active use of registered domains).

In addition to the reserved words set forth by ICANN, the Registry may set aside certain reserved words as second-level domains, e.g., ART.ART. 

IV. Registrant Agreement and License Policies
This paragraph briefly discusses the key terms of the Registrant Agreement and License. The Registrant Agreement and License must be accepted by each registrant and will cover the following areas:
-Term
-Fees
-Renewal and Redemption
-Grace Periods
-Transfers
-Disputes
-Eligibility and Requirements to notify Registry of change of eligibility status
-Authentication and Approval
-Domain Name Disputes
-Security
-Privacy
-Indemnification
-Basic Warranties and Representations

V. Pricing Policy
Applicant shall set the wholesale price that it charges registrars and the terms for which registrations are available. At launch of the registry, Applicant plans to charge a wholesale price of $40.00 per domain name. Registrars set retail prices and each registrar may have a different retail price. Registrars are free to bundle registrations with other products or services.

Applicant may change the wholesale price and⁄or renewal price at any time by providing notice to registrars. The wholesale price may vary according to policies set by Applicant for promotion programs, bulk name registration and so on.

Applicant, in its discretion, may provide refunds to registrars in the event that a registered name is revoked either as a result of a deletion or as a result of a denial of eligibility.
Further explanation of Applicant’s pricing policy is explained in response to question 46. 

VI. Registrar Policy
A. Registrar Selection
In accordance with the Registry Operator Code of Conduct stated in Specification 9 of the Registry Agreement with ICANN, Applicant will provide all ICANN-accredited registrars with equal access to the TLD. Registrars that are not ICANN-accredited or that lose their accreditation will not be eligible to sell .ART domain names. 

B. Registrar Oversight
In accordance with ICANN policies, Applicant will not be responsible for managing whether registrars selling .ART domain names remain ICANN-compliant. In addition, Applicant does not oversee registrar handling of registrant accounts, payments, refunding, credit cards or registrar-level marketing and promotion to potential registrants.

VII. Data and Privacy

In addition to the Data, WhoIs, and Privacy requirements set forth in the Applicant Guidebook and required by ICANN, Applicant may collect data in connection with the planned function and usage of each domain name. This data may include the registrant’s function in the arts community (such as Architect, Performer, Visual Artist, Student, Institution, Patron, etc.), as well as other data determined by Applicant from time to time. Delivery of data beyond standard WhoIs information will be encouraged, but will not be mandatory. This data is held by Applicant in accordance with the Registry Agreement Applicant will execute with ICANN. Applicant shall have the right to reference this data as needed to conduct registry operations, i.e., when investigating a potentially abusive registration. Applicant shall handle and use this data only in accordance with the relevant data protection and privacy laws. Applicant will not share data with third parties without permission from registrants, except as required for registry operations or as required under law.

18(b)(v):
All second-level domain registration data shall be subject to strict confidentiality requirements both by Applicant and its registry services provider, Neustar. Applicant shall ensure that all such data stored locally in its administrative offices – and at any facility at which Applicant may in the future occupy – will be stored using strong encryption technology and, to the extent possible, placed on storage devices that are unconnected to any network attached to the Internet. In addition, Applicant will comply with best network security practices at all office locations and engage the services of an outside security firm to perform periodic audits of Applicantʹs security precautions. Finally, Applicant has engaged the services of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, an international law firm, for support in compliance with world-wide data security⁄privacy requirements. Applicant shall comply with all such laws -- including requirements arising from updates to the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive and its accompanying transposing legislation -- and shall make all efforts to ensure that Neustar handles the registration data of its second-level domain registrations with the same precautions as Applicant. 

18(b)(vi):
Applicant plans on making .ART the premier TLD in which artists institutions, corporations, dealers, agents, and arts patrons of all varieties, such as observers, critics, or academics can register, build and maintain cultural and arts-related websites, from virtual galleries to websites which are themselves experimental and cutting-edge examples of art. To that end, Applicant believes that communications with the public and development of an outreach campaign is essential to the success of the TLD. In 2011, Applicant conducted extensive research regarding several advertising firms in order to find the best partner to develop the .ART brand, strategy for promoting the TLD, and an associated marketing campaign. Applicant has retained Catalyst Branding, a New York-based firm led by experienced branding strategist David Martin, to handle these initiatives. 

After Applicantʹs award of the .ART TLD, its marketing and communications campaign will focus primarily on the North American and European markets for the several reasons, but reaching arts-related individuals and businesses in all corners of the globe has also been calculated into Applicant’s strategy for controlled growth of the TLD. As noted above, the European and U.S. markets are proven supporters of the arts to the extent that the impact and relevance of the arts to the economies of these regions have been studied at length and in great detail. Applicant concluded that the European and U.S. markets would provide an interested and willing audience, with the resources to help Applicant develop a sustainable business model that meets customer expectations. Applicant, being based in Europe, and its branding partner, based in New York, are also most familiar with these marketing channels and determined it would be advisable to start locally and rely on experience and first-hand knowledge before launching fully into the global marketplace. This strategy will also allow Applicant to scale operations in a controlled manner to ensure ongoing feasibility of the business model and offers flexibility to track interest and trends to customize future marketing efforts to other regions.

Applicant believes that .ART is a natural progression of an existing momentum in the relationship between the arts and the Internet and that the .ART TLD shall be a new home for all who feel an affinity for the creative. Artists themselves will be able to flourish and promote their works of self-expression, while observers, critics, or academics will be able to discourse on and appreciate the arts, dealers and agents will be able to use this specialized arts-related TLD space to offer the sale of creative works and experiences, and finally corporations will have a unique opportunity to showcase their art collections and arts-related promotional campaigns. This shall provide to the marketplace a trusted repository for all creative industries and pastimes. Sample uses for registrants could include promotion and sale of all genres of arts, such as: musical and dance performances; creative crafts; information on local and international arts initiatives; virtual displays; fusions of art and science; fundraising for arts-related organizations; and critical and academic perspectives.
 
In an evolving world highly focused on technological advancement and functionality, the .ART TLD seeks to provide a platform for users seeking transcendent experiences touching all the senses. The .ART TLD does not attempt to define art or judge its quality, but shall strive to provide a forum through which users can explore and exchange ideas about all forms of art, as well as connect with others seeking a similar forum.

Question No. 18(c)(i):
 
Multiple applications for a particular domain name will be resolved on a ʺfirst-come, first-servedʺ basis once they have satisfied the relevant eligibility requirements. Eligibility evaluations will also be conducted on a “first-come, first served” basis on the order of submission of the application.
 
Question No. 18(c)(ii):
 
Applicant plans to offer domain name registrations at the wholesale price of USD $40.00. At this time, Applicant has no specific plans to offer additional pricing discounts.
 
Question No. 18(c)(iii):
 
At this time, Applicant plans to review domain name registration rates on an annual basis and will make determinations at that time regarding pricing adjustments, depending upon market factors. Thus, at this time, Applicant does not plan to make specific guarantees regarding pricing increases.
 

No

Not Available

No

Applicant has thoroughly reviewed ISO 3166-1 and ISO 3166-2, relevant UN documents on the standardization of geographic names, GAC correspondence relating to the reservation of geographic names in the .INFO TLD, and understands its obligations under Specification 5 of the draft Registry Agreement. Applicant shall implement measures similar to those used to protect geographic names in the .INFO TLD by reserving and registering to itself all the geographic place names found in ISO-3166 and official country names as specified by the UN. Applicant has already discussed this proposed measure of protecting geographic names with its registry services provider, Neustar, and has arranged for such reservation to occur as soon after delegation as is technically possible. 
 
As with the .INFO TLD, only if a potential second-level domain registrant makes a proper showing of governmental support for country or territorial names will Applicant then relay this request to ICANN. At this point, Applicant would wait for the approval of the GAC and of ICANN before proceeding to delegate the domain at issue.

Applicant has elected to partner with Neustar, Inc to provide back-end services for the 〈.ART〉 registry. In making this decision, Applicant recognized that Neustar already possesses a production-proven registry system that can be quickly deployed and smoothly operated over its robust, flexible, and scalable world-class infrastructure. The existing registry services will be leveraged for the 〈.ART〉 registry. 

The following section describes the registry services to be provided.

23.2 Standard Technical and Business Components
Neustar will provide the highest level of service while delivering a secure, stable and comprehensive registry platform. Applicant will use Neustar’s Registry Services platform to deploy the 〈.ART〉 registry, by providing the following Registry Services (none of these services are offered in a manner that is unique to 〈.ART〉: 
Registry-Registrar Shared Registration Service (SRS)
Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP)
Domain Name System (DNS)
WHOIS
DNSSEC
Data Escrow
Dissemination of Zone Files using Dynamic Updates
Access to Bulk Zone Files
Dynamic WHOIS Updates
IPv6 Support
Rights Protection Mechanisms

The following is a description of each of the services.

SRS
Neustar’s secure and stable SRS is a production-proven, standards-based, highly reliable, and high-performance domain name registration and management system. The SRS includes an EPP interface for receiving data from registrars for the purpose of provisioning and managing domain names and name servers. The response to Question 24 provides specific SRS information. 

EPP
The 〈.ART〉 registry will use the Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) for the provisioning of domain names. The EPP implementation will be fully compliant with all RFCs. Registrars are provided with access via an EPP API and an EPP based Web GUI. With more than 10 gTLD, ccTLD, and private TLDs implementations, Neustar has extensive experience building EPP-based registries. Additional discussion on the EPP approach is presented in the response to Question 25.

DNS
Applicant will leverage Neustar’s world-class DNS network of geographically distributed nameserver sites to provide the highest level of DNS service. The service utilizes “Anycast” routing technology, and supports both IPv4 and IPv6. The DNS network is highly proven, and currently provides service to over 20 TLDs and thousands of enterprise companies. Additional information on the DNS solution is presented in the response to Questions 35.

WHOIS
Neustar’s existing standard WHOIS solution will be used for the 〈.ART〉. The service provides supports for near real-time dynamic updates. The design and construction is agnostic with regard to data display policy is flexible enough to accommodate any data model. In addition, a searchable WHOIS service that complies with all ICANN requirements will be provided. The following WHOIS options will be provided:
Standard WHOIS (Port 43)
Standard WHOIS (Web)
Searchable WHOIS (Web)
Additional information on WHOIS may be found in the response to Question 26.

DNSSEC
An RFC compliant DNSSEC implementation will be provided using existing DNSSEC capabilities. Neustar is an experienced provider of DNSSEC services, and currently manages signed zones for three large top level domains: .biz, .us, and .co. Registrars are provided with the ability to submit and manage DS records using EPP, or through a web GUI. Additional information on DNSSEC, including the management of security extensions is found in the response to Question 43.


Data Escrow
Data escrow will be performed in compliance with all ICANN requirements in conjunction with an approved data escrow provider. The data escrow service will:
Protect against data loss
Follow industry best practices
Ensure easy, accurate, and timely retrieval and restore capability in the event of a hardware failure
Minimizes the impact of software or business failure.
Additional information on the Data Escrow service is provided in the response to Question 38.

Dissemination of Zone Files using Dynamic Updates
Dissemination of zone files will be provided through a dynamic, near real-time process. Updates will be performed within the specified performance levels. The proven technology ensures that updates pushed to all nodes within a few minutes of the changes being received by the SRS. Additional information on the DNS updates may be found in the response to Question 35.

Access to Bulk Zone Files
Applicant will provide third party access to the bulk zone file in accordance with specification 4, Section 2 of the Registry Agreement. Credentialing and dissemination of the zone files will be facilitated through the Central Zone Data Access Provider.

Dynamic WHOIS Updates
Updates to records in the WHOIS database will be provided via dynamic, near real-time updates. Guaranteed delivery message oriented middleware is used to ensure each individual WHOIS server is refreshed with dynamic updates. This component ensures that all WHOIS servers are kept current as changes occur in the SRS, while also decoupling WHOIS from the SRS. Additional information on WHOIS updates is presented in response to Question 26.

IPv6 Support
The 〈.ART〉 registry will provide IPv6 support in the following registry services: SRS, WHOIS, and DNS⁄DNSSEC. In addition, the registry supports the provisioning of IPv6 AAAA records. A detailed description on IPv6 is presented in the response to Question 36.

Required Rights Protection Mechanisms
Applicant will provide all ICANN required Rights Mechanisms, including: 
Trademark Claims Service
UDRP
URS
Sunrise service.
More information is presented in the response to Question 29.

Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)
 
IDN registrations are provided in full compliance with the IDNA protocol. Neustar possesses extensive experience offering IDN registrations in numerous TLDs, and its IDN implementation uses advanced technology to accommodate the unique bundling needs of certain languages. Character mappings are easily constructed to block out characters that may be deemed as confusing to users. A detailed description of the IDN implementation is presented in response to Question 44.

23.3 Unique Services
Applicant will not be offering services that are unique to 〈.ART〉.

23.4 Security or Stability Concerns
All services offered are standard registry services that have no known security or stability concerns. Neustar has demonstrated a strong track record of security and stability within the industry. 

24.1 Introduction
Applicant has partnered with Neustar, Inc, an experienced TLD registry operator, for the operation of the .ART Registry. The applicant is confident that the plan in place for the operation of a robust and reliable Shared Registration System (SRS) as currently provided by Neustar will satisfy the criteria established by ICANN.

Neustar built its SRS from the ground up as an EPP based platform and has been operating it reliably and at scale since 2001. The software currently provides registry services to five TLDs (.BIZ, .US, .TEL, .CO and .TRAVEL) and is used to provide gateway services to the .CN and .TW registries. Neustar’s state of the art registry has a proven track record of being secure, stable, and robust. It manages more than 6 million domains, and has over 300 registrars connected today. 

The following describes a detailed plan for a robust and reliable SRS that meets all ICANN requirements including compliance with Specifications 6 and 10.

24.2 The Plan for Operation of a Robust and Reliable SRS

High-level SRS System Description
The SRS to be used for .ART will leverage a production-proven, standards-based, highly reliable and high-performance domain name registration and management system that fully meets or exceeds the requirements as identified in the new gTLD Application Guidebook. 
The SRS is the central component of any registry implementation and its quality, reliability and capabilities are essential to the overall stability of the TLD. Neustar has a documented history of deploying SRS implementations with proven and verifiable performance, reliability and availability. The SRS adheres to all industry standards and protocols. By leveraging an existing SRS platform, Applicant is mitigating the significant risks and costs associated with the development of a new system. Highlights of the SRS include:
* State-of-the-art, production proven multi-layer design
* Ability to rapidly and easily scale from low to high volume as a TLD grows
* Fully redundant architecture at two sites
* Support for IDN registrations in compliance with all standards 
* Use by over 300 Registrars
* EPP connectivity over IPv6
* Performance being measured using 100% of all production transactions (not sampling).

SRS Systems, Software, Hardware, and Interoperability 
The systems and software that the registry operates on are a critical element to providing a high quality of service. If the systems are of poor quality, if they are difficult to maintain and operate, or if the registry personnel are unfamiliar with them, the registry will be prone to outages. Neustar has a decade of experience operating registry infrastructure to extremely high service level requirements. The infrastructure is designed using best of breed systems and software. Much of the application software that performs registry-specific operations was developed by the current engineering team and a result the team is intimately familiar with its operations.

The architecture is highly scalable and provides the same high level of availability and performance as volumes increase. It combines load balancing technology with scalable server technology to provide a cost effective and efficient method for scaling.

The Registry is able to limit the ability of any one registrar from adversely impacting other registrars by consuming too many resources due to excessive EPP transactions. The system uses network layer 2 level packet shaping to limit the number of simultaneous connections registrars can open to the protocol layer.

All interaction with the Registry is recorded in log files. Log files are generated at each layer of the system. These log files record at a minimum:
* The IP address of the client
* Timestamp
* Transaction Details
* Processing Time.

In addition to logging of each and every transaction with the SRS Neustar maintains audit records, in the database, of all transformational transactions. These audit records allow the Registry, in support of the applicant, to produce a complete history of changes for any domain name.

SRS Design
The SRS incorporates a multi-layer architecture that is designed to mitigate risks and easily scale as volumes increase. The three layers of the SRS are:
* Protocol Layer
* Business Policy Layer
* Database. 

Each of the layers is described below. 

Protocol Layer
The first layer is the protocol layer, which includes the EPP interface to registrars. It consists of a high availability farm of load-balanced EPP servers. The servers are designed to be fast processors of transactions. The servers perform basic validations and then feed information to the business policy engines as described below. The protocol layer is horizontally scalable as dictated by volume.

The EPP servers authenticate against a series of security controls before granting service, as follows:
* The registrar’s host exchanges keys to initiates a TLS handshake session with the EPP server.
* The registrar’s host must provide credentials to determine proper access levels.
* The registrar’s IP address must be preregistered in the network firewalls and traffic-shapers.

Business Policy Layer 
The Business Policy Layer is the “brain” of the registry system. Within this layer, the policy engine servers perform rules-based processing as defined through configurable attributes. This process takes individual transactions, applies various validation and policy rules, persists data and dispatches notification through the central database in order to publish to various external systems. External systems fed by the Business Policy Layer include backend processes such as dynamic update of DNS, WHOIS and Billing. 

Similar to the EPP protocol farm, the SRS consists of a farm of application servers within this layer. This design ensures that there is sufficient capacity to process every transaction in a manner that meets or exceeds all service level requirements. Some registries couple the business logic layer directly in the protocol layer or within the database. This architecture limits the ability to scale the registry. Using a decoupled architecture enables the load to be distributed among farms of inexpensive servers that can be scaled up or down as demand changes.
The SRS today processes over 30 million EPP transactions daily. 

Database
The database is the third core components of the SRS. The primary function of the SRS database is to provide highly reliable, persistent storage for all registry information required for domain registration services. The database is highly secure, with access limited to transactions from authenticated registrars, trusted application-server processes, and highly restricted access by the registry database administrators. A full description of the database can be found in response to Question 33.

Figure 24-1 depicts the overall SRS architecture including network components.

Number of Servers
As depicted in the SRS architecture diagram above Neustar operates a high availability architecture where at each level of the stack there are no single points of failures. Each of the network level devices run with dual pairs as do the databases. For the .ART registry, the SRS will operate with 8 protocol servers and 6 policy engine servers. These expand horizontally as volume increases due to additional TLDs, increased load, and through organic growth. In addition to the SRS servers described above, there are multiple backend servers for services such as DNS and WHOIS. These are discussed in detail within those respective response sections. 

Description of Interconnectivity with Other Registry Systems
The core SRS service interfaces with other external systems via Neustar’s external systems layer. The services that the SRS interfaces with include:
* WHOIS 
* DNS 
* Billing
* Data Warehouse (Reporting and Data Escrow). 
Other external interfaces may be deployed to meet the unique needs of a TLD. At this time there are no additional interfaces planned for .ART.

The SRS includes an “external notifier” concept in its business policy engine as a message dispatcher. This design allows time-consuming backend processing to be decoupled from critical online registrar transactions. Using an external notifier solution, the registry can utilize “control levers” that allow it to tune or to disable processes to ensure optimal performance at all times. For example, during the early minutes of a TLD launch, when unusually high volumes of transactions are expected, the registry can elect to suspend processing of one or more back end systems in order to ensure that greater processing power is available to handle the increased load requirements. This proven architecture has been used with numerous TLD launches, some of which have involved the processing of over tens of millions of transactions in the opening hours. The following are the standard three external notifiers used the SRS: 

WHOIS External Notifier
The WHOIS external notifier dispatches a work item for any EPP transaction that may potentially have an impact on WHOIS. It is important to note that, while the WHOIS external notifier feeds the WHOIS system, it intentionally does not have visibility into the actual contents of the WHOIS system. The WHOIS external notifier serves just as a tool to send a signal to the WHOIS system that a change is ready to occur. The WHOIS system possesses the intelligence and data visibility to know exactly what needs to change in WHOIS. See response to Question 26 for greater detail.

DNS External Notifier
The DNS external notifier dispatches a work item for any EPP transaction that may potentially have an impact on DNS. Like the WHOIS external notifier, the DNS external notifier does not have visibility into the actual contents of the DNS zones. The work items that are generated by the notifier indicate to the dynamic DNS update sub-system that a change occurred that may impact DNS. That DNS system has the ability to decide what actual changes must be propagated out to the DNS constellation. See response to Question 35 for greater detail.

Billing External Notifier
The billing external notifier is responsible for sending all billable transactions to the downstream financial systems for billing and collection. This external notifier contains the necessary logic to determine what types of transactions are billable. The financial systems use this information to apply appropriate debits and credits based on registrar.

Data Warehouse
The data warehouse is responsible for managing reporting services, including registrar reports, business intelligence dashboards, and the processing of data escrow files. The Reporting Database is used to create both internal and external reports, primarily to support registrar billing and contractual reporting requirement. The data warehouse databases are updated on a daily basis with full copies of the production SRS data. 

Frequency of Synchronization between Servers
The external notifiers discussed above perform updates in near real-time, well within the prescribed service level requirements. As transactions from registrars update the core SRS, update notifications are pushed to the external systems such as DNS and WHOIS. These updates are typically live in the external system within 2-3 minutes.

Synchronization Scheme (e.g., hot standby, cold standby) 
Neustar operates two hot databases within the data center that is operating in primary mode. These two databases are kept in sync via synchronous replication. Additionally, there are two databases in the secondary data center. These databases are updated real time through asynchronous replication. This model allows for high performance while also ensuring protection of data. See response to Question 33 for greater detail. 

Compliance with Specification 6 Section 1.2
The SRS implementation for .ART is fully compliant with Specification 6, including section 1.2. EPP Standards are described and embodied in a number of IETF RFCs, ICANN contracts and practices, and registry-registrar agreements. Extensible Provisioning Protocol or EPP is defined by a core set of RFCs that standardize the interface that make up the registry-registrar model. The SRS interface supports EPP 1.0 as defined in the following RFCs shown in Table 24-1. 
Additional information on the EPP implementation and compliance with RFCs can be found in the response to Question 25.

Compliance with Specification 10
Specification 10 of the New TLD Agreement defines the performance specifications of the TLD, including service level requirements related to DNS, RDDS (WHOIS), and EPP. The requirements include both availability and transaction response time measurements. As an experienced registry operator, Neustar has a long and verifiable track record of providing registry services that consistently exceed the performance specifications stipulated in ICANN agreements. This same high level of service will be provided for the .ART Registry. The following section describes Neustar’s experience and its capabilities to meet the requirements in the new agreement.

To properly measure the technical performance and progress of TLDs, Neustar collects data on key essential operating metrics. These measurements are key indicators of the performance and health of the registry. Neustar’s current .biz SLA commitments are among the most stringent in the industry today, and exceed the requirements for new TLDs. 

Table 24-2 compares the current SRS performance levels compared to the requirements for new TLDs, and clearly demonstrates the ability of the SRS to exceed those requirements.

Their ability to commit and meet such high performance standards is a direct result of their philosophy towards operational excellence. See response to Question 31 for a full description of their philosophy for building and managing for performance.

24.3 Resourcing Plans 
The development, customization, and on-going support of the SRS are the responsibility of a combination of technical and operational teams, including:
* Development⁄Engineering
* Database Administration
* Systems Administration
* Network Engineering.

Additionally, if customization or modifications are required, the Product Management and Quality Assurance teams will be involved in the design and testing. Finally, the Network Operations and Information Security play an important role in ensuring the systems involved are operating securely and reliably.

The necessary resources will be pulled from the pool of operational resources described in detail in the response to Question 31. Neustar’s SRS implementation is very mature, and has been in production for over 10 years. As such, very little new development related to the SRS will be required for the implementation of the .ART registry. The following resources are available from those teams:
* Development⁄Engineering =19 employees
* Database Administration =10 employees
* Systems Administration =24 employees
* Network Engineering =5 employees

The resources are more than adequate to support the SRS needs of all the TLDs operated by Neustar, including the .ART registry.

25.1 Introduction
Applicant’s back-end registry operator, Neustar, has over 10 years of experience operating EPP based registries. They deployed one of the first EPP registries in 2001 with the launch of .biz. In 2004, they were the first gTLD to implement EPP 1.0. Over the last ten years Neustar has implemented numerous extensions to meet various unique TLD requirements. Neustar will leverage its extensive experience to ensure Applicant is provided with an unparalleled EPP based registry. The following discussion explains the EPP interface which will be used for the 〈.ART〉 registry. This interface exists within the protocol farm layer as described in Question 24 and is depicted in Figure 25-1.

25.2 EPP Interface
Registrars are provided with two different interfaces for interacting with the registry. Both are EPP based, and both contain all the functionality necessary to provision and manage domain names. The primary mechanism is an EPP interface to connect directly with the registry. This is the interface registrars will use for most of their interactions with the registry. 
However, an alternative web GUI (Registry Administration Tool) that can also be used to perform EPP transactions will be provided. The primary use of the Registry Administration Tool is for performing administrative or customer support tasks. 
The main features of the EPP implementation are: 

-Standards Compliance: The EPP XML interface is compliant to the EPP RFCs. As future EPP RFCs are published or existing RFCs are updated, Neustar makes changes to the implementation keeping in mind of any backward compatibility issues.
-Scalability: The system is deployed keeping in mind that it may be required to grow and shrink the footprint of the Registry system for a particular TLD.
-Fault-tolerance: The EPP servers are deployed in two geographically separate data centers to provide for quick failover capability in case of a major outage in a particular data center. The EPP servers adhere to strict availability requirements defined in the SLAs.
-Configurability: The EPP extensions are built in a way that they can be easily configured to turn on or off for a particular TLD.
-Extensibility: The software is built ground up using object oriented design. This allows for easy extensibility of the software without risking the possibility of the change rippling through the whole application.
-Auditable: The system stores detailed information about EPP transactions from provisioning to DNS and WHOIS publishing. In case of a dispute regarding a name registration, the Registry can provide comprehensive audit information on EPP transactions.
-Security: The system provides IP address based access control, client credential-based authorization test, digital certificate exchange, and connection limiting to the protocol layer.

25.3 Compliance with RFCs and Specifications
The registry-registrar model is described and embodied in a number of IETF RFCs, ICANN contracts and practices, and registry-registrar agreements. As shown in Table 25-1, EPP is defined by the core set of RFCs that standardize the interface that registrars use to provision domains with the SRS. As a core component of the SRS architecture, the implementation is fully compliant with all EPP RFCs.

Neustar ensures compliance with all RFCs through a variety of processes and procedures. Members from the engineering and standards teams actively monitor and participate in the development of RFCs that impact the registry services, including those related to EPP. When new RFCs are introduced or existing ones are updated, the team performs a full compliance review of each system impacted by the change. Furthermore, all code releases include a full regression test that includes specific test cases to verify RFC compliance.
 
Neustar has a long history of providing exceptional service that exceeds all performance specifications. The SRS and EPP interface have been designed to exceed the EPP specifications defined in Specification 10 of the Registry Agreement and profiled in Table 25-2. Evidence of Neustar’s ability to perform at these levels can be found in the .biz monthly progress reports found on the ICANN website.

EPP Toolkits

Toolkits, under open source licensing, are freely provided to registrars for interfacing with the SRS. Both Java and C++ toolkits will be provided, along with the accompanying documentation. The Registrar Tool Kit (RTK) is a software development kit (SDK) that supports the development of a registrar software system for registering domain names in the registry using EPP. The SDK consists of software and documentation as described below.

The software consists of working Java and C++ EPP common APIs and samples that implement the EPP core functions and EPP extensions used to communicate between the registry and registrar. The RTK illustrates how XML requests (registration events) can be assembled and forwarded to the registry for processing. The software provides the registrar with the basis for a reference implementation that conforms to the EPP registry-registrar protocol. The software component of the SDK also includes XML schema definition files for all Registry EPP objects and EPP object extensions. The RTK also includes a “dummy” server to aid in the testing of EPP clients.

The accompanying documentation describes the EPP software package hierarchy, the object data model, and the defined objects and methods (including calling parameter lists and expected response behavior). New versions of the RTK are made available from time to time to provide support for additional features as they become available and support for other platforms and languages.


25.4 Proprietary EPP Extensions

The 〈.ART〉 registry will not include proprietary EPP extensions. Neustar has implemented various EPP extensions for both internal and external use in other TLD registries. These extensions use the standard EPP extension framework described in RFC 5730. Table 25-3 provides a list of extensions developed for other TLDs. Should the 〈.ART〉 registry require an EPP extension at some point in the future, the extension will be implemented in compliance with all RFC specifications including RFC 3735.

The full EPP schema to be used in the 〈.ART〉 registry is attached in the document titled “EPP Schema.”

25.5 Resourcing Plans
The development and support of EPP is largely the responsibility of the Development⁄Engineering and Quality Assurance teams. As an experience registry operator with a fully developed EPP solution, on-going support is largely limited to periodic updates to the standard and the implementation of TLD specific extensions.

The necessary resources will be pulled from the pool of available resources described in detail in the response to Question 31. The following resources are available from those teams:

Development⁄Engineering – 19 employees

Quality Assurance - 7 employees

These resources are more than adequate to support any EPP modification needs of the 〈.ART〉 registry.

26.1 Introduction
.ART recognizes the importance of an accurate, reliable, and up-to-date WHOIS database to governments, law enforcement, intellectual property holders and the public as a whole and is firmly committed to complying with all of the applicable WHOIS specifications for data objects, bulk access, and lookups as defined in Specifications 4 and 10 to the Registry Agreement. .ART’s back-end registry services provider, Neustar, has extensive experience providing ICANN and RFC-compliant WHOIS services for each of the TLDs that it operates both as a Registry Operator for gTLDs, ccTLDs and back-end registry services provider. As one of the first “thick” registry operators in the gTLD space, Neustar’s WHOIS service has been designed from the ground up to display as much information as required by a TLD and respond to a very stringent availability and performance requirement.

Some of the key features of .ART’s solution include:
* Fully compliant with all relevant RFCs including 3912
* Production proven, highly flexible, and scalable with a track record of 100% availability over the past 10 years
* Exceeds current and proposed performance specifications 
* Supports dynamic updates with the capability of doing bulk updates 
* Geographically distributed sites to provide greater stability and performance
* In addition, .ART’s thick-WHOIS solution also provides for additional search capabilities and mechanisms to mitigate potential forms of abuse as discussed below. (e.g., IDN, registrant data).

26.2 Software Components
The WHOIS architecture comprises the following components:
* An in-memory database local to each WHOIS node: To provide for the performance needs, the WHOIS data is served from an in-memory database indexed by searchable keys. 
* Redundant servers: To provide for redundancy, the WHOIS updates are propagated to a cluster of WHOIS servers that maintain an independent copy of the database. 
* Attack resistant: To ensure that the WHOIS system cannot be abused using malicious queries or DOS attacks, the WHOIS server is only allowed to query the local database and rate limits on queries based on IPs and IP ranges can be readily applied.
* Accuracy auditor: To ensure the accuracy of the information served by the WHOIS servers, a daily audit is done between the SRS information and the WHOIS responses for the domain names which are updated during the last 24-hour period. Any discrepancies are resolved proactively.
* Modular design: The WHOIS system allows for filtering and translation of data elements between the SRS and the WHOIS database to allow for customizations.
* Scalable architecture: The WHOIS system is scalable and has a very small footprint. Depending on the query volume, the deployment size can grow and shrink quickly.
* Flexible: It is flexible enough to accommodate thin, thick, or modified thick models and can accommodate any future ICANN policy, such as different information display levels based on user categorization.
* SRS master database: The SRS database is the main persistent store of the Registry information. The Update Agent computes what WHOIS updates need to be pushed out. A publish-subscribe mechanism then takes these incremental updates and pushes to all the WHOIS slaves that answer queries.

26.3 Compliance with RFC and Specifications 4 and 10
Neustar has been running thick-WHOIS Services for over 10+ years in full compliance with RFC 3912 and with Specifications 4 and 10 of the Registry Agreement.RFC 3912 is a simple text based protocol over TCP that describes the interaction between the server and client on port 43. Neustar built a home-grown solution for this service. It processes millions of WHOIS queries per day.

Table 26-1 describes Neustar’s compliance with Specifications 4 and 10.

Neustar ensures compliance with all RFCs through a variety of processes and procedures. Members from the engineering and standards teams actively monitor and participate in the development of RFCs that impact the registry services, including those related to WHOIS. When new RFCs are introduced or existing ones are updated, the team performs a full compliance review of each system impacted by the change. Furthermore, all code releases include a full regression test that includes specific test cases to verify RFC compliance.

26.4 High-level WHOIS System Description

26.4.1 WHOIS Service (port 43)
The WHOIS service is responsible for handling port 43 queries. Our WHOIS is optimized for speed using an in-memory database and master-slave architecture between the SRS and WHOIS slaves.
The WHOIS service also has built-in support for IDN. If the domain name being queried is an IDN, the returned results include the language of the domain name, the domain name’s UTF-8 encoded representation along with the Unicode code page.

26.4.2 Web Page for WHOIS queries
In addition to the WHOIS Service on port 43, Neustar provides a web based WHOIS application (www.whois.ART). It is an intuitive and easy to use application for the general public to use. WHOIS web application provides all of the features available in the port 43 WHOIS. This includes full and partial search on:
* Domain names
* Nameservers
* Registrant, Technical and Administrative Contacts
* Registrars

It also provides features not available on the port 43 service. These include:
1. Redemption Grace Period calculation: Based on the registry’s policy, domains in pendingDelete can be restorable or scheduled for release depending on the date⁄time the domain went into pendingDelete. For these domains, the web based WHOIS displays “Restorable” or “Scheduled for Release” to clearly show this additional status to the user.
2. Extensive support for international domain names (IDN)
3. Ability to perform WHOIS lookups on the actual Unicode IDN
4. Display of the actual Unicode IDN in addition to the ACE-encoded name
5. A Unicode to Punycode and Punycode to Unicode translator
6. An extensive FAQ
7. A list of upcoming domain deletions

26.5 IT and Infrastructure Resources
As described above the WHOIS architecture uses a workflow that decouples the update process from the SRS. This ensures SRS performance is not adversely affected by the load requirements of dynamic updates. It is also decoupled from the WHOIS lookup agent to ensure the WHOIS service is always available and performing well for users. Each of Neustar’s geographically diverse WHOIS sites use:
* Firewalls, to protect this sensitive data 
* Dedicated servers for MQ Series, to ensure guaranteed delivery of WHOIS updates 
* Packetshaper for source IP address-based bandwidth limiting 
* Load balancers to distribute query load 
* Multiple WHOIS servers for maximizing the performance of WHOIS service.

The WHOIS service uses HP BL 460C servers, each with 2 X Quad Core CPU and a 64GB of RAM. The existing infrastructure has 6 servers, but is designed to be easily scaled with additional servers should it be needed.

Figure 26-1 depicts the different components of the WHOIS architecture.

26.6 Interconnectivity with Other Registry System
As described in Question 24 about the SRS and further in response to Question 31, “Technical Overview”, when an update is made by a registrar that impacts WHOIS data, a trigger is sent to the WHOIS system by the external notifier layer. The update agent processes these updates, transforms the data if necessary and then uses messaging oriented middleware to publish all updates to each WHOIS slave. The local update agent accepts the update and applies it to the local in-memory database. A separate auditor compares the data in WHOIS and the SRS daily and monthly to ensure accuracy of the published data.

26.7 Frequency of Synchronization between Servers
Updates from the SRS, through the external notifiers, to the constellation of independent WHOIS slaves happens in real-time via an asynchronous publish⁄subscribe messaging architecture. The updates are guaranteed to be updated in each slave within the required SLA of 95% ≤ 60 minutes. Please note that Neustar’s current architecture is built towards the stricter SLAs (95% ≤ 15 minutes) of .BIZ. The vast majority of updates tend to happen within 2-3 minutes.

26.8 Provision for Searchable WHOIS Capabilities
Neustar will create a new web-based service to address the new search features based on requirements specified in Specification 4 Section 1.8. The application will enable users to search the WHOIS directory using any one or more of the following fields: 
* Domain name
* Registrar ID
* Contacts and registrant’s name
* Contact and registrant’s postal address, including all the sub-fields described in EPP (e.g., street, city, state or province, etc.)
* Name server name and name server IP address
* The system will also allow search using non-Latin character sets which are compliant with IDNA specification.

The user will choose one or more search criteria, combine them by Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and provide partial or exact match regular expressions for each of the criterion name-value pairs. The domain names matching the search criteria will be returned to the user.

Figure 26-2 shows an architectural depiction of the new service. 

To mitigate the risk of this powerful search service being abused by unscrupulous data miners, a layer of security will be built around the query engine which will allow the registry to identify rogue activities and then take appropriate measures. Potential abuses include, but are not limited to:
* Data Mining
* Unauthorized Access
* Excessive Querying
* Denial of Service Attacks

To mitigate the abuses noted above, Neustar will implement any or all of these mechanisms as appropriate:
* Username-password based authentication 
* Certificate based authentication
* Data encryption
* CAPTCHA mechanism to prevent robo invocation of Web query
* Fee-based advanced query capabilities for premium customers.

The searchable WHOIS application will adhere to all privacy laws and policies of the .ART registry.

26.9 Resourcing Plans 
As with the SRS, the development, customization, and on-going support of the WHOIS service is the responsibility of a combination of technical and operational teams. The primary groups responsible for managing the service include:
* Development⁄Engineering =19 employees
* Database Administration =10 employees
* Systems Administration =24 employees
* Network Engineering =5 employees 

Additionally, if customization or modifications are required, the Product Management and Quality Assurance teams will also be involved. Finally, the Network Operations and Information Security play an important role in ensuring the systems involved are operating securely and reliably. The necessary resources will be pulled from the pool of available resources described in detail in the response to Question 31. Neustar’s WHOIS implementation is very mature, and has been in production for over 10 years. As such, very little new development will be required to support the implementation of the .ART registry. The resources are more than adequate to support the WHOIS needs of all the TLDs operated by Neustar, including the .ART registry.

27.1 Registration Life Cycle

Introduction
〈.ART〉 will follow the lifecycle and business rules found in the majority of gTLDs today. Our back-end operator, Neustar, has over ten years of experience managing numerous TLDs that utilize standard and unique business rules and lifecycles. This section describes the business rules, registration states, and the overall domain lifecycle that will be used for 〈.ART〉.

Domain Lifecycle - Description
The registry will use the EPP 1.0 standard for provisioning domain names, contacts and hosts. Each domain record is comprised of three registry object types: domain, contacts, and hosts.
 
Domains, contacts and hosts may be assigned various EPP defined statuses indicating either a particular state or restriction placed on the object. Some statuses may be applied by the Registrar; other statuses may only be applied by the Registry. Statuses are an integral part of the domain lifecycle and serve the dual purpose of indicating the particular state of the domain and indicating any restrictions placed on the domain. The EPP standard defines 17 statuses, however only 14 of these statuses will be used in the 〈.ART〉 registry per the defined 〈.ART〉 business rules.

The following is a brief description of each of the statuses. Server statuses may only be applied by the Registry, and client statuses may be applied by the Registrar.
-OK – Default status applied by the Registry.
-Inactive – Default status applied by the Registry if the domain has less than 2 nameservers.
-PendingCreate – Status applied by the Registry upon processing a successful Create command, and indicates further action is pending. This status will not be used in the 〈.ART〉 registry.
-PendingTransfer – Status applied by the Registry upon processing a successful Transfer request command, and indicates further action is pending.
-PendingDelete – Status applied by the Registry upon processing a successful Delete command that does not result in the immediate deletion of the domain, and indicates further action is pending.
-PendingRenew – Status applied by the Registry upon processing a successful Renew command that does not result in the immediate renewal of the domain, and indicates further action is pending. This status will not be used in the 〈.ART〉 registry.
-PendingUpdate – Status applied by the Registry if an additional action is expected to complete the update, and indicates further action is pending. This status will not be used in the 〈.ART〉 registry.
-Hold – Removes the domain from the DNS zone.
-UpdateProhibted – Prevents the object from being modified by an Update command.
-TransferProhibted – Prevents the object from being transferred to another Registrar by the Transfer command.
-RenewProhibted – Prevents a domain from being renewed by a Renew command.
-DeleteProhibted – Prevents the object from being deleted by a Delete command.

The lifecycle of a domain begins with the registration of the domain. All registrations must follow the EPP standard, as well as the specific business rules described in the response to Question 18 above. Upon registration a domain will either be in an active or inactive state. Domains in an active state are delegated and have their delegation information published to the zone. Inactive domains either have no delegation information or their delegation information in not published in the zone. Following the initial registration of a domain, one of five actions may occur during its lifecycle:
-Domain may be updated
-Domain may be deleted, either within or after the add-grace period
-Domain may be renewed at anytime during the term
-Domain may be auto-renewed by the Registry
-Domain may be transferred to another registrar. 

Each of these actions may result in a change in domain state. This is described in more detail in the following section. Every domain must eventually be renewed, auto-renewed, transferred, or deleted. A registrar may apply EPP statuses described above to prevent specific actions such as updates, renewals, transfers, or deletions.

27.1.1 Registration States

Domain Lifecycle – Registration States
As described above the 〈.ART〉 registry will implement a standard domain lifecycle found in most gTLD registries today. There are five possible domain states:
-Active
-Inactive
-Locked
-Pending Transfer
-Pending Delete

All domains are always in either an Active or Inactive state, and throughout the course of the lifecycle may also be in a Locked, Pending Transfer, and Pending Delete state. Specific conditions such as applied EPP policies and registry business rules will determine whether a domain can be transitioned between states. Additionally, within each state, domains may be subject to various timed events such as grace periods, and notification periods. 

Active State
The active state is the normal state of a domain and indicates that delegation data has been provided and the delegation information is published in the zone. A domain in an Active state may also be in the Locked or Pending Transfer states.

Inactive State
The Inactive state indicates that a domain has not been delegated or that the delegation data has not been published to the zone. A domain in an Inactive state may also be in the Locked or Pending Transfer states. By default all domain in the Pending Delete state are also in the Inactive state.

Locked State
The Locked state indicates that certain specified EPP transactions may not be performed to the domain. A domain is considered to be in a Locked state if at least one restriction has been placed on the domain; however up to eight restrictions may be applied simultaneously. Domains in the Locked state will also be in the Active or Inactive, and under certain conditions may also be in the Pending Transfer or Pending Delete states.

Pending Transfer State
The Pending Transfer state indicates a condition in which there has been a request to transfer the domain from one registrar to another. The domain is placed in the Pending Transfer state for a period of time to allow the current (losing) registrar to approve (ack) or reject (nack) the transfer request. Registrars may only nack requests for reasons specified in the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy.

Pending Delete State
The Pending Delete State occurs when a Delete command has been sent to the Registry after the first 5 days (120 hours) of registration. The Pending Delete period is 35-days during which the first 30-days the name enters the Redemption Grace Period (RGP) and the last 5-days guarantee that the domain will be purged from the Registry Database and available to public pool for registration on a first come, first serve basis.


27.1.2 Typical Registration Lifecycle Activities

Domain Creation Process
The creation (registration) of domain names is the fundamental registry operation. All other operations are designed to support or compliment a domain creation. The following steps occur when a domain is created. 
1. Contact objects are created in the SRS database. The same contact object may be used for each contact type, or they may all be different. If the contacts already exist in the database this step may be skipped.
2. Nameservers are created in the SRS database. Nameservers are not required to complete the registration process; however any domain with less than 2 name servers will not be resolvable.
3. The domain is created using the each of the objects created in the previous steps. In addition, the term and any client statuses may be assigned at the time of creation.

The actual number of EPP transactions needed to complete the registration of a domain name can be as few as one and as many as 40. The latter assumes seven distinct contacts and 13 nameservers, with Check and Create commands submitted for each object.

Update Process
Registry objects may be updated (modified) using the EPP Modify operation. The Update transaction updates the attributes of the object. 

For example, the Update operation on a domain name will only allow the following attributes to be updated:
-Domain statuses
-Registrant ID
-Administrative Contact ID
-Billing Contact ID
-Technical Contact ID
-Nameservers
-AuthInfo
-Additional Registrar provided fields.
 
The Update operation will not modify the details of the contacts. Rather it may be used to associate a different contact object (using the Contact ID) to the domain name. To update the details of the contact object the Update transaction must be applied to the contact itself. For example, if an existing registrant wished to update the postal address, the Registrar would use the Update command to modify the contact object, and not the domain object. 

Renew Process
The term of a domain may be extended using the EPP Renew operation. ICANN policy general establishes the maximum term of a domain name to be 10 years, and Neustar recommends not deviating from this policy. A domain may be renewed⁄extended at any point time, even immediately following the initial registration. The only stipulation is that the overall term of the domain name may not exceed 10 years. If a Renew operation is performed with a term value will extend the domain beyond the 10 year limit, the Registry will reject the transaction entirely.

Transfer Process
The EPP Transfer command is used for several domain transfer related operations:
-Initiate a domain transfer
-Cancel a domain transfer
-Approve a domain transfer
-Reject a domain transfer

To transfer a domain from one Registrar to another the following process is followed:
1. The gaining (new) Registrar submits a Transfer command, which includes the AuthInfo code of the domain name.
2. If the AuthInfo code is valid and the domain is not in a status that does not allow transfers the domain is placed into pendingTransfer status
3. A poll message notifying the losing Registrar of the pending transfer is sent to the Registrar’s message queue
4. The domain remains in pendingTransfer status for up to 120 hours, or until the losing (current) Registrar Acks (approves) or Nack (rejects) the transfer request
5. If the losing Registrar has not Acked or Nacked the transfer request within the 120 hour timeframe, the Registry auto-approves the transfer
6. The requesting Registrar may cancel the original request up until the transfer has been completed.

A transfer adds an additional year to the term of the domain. In the event that a transfer will cause the domain to exceed the 10 year maximum term, the Registry will add a partial term up to the 10 year limit. Unlike with the Renew operation, the Registry will not reject a transfer operation.

Deletion Process
A domain may be deleted from the SRS using the EPP Delete operation. The Delete operation will result in either the domain being immediately removed from the database or the domain being placed in pendingDelete status. The outcome is dependent on when the domain is deleted. If the domain is deleted within the first five days (120 hours) of registration, the domain is immediately removed from the database. A deletion at any other time will result in the domain being placed in pendingDelete status and entering the Redemption Grace Period (RGP). Additionally, domains that are deleted within five days (120) hours of any billable (add, renew, transfer) transaction may be deleted for credit.

27.1.3 Applicable Time Elements

The following section explains the time elements that are involved. 

Grace Periods
There are six grace periods:
-Add-Delete Grace Period (AGP)
-Renew-Delete Grace Period
-Transfer-Delete Grace Period
-Auto-Renew-Delete Grace Period
-Auto-Renew Grace Period
-Redemption Grace Period (RGP)

The first four grace periods listed above are designed to provide the Registrar with the ability to cancel a revenue transaction (add, renew, or transfer) within a certain period of time and receive a credit for the original transaction.

The following describes each of these grace periods in detail.

Add-Delete Grace Period
The APG is associated with the date the Domain was registered. Domains may be deleted for credit during the initial 120 hours of a registration, and the Registrar will receive a billing credit for the original registration. If the domain is deleted during the Add Grace Period, the domain is dropped from the database immediately and a credit is applied to the Registrar’s billing account. 

Renew-Delete Grace Period
The Renew-Delete Grace Period is associated with the date the Domain was renewed. Domains may be deleted for credit during the 120 hours after a renewal. The grace period is intended to allow Registrars to correct domains that were mistakenly renewed. It should be noted that domains that are deleted during the renew grace period will be placed into pendingDelete and will enter the RGP (see below).

Transfer-Delete Grace Period
The Transfer-Delete Grace Period is associated with the date the Domain was transferred to another Registrar. Domains may be deleted for credit during the 120 hours after a transfer. It should be noted that domains that are deleted during the renew grace period will be placed into pendingDelete and will enter the RGP. A deletion of domain after a transfer is not the method used to correct a transfer mistake. Domains that have been erroneously transferred or hijacked by another party can be transferred back to the original registrar through various means including contacting the Registry.

Auto-Renew-Delete Grace Period
The Auto-Renew-Delete Grace Period is associated with the date the Domain was auto-renewed. Domains may be deleted for credit during the 120 hours after an auto-renewal. The grace period is intended to allow Registrars to correct domains that were mistakenly auto-renewed. It should be noted that domains that are deleted during the auto-renew delete grace period will be placed into pendingDelete and will enter the RGP. 
 
Auto-Renew Grace Period
The Auto-Renew Grace Period is a special grace period intended to provide registrants with an extra amount of time, beyond the expiration date, to renew their domain name. The grace period lasts for 45 days from the expiration date of the domain name. Registrars are not required to provide registrants with the full 45 days of the period.

Redemption Grace Period
The RGP is a special grace period that enables Registrars to restore domains that have been inadvertently deleted but are still in pendingDelete status within the Redemption Grace Period. All domains enter the RGP except those deleted during the AGP.
The RGP period is 30 days, during which time the domain may be restored using the EPP RenewDomain command as described below. Following the 30day RGP period the domain will remain in pendingDelete status for an additional five days, during which time the domain may NOT be restored. The domain is released from the SRS, at the end of the 5 day non-restore period. A restore fee applies and is detailed in the Billing Section. A renewal fee will be automatically applied for any domain past expiration.
Neustar has created a unique restoration process that uses the EPP Renew transaction to restore the domain and fulfill all the reporting obligations required under ICANN policy. The following describes the restoration process.

27.2 State Diagram
Figure 27-1 provides a description of the registration lifecycle.

The different states of the lifecycle are active, inactive, locked, pending transfer, and pending delete. Refer to section 27.1.1 for detail description of each of these states. The lines between the states represent triggers that transition a domain from one state to another. 

The details of each trigger are described below:
-Create: Registry receives a create domain EPP command.
-WithNS: The domain has met the minimum number of nameservers required by registry policy in order to be published in the DNS zone.
-WithOutNS: The domain has not met the minimum number of nameservers required by registry policy. The domain will not be in the DNS zone.
-Remove Nameservers: Domainʹs nameserver(s) is removed as part of an update domain EPP command. The total nameserver is below the minimum number of nameservers required by registry policy in order to be published in the DNS zone.
-Add Nameservers: Nameserver(s) has been added to domain as part of an update domain EPP command. The total number of nameservers has met the minimum number of nameservers required by registry policy in order to be published in the DNS zone.

-Delete: Registry receives a delete domain EPP command.
-DeleteAfterGrace: Domain deletion does not fall within the add grace period.
-DeleteWithinAddGrace: Domain deletion falls within add grace period.
-Restore: Domain is restored. Domain goes back to its original state prior to the delete command.
-Transfer: Transfer request EPP command is received.
-Transfer Approve⁄Cancel⁄Reject: Transfer requested is approved or cancel or rejected.
-TransferProhibited: The domain is in clientTransferProhibited and⁄or serverTranferProhibited status. This will cause the transfer request to fail. The domain goes back to its original state.
-DeleteProhibited: The domain is in clientDeleteProhibited and⁄or serverDeleteProhibited status. This will cause the delete command to fail. The domain goes back to its original state.

Note: the locked state is not represented as a distinct state on the diagram as a domain may be in a locked state in combination with any of the other states: inactive, active, pending transfer, or pending delete.

27.2.1 EPP RFC Consistency
As described above, the domain lifecycle is determined by ICANN policy and the EPP RFCs. Neustar has been operating ICANN TLDs for the past 10 years consistent and compliant with all the ICANN policies and related EPP RFCs. 

27.3 Resources
The registration lifecycle and associated business rules are largely determined by policy and business requirements; as such the Product Management and Policy teams will play a critical role in working Applicant to determine the precise rules that meet the requirements of the TLD. Implementation of the lifecycle rules will be the responsibility of Development⁄Engineering team, with testing performed by the Quality Assurance team. Neustar’s SRS implementation is very flexible and configurable, and in many case development is not required to support business rule changes. 

The 〈.ART〉 registry will be using standard lifecycle rules, and as such no customization is anticipated. However should modifications be required in the future, the necessary resources will be pulled from the pool of available resources described in detail in the response to Question 31. The following resources are available from those teams:

Development⁄Engineering – 19 employees
Registry Product Management – 4 employees

These resources are more than adequate to support the development needs of all the TLDs operated by Neustar, including the 〈.ART〉 registry. 

28.1 Abuse Prevention and Mitigation
Strong abuse prevention by a new gTLD is an important benefit to the Internet community. Applicant and its registry operator and back-end registry services provider, Neustar, agree that a registry must not only aim for the highest standards of technical and operational competence, but also needs to act as a steward of the space on behalf of the Internet community and ICANN in promoting the public interest. Neustar brings extensive experience establishing and implementing registration policies. This experience will be leveraged to help Applicant combat abusive and malicious domain activity within the new gTLD space.

One of those public interest functions for a responsible domain name registry includes working towards the eradication of abusive domain name registrations and domain name use, including, but not limited to, those resulting from:

-Illegal or fraudulent actions
-Spam
-Phishing
-Pharming
-Distribution of malware
-Fast flux hosting
-Botnets
-Distribution of child pornography
-Online sale or distribution of illegal pharmaceuticals.

More specifically, although traditionally botnets have used Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers to control registry and the compromised PCs, or bots, for DDoS attacks and the theft of personal information, an increasingly popular technique, known as fast-flux DNS, allows botnets to use a multitude of servers to hide a key host or to create a highly-available control network. This ability to shift the attacker’s infrastructure over a multitude of servers in various countries creates an obstacle for law enforcement and security researchers to mitigate the effects of these botnets. But a point of weakness in this scheme is its dependence on DNS for its translation services. By taking an active role in researching and monitoring these sorts of botnets, Applicant’s partner, Neustar, has developed the ability to efficiently work with various law enforcement and security communities to begin a new phase of mitigation of these types of threats.

Policies and Procedures to Minimize Abusive Registrations
As Applicantʹs registry provider, Neustar is at the forefront of the prevention of such abusive practices and is one of the few registry operators to have actually developed and implemented an active “domain takedown” policy. We also believe that a strong program is essential given that registrants have a reasonable expectation that they are in control of the data associated with their domains, especially its presence in the DNS zone. Because domain names are sometimes used as a mechanism to enable various illegitimate activities on the Internet often the best preventative measure to thwart these attacks is to remove the names completely from the DNS before they can impart harm, not only to the domain name registrant, but also to millions of unsuspecting Internet users. Removing the domain name from the zone has the effect of shutting down all activity associated with the domain name, including the use of all websites and e-mail. The use of this technique should not be entered into lightly. Applicant has an extensive, defined, and documented process for taking the necessary action of removing a domain from the zone when its presence in the zone poses a threat to the security and stability of the infrastructure of the Internet or the registry.


Abuse Point of Contact 
As required by the Registry Agreement, Applicant will establish and publish on its website a single abuse point of contact responsible for addressing inquiries from law enforcement and the public related to malicious and abusive conduct. Applicant will also provide such information to ICANN prior to the delegation of any domain names in the TLD. This information shall consist of, at a minimum, a valid e-mail address dedicated solely to the handling of malicious conduct complaints, anticipated to be complaint@abuse.ART. This e-mail address will serve as a distribution list for designated Applicant personnel to ensure timely review of complaints. We will ensure that this information will be kept accurate and up to date and will be provided to ICANN if and when changes are made. In addition, with respect to inquiries from ICANN-Accredited registrars, our registry services provider, Neustar, shall have an additional point of contact, as it does today, handling requests by registrars related to abusive domain name practices. Prior to commencing sales of domain names, Applicant will publish a detailed abuse complaint procedure offering specific service-level commitments regarding review and response times.

28.2 Policies Regarding Abuse Complaints
One of the key policies of .ART will be the implementation of an Acceptable Use Policy that clearly delineates the types of activities that constitute “abuse” and the repercussions associated with an abusive domain name registration. Applicant shall publish the Acceptable Use Policy at .ART and clearly provide Applicant’s point of contact for abuse-related issues. This information shall consist of, at a minimum, a valid email address dedicated solely to the handling of abuse complaints, and a telephone number and mailing address for the primary contact. Applicant will ensure that this information will be kept accurate and up to date. In addition, the policy will be incorporated into the applicable Registry-Registrar Agreement and reserve the right for the registry to take the appropriate actions based on the type of abuse. This will include locking down the domain name, preventing any changes to the contact and nameserver information associated with the domain name, placing the domain name “on hold” rendering the domain name non-resolvable, transferring the domain name to another registrar, and⁄or in cases in which the domain name is associated with an existing law enforcement investigation, substituting name servers to collect information about the DNS queries to assist the investigation. 

Applicant will adopt an Acceptable Use Policy that clearly defines the types of activities that will not be permitted in the TLD and reserves the right of the Applicant to lock, cancel, transfer or otherwise suspend or take down domain names violating the Acceptable Use Policy and allow the Registry where and when appropriate to share information with law enforcement. Each ICANN-Accredited Registrar must agree to pass on the Acceptable Use Policy to its Resellers (if applicable) and ultimately to the TLD registrants. Below is the Registry’s initial Acceptable Use Policy that we will use in connection with .ART.

.ART Acceptable Use Policy
This Acceptable Use Policy gives the Registry the ability to quickly lock, cancel, transfer or take ownership of any .ART domain name, either temporarily or permanently, if the domain name is being used in a manner that appears to threaten the stability, integrity or security of the Registry, or any of its registrar partners – and⁄or that may put the safety and security of any registrant or user at risk. The process also allows the Registry to take preventive measures to avoid any such criminal or security threats.
The Acceptable Use Policy may be triggered through a variety of channels, including, among other things, private complaint, public alert, government or enforcement agency outreach, and the on-going monitoring by the Registry or its partners. In all cases, the Registry or its designees will alert Registry’s registrar partners about any identified threats, and will work closely with them to bring offending sites into compliance.
The following are some (but not all) activities that may be subject to rapid domain compliance:
-Phishing: the attempt to acquire personally identifiable information by masquerading as a website other than .ART.
-Pharming: the redirection of Internet users to websites other than those the user intends to visit, usually through unauthorized changes to the Hosts file on a victim’s computer or DNS records in DNS servers.
-Dissemination of Malware: the intentional creation and distribution of ʺmaliciousʺ software designed to infiltrate a computer system without the owner’s consent, including, without limitation, computer viruses, worms, key loggers, and Trojans.
-Fast Flux Hosting: a technique used to shelter Phishing, Pharming and Malware sites and networks from detection and to frustrate methods employed to defend against such practices, whereby the IP address associated with fraudulent websites are changed rapidly so as to make the true location of the sites difficult to find.
-Botnetting: the development and use of a command, agent, motor, service, or software which is implemented: (1) to remotely control the computer or computer system of an Internet user without their knowledge or consent, (2) to generate distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
-Malicious Hacking: the attempt to gain unauthorized access (or exceed the level of authorized access) to a computer, information system, user account or profile, database, or security system.
-Child Pornography: the storage, publication, display and⁄or dissemination of pornographic materials depicting individuals under the age of majority in the relevant jurisdiction.

The Registry reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to take any administrative and operational actions necessary, including the use of computer forensics and information security technological services, among other things, in order to implement the Acceptable Use Policy. In addition, the Registry reserves the right to deny, cancel or transfer any registration or transaction, or place any domain name(s) on registry lock, hold or similar status, that it deems necessary, in its discretion; (1) to protect the integrity and stability of the registry; (2) to comply with any applicable laws, government rules or requirements, requests of law enforcement, or any dispute resolution process; (3) to avoid any liability, civil or criminal, on the part of Registry as well as its affiliates, subsidiaries, officers, directors, and employees; (4) per the terms of the registration agreement or (5) to correct mistakes made by the Registry or any Registrar in connection with a domain name registration. Registry also reserves the right to place upon registry lock, hold or similar status a domain name during resolution of a dispute. 

Taking Action Against Abusive and⁄or Malicious Activity
The Registry is committed to ensuring that those domain names associated with abuse or malicious conduct in violation of the Acceptable Use Policy are dealt with in a timely and decisive manner. This includes taking action against those domain names that are being used to threaten the stability and security of the TLD, or is part of a real-time investigation by law enforcement.

Once a complaint is received from a trusted source, third-party, or detected by the Registry, the Registry will use commercially reasonable efforts to verify the information in the complaint. If that information can be verified to the best of the ability of the Registry, the sponsoring registrar will be notified and be given 48 hours to investigate the activity and either take down the domain name by placing the domain name on hold or by deleting the domain name in its entirety or providing a compelling argument to the Registry to keep the name in the zone. If the registrar has not taken the requested action after the 48-hour period (i.e., is unresponsive to the request or refuses to take action), the Registry will place the domain on “ServerHold”. Although this action removes the domain name from the TLD zone, the domain name record still appears in the TLD WHOIS database so that the name and entities can be investigated by law enforcement should they desire to get involved.

Coordination with Law Enforcement
With the assistance of Neustar as its back-end registry services provider, Applicant can meet its obligations under Section 2.8 of the Registry Agreement where required to take reasonable steps to investigate and respond to reports from law enforcement and governmental and quasi-governmental agencies of illegal conduct in connection with the use of its TLD. The Registry will respond to legitimate law enforcement inquiries within one business day from receiving the request. Such response shall include, at a minimum, an acknowledgement of receipt of the request, questions or comments concerning the request, and an outline of the next steps to be taken by .ART for rapid resolution of the request. 

In the event such request involves any of the activities which can be validated by the Registry and involves the type of activity set forth in the Acceptable Use Policy, the sponsoring registrar is then given 48 hours to investigate the activity further and either take down the domain name by placing the domain name on hold or by deleting the domain name in its entirety or providing a compelling argument to the registry to keep the name in the zone. If the registrar has not taken the requested action after the 48-hour period (i.e., is unresponsive to the request or refuses to take action), the Registry will place the domain on “serverHold”. 

28.3 Measures for Removal of Orphan Glue Records
As the Security and Stability Advisory Committee of ICANN (SSAC) rightly acknowledges, although orphaned glue records may be used for abusive or malicious purposes, the “dominant use of orphaned glue supports the correct and ordinary operation of the DNS.” See http:⁄⁄www.icann.org⁄en⁄committees⁄security⁄sac048.pdf. 

While orphan glue often support correct and ordinary operation of the DNS, we understand that such glue records can be used maliciously to point to name servers that host domains used in illegal phishing, bot-nets, malware, and other abusive behaviors. Problems occur when the parent domain of the glue record is deleted but its children glue records still remain in DNS. Therefore, when the Registry has written evidence of actual abuse of orphaned glue, the Registry will take action to remove those records from the zone to mitigate such malicious conduct. 

Neustar will run a daily audit of entries in its DNS systems and compares those with its provisioning system. This serves as an umbrella protection to make sure that items in the DNS zone are valid. Any DNS record that shows up in the DNS zone but not in the provisioning system will be flagged for investigation and removed if necessary. This daily DNS audit serves to not only prevent orphaned hosts but also other records that should not be in the zone.
 
In addition, if either Applicant or Neustar become aware of actual abuse on orphaned glue after receiving written notification by a third party through its Abuse Contact or through its customer support, such glue records will be removed from the zone. 

28.4.1 Measures to Promote WHOIS Accuracy

Applicant acknowledges that ICANN has developed a number of mechanisms over the past decade that are intended to address the issue of inaccurate WHOIS information. Such measures alone have not proven to be sufficient. In order to promote WHOIS accuracy Applicant will offer a mechanism whereby third parties can submit complaints directly to the Applicant (as opposed to ICANN or the sponsoring Registrar) about inaccurate or incomplete WHOIS data. Such information shall be forwarded to the sponsoring Registrar, who shall be required to address those complaints with their registrants. Thirty days after forwarding the complaint to the registrar, Applicant will examine the current WHOIS data for names that were alleged to be inaccurate to determine if the information was corrected, the domain name was deleted, or there was some other disposition. If the Registrar has failed to take any action, or it is clear that the Registrant was either unwilling or unable to correct the inaccuracies, Applicant reserves the right to suspend the applicable domain name(s) until such time as the Registrant is able to cure the deficiencies.

28.4.2 Monitoring of Registration Data

To ensure the continued viability of the WHOIS system, Applicant shall perform random spot checking of registration data for accuracy and completeness at least twice per year. Applicant shall endeavor to authenticate the WhoIs information chosen for spot checks by electronic means and shall also attempt to verify all contact information provided. 

28.4.3 Policies and Procedures Ensuring Compliance 

Should Applicant find any information inaccurate or incomplete, Applicant shall contact the registrar through which the second-level domain in question was registered and request that the registrar contact the Registrant to request supplementation of the appropriate data. Thirty days after forwarding the complaint to the Registrar, the Applicant will examine the current WHOIS data for names that were alleged to be inaccurate to determine if the information was corrected, the domain name was deleted, or if there was some other disposition. 

If the Registrar has failed to take any action, or it is clear that the Registrant was either unwilling or unable to correct the inaccuracies, Applicant reserves the right to suspend the applicable domain name(s) until such time as the Registrant is able to cure the deficiencies. Applicant also reserves the right to share such information with industry partners for the purpose of promoting WHOIS accuracy.

If the Registrar had failed to take action with regard to the perceived inaccuracy or incomplete WHOIS information after thirty days of applicant contacting the Registrar, Applicant reserves the right to notify the appropriate personnel at ICANN and InterNIC that the Registrar in question was uncooperative. In the event the Registrar failed to take action to correct the inaccuracy, Applicant reserves the right to suspend the domain at issue, but shall do so only in cases where the domain’s usage violates Applicant’s Acceptable Use Policy. 

28.5 Registrar Incentives for Authenticated Data
Applicant also reserves the right to offer registrars financial incentives for pre-authenticated and verified registration data. Applicant may elect to provide discounts for bulk registrations or transfers of domains to registrars who can verify that the WHOIS data associated with the domains has already been verified. Applicant may also offer financial incentives to registrars who do not permit proxy services to act as registrants or penalize registrars who provide WHOIS registrant information that is obviously false. Applicant shall fully describe any financial incentives in its Registry-Registrar Agreements.

28.6 Resourcing Plans
Responsibility for abuse mitigation rests with a variety of functional groups. The Abuse Monitoring team is primarily responsible for providing analysis and conducting investigations of reports of abuse. The customer service team also plays an important role in assisting with the investigations, responded to customers, and notifying registrars of abusive domains. Finally, the Policy⁄Legal team is responsible for developing the relevant policies and procedures. 
The necessary resources will be pulled from the pool of available resources described in detail in the response to Question 31. The following resources are available from those teams:

Customer Support – 12 employees
Policy⁄Legal – 2 employees

In addition to the Neustar staff detailed above, within Applicant, two (2) persons shall be tasked with monitoring and cataloging abuse issues. As the .ART TLD grows, and if issues of abuse become more problematic and time-consuming, Applicant shall increase the number of employees on the abuse team and possibly engage the services of a third party or security analyst to outsource abuse investigations. 

The resources are more than adequate to support the abuse mitigation procedures of the .ART registry.

General Statement

Abusive uses of .ART second-level domain names will not be tolerated. The nature of such abuses creates security and stability issues for the registry, registrars and registrants, as well as for users of the Internet in general. In order to reduce abusive registrations, Applicant will take the following measures to decrease the potential for abuse:

29.1. Rights Protection Mechanisms
Applicant is firmly committed to the protection of Intellectual Property rights and to implementing the mandatory rights protection mechanisms contained in the Applicant Guidebook and detailed in Specification 7 of the Registry Agreement. Applicant recognizes that although the New gTLD program includes significant protections beyond those that were mandatory for a number of the current TLDs, a key motivator for Applicantʹs selection of Neustar as its registry services provider is Neustar’s experience in successfully launching a number of TLDs with diverse rights protection mechanisms, including many the ones required in the Applicant Guidebook. More specifically, Applicant will implement the following rights protection mechanisms in accordance with the Applicant Guidebook as further described below:
-Trademark Clearinghouse: a one-stop shop so that trademark holders can protect their trademarks with a single registration.
-Extended Sunrise Period and Continued Trademark Claims processes for the TLD.
-Implementation of the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy to address domain names that have been registered and used in bad faith in the TLD.
-Uniform Rapid Suspension: A quicker, more efficient and cheaper alternative to the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy to deal with clear cut cases of cybersquatting.
-Implementation of a Thick Whois making it easier for rights holders to identify and locate infringing parties.

A. Trademark Clearinghouse Including Sunrise and Trademark Claims
The first mandatory rights protection mechanism (“RPM”) required to be implemented by each new gTLD Registry is support for, and interaction with, the trademark clearinghouse. The trademark clearinghouse is intended to serve as a central repository for information to be authenticated, stored and disseminated pertaining to the rights of trademark holders. The data maintained in the clearinghouse will support and facilitate other RPMs, including the mandatory Sunrise Period and Trademark Claims service. Although there are many details of how the trademark clearinghouse will interact with each registry operator and registrars, Applicant is actively monitoring the developments of the Implementation Assistance Group (“IAG”) designed to assist ICANN staff in firming up the rules and procedures associated with the policies and technical requirements for the trademark clearinghouse. In addition, Applicantʹs back-end registry services provider is actively participating in the IAG to ensure that the protections afforded by the clearinghouse and associated RPMs are feasible and implementable.

Utilizing the trademark clearinghouse, all operators of new gTLDs must offer: (i) a sunrise registration service for at least 30 days during the pre-launch phase giving eligible trademark owners an early opportunity to register second-level domains in new gTLDs; and (ii) a trademark claims service for at least the first 60 days that second-level registrations are open. The trademark claim service is intended to provide clear noticeʺ to a potential registrant of the rights of a trademark owner whose trademark is registered in the clearinghouse.

Applicant, however, shall provide additional protection to brand owners and rights-holders by extending its Sunrise Period to sixty days; in addition, Applicant plans on implementing the Trademark Claims Service and subscribing to the Trademark Clearinghouse indefinitely. 

1. Sunrise Procedures:

Applicant’s registrars will ensure that all Sunrise Registrants meet sunrise eligibility requirements (“SERs”), which will be verified by Clearinghouse data. The proposed SERs include: (i) ownership of a mark that is (a) nationally or regionally registered and for which proof of use, such as a declaration and a single specimen of current use – was submitted to, and validated by, the Trademark Clearinghouse; or (b) that have been court-validated; or (c) that are specifically protected by a statute or treaty currently in effect and that was in effect on or before 26 June 2008, (ii) optional registry-elected requirements regarding the international class of goods or services covered by registration; (iii) representation that all provided information is true and correct; and (iv) provision of data sufficient to document rights in the trademark. 
 
Upon submission of all of the required information and documentation, registrar will forward the information to Applicant for authentication. Applicant will review the information and documentation and verify the trademark information and registration eligibility, and notify the potential registrant of any deficiencies. 
 
Applicant will incorporate a Sunrise Dispute Resolution Policy (SDRP). The SRDP will allow challenges to Sunrise Registrations by third parties for a ten-day period after acceptance of the registration based on the following four grounds: (i) at the time the challenged domain name was registered, the registrant did not hold a trademark registration of national effect (or regional effect) or the trademark had not been court-validated or protected by statute or treaty; (ii) the domain name is not identical to the mark on which the registrant based its Sunrise registration; (iii) the trademark registration on which the registrant based its Sunrise registration is not of national or regional effect or the trademark had not been court-validated or protected by statute or treaty; or (iv) the trademark registration on which the domain name registrant based its Sunrise registration did not issue on or before the effective date of the Registry Agreement and was not applied for on or before ICANN announced the applications received.
 
After receiving a Sunrise Complaint, Applicant will review the Complaint to see if the Complaint reasonably asserts a legitimate challenge as defined by the SDRP. If not, Applicant will timely send an email to the Complainant that the subject of the complaint clearly does not fall within one of the delineated grounds as defined by the SDRP and that Applicant considers the matter closed.
 
If the domain name is found to not meet the SERs, Applicant will immediately suspend the domain name. Thereafter, Applicant will immediately notify the Sunrise Registrant of the suspension of the domain name, the nature of the complaint, and provide the registrant with the option to timely cure the SER deficiencies or the domain name will be canceled. 
 
If the registrant timely responds, its response will be reviewed by Applicant to determine if the SERs are met. If Applicant is satisfied by the registrant’s response, Applicant will timely submit a request to unsuspend the domain name. If registrant does not timely respond, Applicant will then timely notify the Complainant that its complaint was ultimately denied and provide the reasons for the denial.

2. Trademark Claims Process:
Applicant plans to offer the Trademark Claims Service for not less than 180 days, and once details concerning the operation of the Trademark Clearinghouse are finalized, Applicant shall explore offering Trademark Claims Service for the life of the TLD. The Trademark Claims Service will be monitored by Applicant. Applicant’s registrars will be required to review all domain names requested to be registered during the Trademark Claims period to determine if they are an identical match of a trademark that has been filed with the Trademark Clearinghouse. A domain name will be considered an identical match when the domain name consists of the complete and identical textual elements of the mark, and includes domain names where (a) spaces contained within a mark that are either replaced by hyphens (and vice versa) or omitted; (b) certain special characters contained within a trademark are spelled out with appropriate words describing it (e.g., @ and &); and (c) punctuation or special characters contained within a mark that are unable to be used in a second-level domain name are either (i) omitted or (ii) replaced by spaces, hyphens or underscores. Domain names that are plural forms of a mark or that merely contain a mark will not qualify as an identical match.
 
If the registrar determines that a prospective domain name registration is identical to a mark registered in the Trademark Clearinghouse, the registrar will be required to ensure that a “Trademark Claims Notice” (“Notice”) in English is sent to the prospective registrant of the domain name and blind copy to Applicant on all such correspondence. The Notice will provide the prospective registrant information regarding the trademark referenced in the Trademark Claims Notice to enhance understanding of the Trademark rights being claimed by the trademark holder. The Notice will be provided in real time without cost to the prospective registrant.
 
After sending the Notice, the registrar will be required to ensure that the prospective registrant specifically warrant within five (5) days that: (i) the prospective registrant has received notification that the mark(s) is included in the Clearinghouse; (ii) the prospective registrant has received and understood the notice; and (iii) to the best of the prospective registrant’s knowledge that the registration and use of the requested domain name will not infringe on the rights that are the subject of the notice. If the warranty satisfies these requirements, the registrar will effectuate the registration and notify Applicant. 
 
After the effectuation of a registration that is identical to a mark listed in the Trademark Clearinghouse, the registrar will be required to then ensure that a clear notice to the trademark owner of the trademark consisting of the domain name that has been registered and will blind copy to Applicant confirming that it has done so. The trademark owner then has the option of filing a Complaint under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) and the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS) against the domain name, as the Applicant will require in its relevant agreements that the registry, registrar, and registrant all submit to and abide by the determinations of the UDRP and the URS providers. 


1. Applicantʹs registry service provider, Neustar, has already implemented Sunrise and⁄or Trademark Claims programs for numerous TLDs including .biz, .us, .travel, .tel and .co and will implement both of these services on behalf of .ART. 

Neustar’s Experience in Implementing Sunrise and Trademark Claims Processes
In early 2002, Neustar became the first registry operator to launch a successful authenticated Sunrise process. This process permitted qualified trademark owners to pre-register their trademarks as domain names in the .us TLD space prior to the opening of the space to the general public. Unlike any other “Sunrise” plans implemented (or proposed before that time), Neustar validated the authenticity of Trademark applications and registrations with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Subsequently, as the back-end registry operator for the .tel gTLD and the .co ccTLD, Neustar launched validated Sunrise programs employing processes. These programs are very similar to those that are to be employed by the Trademark Clearinghouse for new gTLDs.

Below is a high level overview of the implementation of the .co Sunrise period that demonstrates Neustar’s experience and ability to provide a Sunrise service and an overview of Neustar’s experience in implementing a Trademark Claims program to trademark owners for the launch of .biz. Neustar’s experience in each of these rights protection mechanisms will enable it to seamlessly provide these services on behalf of .ART as required by ICANN.

a) Sunrise and .co
The Sunrise process for .co was divided into two sub-phases:
-Local Sunrise giving holders of eligible trademarks that have obtained registered status from the Colombian trademark office the opportunity to apply for the .co domain names corresponding with their marks.
-Global Sunrise program giving holders of eligible registered trademarks of national effect, that have obtained a registered status in any country of the world the opportunity apply for the .co domain names corresponding with their marks for a period of time before registration is open to the public at large.

Like the new gTLD process set forth in the Applicant Guidebook, trademark owners had to have their rights validated by a Clearinghouse provider prior to the registration being accepted by the Registry. The Clearinghouse used a defined process for checking the eligibility of the legal rights claimed as the basis of each Sunrise application using official national trademark databases and submitted documentary evidence.

Applicants and⁄or their designated agents had the option of interacting directly with the Clearinghouse to ensure their applications were accurate and complete prior to submitting them to the Registry pursuant to an optional “Pre-validation Process”. Whether or not an applicant was “pre-validated,” the applicant had to submit its corresponding domain name application through an accredited registrar. When the Applicant was pre-validated through the Clearinghouse, each was given an associated approval number that it had to supply the registry. If they were not pre-validated, applicants were required to submit the required trademark information through their registrar to the Registry.

At the registry level, Neustar, subsequently either delivered the:
-Approval number and domain name registration information to the Clearinghouse.
-When there was no approval number, trademark information and the domain name registration information was provided to the Clearinghouse through EPP (as is currently required under the Applicant Guidebook).

Information was then used by the Clearinghouse as either further validation of those pre-validated applications, or initial validation of those that did not go through pre-validation. If the applicant was validated and their trademark matched the domain name applied-for, the Clearinghouse communicated that fact to the Registry via EPP. 

When there was only one validated sunrise application, the application proceeded to registration when the .co launched. If there were multiple validated applications (recognizing that there could be multiple trademark owners sharing the same trademark), those were included in the .co Sunrise auction process. Neustar tracked all of the information it received and the status of each application and posted that status on a secure Website to enable trademark owners to view the status of its Sunrise application.

Although the exact process for the Sunrise program and its interaction between the trademark owner, Registry, Registrar, and IP Clearinghouse is not completely defined in the Applicant Guidebook and is dependent on the current RFI issued by ICANN in its selection of a Trademark Clearinghouse provider, Neustar’s expertise in launching multiple Sunrise processes and its established software will implement a smooth and compliant Sunrise process for the new gTLDs.

b) Trademark Claims Service Experience
When Neustar’s .biz TLD launched in 2001, Neustar became the first TLD with a Trademark Claims service. Neustar developed the Trademark Claim Service by enabling companies to stake claims to domain names prior to the commencement of live .biz domain registrations.

During the Trademark Claim process, Neustar received over 80,000 Trademark Claims from entities around the world. Recognizing that multiple intellectual property owners could have trademark rights in a particular mark, multiple Trademark Claims for the same string were accepted. All applications were logged into a Trademark Claims database managed by Neustar.

The Trademark Claimant was required to provide a variety of information about their trademark rights, including the:
-Particular trademark or service mark relied on for the trademark Claim;
-Date a trademark application on the mark was filed, if any, on the string of the domain name;
-Country where the mark was filed, if applicable;
-Registration date, if applicable;
-Class or classes of goods and services for which the trademark or service mark was registered; and
-Name of a contact person with whom to discuss the claimed trademark rights.

Once all Trademark Claims and domain name applications were collected, Neustar then compared the claims contained within the Trademark Claims database with its database of collected domain name applications (DNAs). In the event of a match between a Trademark Claim and a domain name application, an e-mail message was sent to the domain name applicant notifying the applicant of the existing Trademark Claim. The e-mail also stressed that if the applicant chose to continue the application process and was ultimately selected as the registrant, the applicant would be subject to Neustar’s dispute proceedings if challenged by the Trademark Claimant for that particular domain name.

The domain name applicant had the option to proceed with the application or cancel the application. Proceeding on an application meant that the applicant wanted to go forward and have the application proceed to registration despite having been notified of an existing Trademark Claim. By choosing to “cancel,” the applicant made a decision in light of an existing Trademark Claim notification to not proceed.

If the applicant did not respond to the e-mail notification from Neustar, or elected to cancel the application, the application was not processed. This resulted in making the applicant ineligible to register the actual domain name. If the applicant affirmatively elected to continue the application process after being notified of the claimant’s (or claimants’) alleged trademark rights to the desired domain name, Neustar processed the application.

This process is very similar to the one ultimately adopted by ICANN and incorporated in the latest version of the Applicant Guidebook. Although the collection of Trademark Claims for new gTLDs will be by the Trademark Clearinghouse, many of the aspects of Neustar’s Trademark Claims process in 2001 are similar to those in the Applicant Guidebook. This makes Neustar uniquely qualified to implement the new gTLD Trademark Claims process.

B. Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) and Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS)
1. URS

In response to complaints by trademark owners that the UDRP was too cost prohibitive and slow, and the fact that more than 70 percent of UDRP cases were “clear cut” cases of cybersquatting, ICANN adopted the IRT’s recommendation that all new gTLD registries be required, pursuant to their contracts with ICANN, to take part in a Uniform Rapid Suspension System (“URS”). The purpose of the URS is to provide a more cost effective and timely mechanism for brand owners than the UDRP to protect their trademarks and to promote consumer protection on the Internet.

The URS is not meant to address questionable cases of alleged infringement (e.g., use of terms in a generic sense) or for anti-competitive purposes or denial of free speech, but rather for those cases in which there is no genuine contestable issue as to the infringement and abuse that is taking place.

Unlike the UDRP which requires little involvement of gTLD registries, the URS envisages much more of an active role at the registry-level. For example, rather than requiring the registrar to lock down a domain name subject to a UDRP dispute, it is the registry under the URS that must lock the domain within 24 hours of receipt of the complaint from the URS Provider to restrict all changes to the registration data, including transfer and deletion of the domain names.

In addition, in the event of a determination in favor of the complainant, the registry is required to suspend the domain name. This suspension remains for the balance of the registration period and would not resolve the original website. Rather, the nameservers would be redirected to an informational web page provided by the URS Provider about the URS.

Additionally, the WHOIS reflects that the domain name will not be able to be transferred, deleted, or modified for the life of the registration. Finally, there is an option for a successful complainant to extend the registration period for one additional year at commercial rates.

Applicant is fully aware of each of these requirements and will have the capability to implement these requirements for new gTLDs. Applicant’s choice of Neustar reflects its committment to the URS process. This is partly because during the IRT’s development of the URS, Neustar began examining the implications of the URS on its registry operations and provided the IRT with feedback on whether the recommendations from the IRT would be feasible for registries to implement.
Although there have been a few changes to the URS since the IRT recommendations, Neustar continued to participate in the development of the URS by providing comments to ICANN, many of which were adopted. In short, with the help of its registry services provider, Neustar, Applicant is committed to supporting the URS for the .ART TLD.

Applicant will specify in its Registry-Registrar and Registration Agreements used in connection with the .ART that all parties will timely abide by all decisions made by panels in accordance with the URS. On Applicant’s NIC.ART website, Applicant will designate and provide contact information for a Rights Protection Contact (“Rights Contact”) that will receive all URS Complaints verified by the URS Provider. This information shall consist of, at a minimum, a valid e-mail address dedicated solely to the handling of rights protection complaints, a telephone number and mailing address for the Rights Contact. Applicant will ensure that this information will be kept accurate and up to date.
 
Within 24 hours of receipt of the Notice of Complaint from the URS Provider, the Rights Contact shall notify its registry operator to “lock” the domain, meaning the registry shall restrict all changes to the registration data, including transfer and deletion of the domain names, but the name will continue to resolve. The Rights Contact will notify the URS Provider immediately upon locking the domain name (“Notice of Lock”). 
 
Immediately upon receipt of a Determination in the Complainant’s favor, Rights Contact will notify the registry operator to suspend the domain name, which shall remain suspended for the balance of the registration period and will not resolve to the original web site. The nameservers shall be redirected to an informational web page provided by the URS Provider about the URS. The WHOIS for the domain name shall continue to display all of the information of the original Registrant except for the redirection of the nameservers. In addition, the WHOIS shall reflect that the domain name will not be able to be transferred, deleted or modified for the life of the registration. Finally, Applicant will abide by any timely requests by Complainant to extend the registration period for one additional year at commercial rates. 
 
Immediately upon receipt of a Determination in registrant’s favor, Rights Contact will notify the registry operator to unlock the domain name.

2. UDRP

Applicant will specify in its Registry-Registrar and Registration Agreements used in connection with the TLD that all parties will timely abide by all decisions made by panels in accordance with the UDRP. Applicant’s Rights Contact will receive all UDRP Complaints and decisions, temporarily lock any domain names as required, and will notify its registrar to timely cancel or transfer all registrations determined to by a UDRP panel to be infringing. 
 
3. Trademark Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedure (Trademark PDDRP)
 
Applicant will participate in all post-delegation procedures required by the Registry agreement, including the Trademark Post-Delegation Dispute Resolution Procedure (Trademark PDDRP), and will timely abide by any Determinations of any PDDRP Provider as required in Specification 7 of the Registry Agreement.


C. Implementation of Thick Whois
The .ART registry will include a thick WHOIS database as required in Specification 4 of the Registry agreement. A thick WHOIS provides numerous advantages including a centralized location of registrant information, the ability to more easily manage and control the accuracy of data, and a consistent user experience. Applicant is committed to ensuring WHOIS queries are returned with the utmost speed and that registrars who go out of business or whose data otherwise becomes unavailable shall not prejudice the accuracy of the WHOIS database. Indeed, Applicant views the provision of an always-on, accurate, and thick WHOIS database as crucial to the proper operation of the UDRP and URS systems. 

In addition, Applicant will at least twice per year review a random sampling of domain names within the applied-for TLD to test the accuracy and authenticity of the WHOIS information. Through this review, Applicant will examine the WHOIS data for evidence of inaccurate or incomplete WHOIS information. In the event that such errors or missing information exists, it shall be forwarded to the registrar, who shall be required to address such deficiencies with its registrants. 

D. Policies Handling Complaints Regarding Abuse
In addition the Rights Protection mechanisms addressed above, the Applicant will implement a number of measures to handle complaints regarding the abusive registration of domain names in its TLD as described in .ART’s response to Question 28.

Registry Acceptable Use Policy
One of the key policies for each new gTLD registry is the need for an Acceptable Use Policy that clearly delineates the types of activities that constitute “abuse” and the repercussions associated with an abusive domain name registration. The policy must be incorporated into the applicable Registry-Registrar Agreement and reserve the right for the registry to take the appropriate actions based on the type of abuse. This may include locking down the domain name preventing any changes to the contact and nameserver information associated with the domain name, placing the domain name “on hold” rendering the domain name non-resolvable, transferring to the domain name to another registrar, and⁄or in cases in which the domain name is associated with an existing law enforcement investigation, substituting name servers to collect information about the DNS queries to assist the investigation. Applicantʹs Acceptable Use Policy, set forth in our response to Question 28, will include prohibitions on phishing, pharming, dissemination of malware, fast flux hosting, botnetting, hacking, and child pornography. In addition, the policy will include the right of the registry to take action necessary to deny, cancel, suspend, lock, or transfer any registration in violation of the policy.

Monitoring for Malicious Activity
Applicant is committed to ensuring that those domain names associated with abuse or malicious conduct in violation of the Acceptable Use Policy are dealt with in a timely and decisive manner. This includes taking action against those domain names that are being used to threaten the stability and security of the TLD, or is part of a real-time investigation by law enforcement.

Once a complaint is received from a trusted source, third-party, or detected by the Registry, the Registry will use commercially reasonable efforts to verify the information in the complaint. If that information can be verified to the best of the ability of the Registry, the sponsoring registrar will be notified and be given 48 hours to investigate the activity and either take down the domain name by placing the domain name on hold or by deleting the domain name in its entirety or providing a compelling argument to the Registry to keep the name in the zone. If the registrar has not taken the requested action after the 12-hour period (i.e., is unresponsive to the request or refuses to take action), the Registry will place the domain on “ServerHold”. Although this action removes the domain name from the TLD zone, the domain name record still appears in the TLD WHOIS database so that the name and entities can be investigated by law enforcement should they desire to get involved.

Takedown Procedure
 
Applicant will provide a Rights Protection Takedown Procedure (“Takedown Procedure”) modeled after the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s notice-and-takedown procedure.
 
At all times, Applicant will publish on its home website at 〈NIC.ART〉 as well as at its RPM Reporting Website contact information for addressing rights protection complaints (Complaints) to the Rights Contact, and the TLD’s Takedown Procedure.
 
Inquiries addressed to the Rights Contact will be forwarded to Applicant who will remedy or deny any Complaint regarding an alleged violation of the rights of the Complainant. During the review of any Complaint, Applicant will first give the Complaint a “quick look” to see if the Complaint reasonably alleges the infringement of any legal right. If not, the Rights Contact will write a timely correspondence to Complainant stating that the subject of the complaint clearly does not violate its rights.
 
If the quick look does not resolve the matter, Applicant will timely give the Complaint a full review. If a rights infringement is determined, the Rights Contact will alert the registry services provider to immediately suspend the resolution of the domain name. Applicant will then immediately notify the registrant of the suspension of the domain name, the nature of the complaint, and provide the registrant with the option to respond or take down the infringing content within a timely fashion or the domain name will be canceled. 
 
If the registrant responds within a timely period, its response will be reviewed by Applicant. If Applicant is satisfied by the registrant’s response that no rights have been infringed, Applicant will submit a timely request to the registry services provider to unsuspend the domain name. The Rights Contact will then timely notify the Complainant that its complaint was ultimately denied and provide the reasons for the denial. If the registrant does not respond within a timely fashion, the Rights Contact will notify the registry services provider to cancel the abusive domain name.
 
This Takedown Procedure will not prejudice either party’s election to pursue another dispute mechanism, such as URS or UDRP.
 
With the assistance of its back-end registry services provider, Applicant will meet its obligations under Section 2.8 of the Registry Agreement to take reasonable steps to investigate and respond to reports from law enforcement and governmental and quasi-governmental agencies of illegal conduct in connection with the use of its TLD. Applicant will accordingly timely respond to legitimate law enforcement inquiries. Any such response shall include, at a minimum, an acknowledgement of receipt of the request, questions, or comments concerning the request, and an outline of the next steps to be taken by Applicant for a timely resolution of the request. 
 
In the event such request involves any infringing activity which can be validated by Applicant, Rights Contact will timely notify the registry services provider to either suspend the domain name until the infringing activity is cured or cancel the domain name. If Applicant determines that it is not an infringing activity, Rights Contact will timely provide the relevant law enforcement, governmental and⁄or quasi-governmental agency with documentation supporting the maintenance of the domain in the zone.

With regard to all such requests discussed above, Applicant will maintain records of all law enforcement and governmental requests or inquiries and will track such requests and inquiries using customer relations management tools.

29.3 Resourcing Plans

The rights protection mechanisms described in the response above involve a wide range of tasks, procedures, and systems. The responsibility for each mechanism varies based on the specific requirements. In general the development of applications such as sunrise and IP claims is the responsibility of the Engineering team, with guidance from the Product Management team. Customer Support and Legal play a critical role in enforcing certain policies such as the rapid suspension process. These Neustar teams have years of experience implementing these or similar processes. The necessary resources will be pulled from the pool of available resources described in detail in the response to Question 31. The following resources are available from those teams:

Development⁄Engineering – 19 employees
Product Management- 4 employees
Customer Support – 12 employees

The resources are more than adequate to support the rights protection mechanisms of the .ART registry.

In addition to the Neustar staff detailed above, within Applicant, two (2) persons shall be tasked with monitoring, reviewing, cataloging, and addressing RPM complaint issues. As the .ART TLD grows, and if RPM-related issues become more problematic and time-consuming, Applicant shall increase the number of employees on the RPM team and possibly engage the services of outside vendors to supplement its internal staff.

Comment: Please refer to response to Question 28, Abuse Prevention and Mitigation, and response to Questions 30.(a), Security Policy – Summary of the Security Policy for the Proposed Registry. 

30(a)
Applicant and our back-end operator, Neustar, recognize the vital need to secure the systems and the integrity of the data in commercial solutions. The 〈.ART〉 registry solution will leverage industry-best security practices including the consideration of physical, network, server, and application elements. 

Neustar’s approach to information security starts with comprehensive information security policies. These are based on the industry best practices for security including SANS (SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security) Institute, NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), and Center for Internet Security (CIS). Policies are reviewed annually by Neustar’s information security team.

The following is a summary of the security policies that will be used in the 〈.ART〉 registry, including:
1. Summary of the security policies used in the registry operations
2. Description of independent security assessments
3. Description of security features that are appropriate for 〈.ART〉
4. List of commitments made to registrants regarding security levels
 
All of the security policies and levels described in this section are appropriate for the 〈.ART〉 registry.

30.(a).1 Summary of Security Policies
 
Neustar has developed a comprehensive Information Security Program in order to create effective administrative, technical, and physical safeguards for the protection of its information assets, and to comply with Neustarʹs obligations under applicable law, regulations, and contracts. This Program establishes Neustarʹs policies for accessing, collecting, storing, using, transmitting, and protecting electronic, paper, and other records containing sensitive information.

The Program defines:
-The policies for internal users and our clients to ensure the safe, organized and fair use of information resources.
-The rights that can be expected with that use.
-The standards that must be met to effectively comply with policy.
-The responsibilities of the owners, maintainers, and users of Neustar’s information resources.
-Rules and principles used at Neustar to approach information security issues.
 
The following policies are included in the Program:
1. Acceptable Use Policy
The Acceptable Use Policy provides the “rules of behavior” covering all Neustar Associates for using Neustar resources or accessing sensitive information.

2. Information Risk Management Policy
The Information Risk Management Policy describes the requirements for the on-going information security risk management program, including defining roles and responsibilities for conducting and evaluating risk assessments, assessments of technologies used to provide information security and monitoring procedures used to measure policy compliance.

3. Data Protection Policy
The Data Protection Policy provides the requirements for creating, storing, transmitting, disclosing, and disposing of sensitive information, including data classification and labeling requirements, the requirements for data retention. Encryption and related technologies such as digital certificates are also covered under this policy.

4. Third Party Policy
The Third Party Policy provides the requirements for handling service provider contracts, including specifically the vetting process, required contract reviews, and on-going monitoring of service providers for policy compliance.

5. Security Awareness and Training Policy
The Security Awareness and Training Policy provide the requirements for managing the on-going awareness and training program at Neustar. This includes awareness and training activities provided to all Neustar Associates.

6. Incident Response Policy
The Incident Response Policy provides the requirements for reacting to reports of potential security policy violations. This policy defines the necessary steps for identifying and reporting security incidents, remediation of problems, and conducting “lessons learned” post-mortem reviews in order to provide feedback on the effectiveness of this Program. Additionally, this policy contains the requirement for reporting data security breaches to the appropriate authorities and to the public, as required by law, contractual requirements, or regulatory bodies.

7. Physical and Environmental Controls Policy
The Physical and Environment Controls Policy provides the requirements for securely storing sensitive information and the supporting information technology equipment and infrastructure. This policy includes details on the storage of paper records as well as access to computer systems and equipment locations by authorized personnel and visitors.

8. Privacy Policy
Neustar supports the right to privacy, including the rights of individuals to control the dissemination and use of personal data that describes them, their personal choices, or life experiences. Neustar supports domestic and international laws and regulations that seek to protect the privacy rights of such individuals.

9. Identity and Access Management Policy
The Identity and Access Management Policy covers user accounts (login ID naming convention, assignment, authoritative source) as well as ID lifecycle (request, approval, creation, use, suspension, deletion, review), including provisions for system⁄application accounts, shared⁄group accounts, guest⁄public accounts, temporary⁄emergency accounts, administrative access, and remote access. This policy also includes the user password policy requirements.

10. Network Security Policy
The Network Security Policy covers aspects of Neustar network infrastructure and the technical controls in place to prevent and detect security policy violations.

11. Platform Security Policy
The Platform Security Policy covers the requirements for configuration management of servers, shared systems, applications, databases, middle-ware, and desktops and laptops owned or operated by Neustar Associates.

12. Mobile Device Security Policy
The Mobile Device Policy covers the requirements specific to mobile devices with information storage or processing capabilities. This policy includes laptop standards, as well as requirements for PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras and music players, and any other removable device capable of transmitting, processing or storing information.

13. Vulnerability and Threat Management Policy
The Vulnerability and Threat Management Policy provides the requirements for patch management, vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, threat management (modeling and monitoring) and the appropriate ties to the Risk Management Policy.

14. Monitoring and Audit Policy
The Monitoring and Audit Policy covers the details regarding which types of computer events to record, how to maintain the logs, and the roles and responsibilities for how to review, monitor, and respond to log information. This policy also includes the requirements for backup, archival, reporting, forensics use, and retention of audit logs.

15. Project and System Development and Maintenance Policy
The System Development and Maintenance Policy covers the minimum security requirements for all software, application, and system development performed by or on behalf of Neustar and the minimum security requirements for maintaining information systems.
 
30. (a).2 Independent Assessment Reports
Neustar IT Operations is subject to yearly Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Statement on Auditing Standards #70 (SAS70) and ISO audits. Testing of controls implemented by Neustar management in the areas of access to programs and data, change management and IT Operations are subject to testing by both internal and external SOX and SAS70 audit groups. Audit Findings are communicated to process owners, Quality Management Group and Executive Management. Actions are taken to make process adjustments where required and remediation of issues is monitored by internal audit and QM groups.

External Penetration Test is conducted by a third party on a yearly basis. As authorized by Neustar, the third party performs an external Penetration Test to review potential security weaknesses of network devices and hosts and demonstrate the impact to the environment. The assessment is conducted remotely from the Internet with testing divided into four phases:
-A network survey is performed in order to gain a better knowledge of the network that was being tested
-Vulnerability scanning is initiated with all the hosts that are discovered in the previous phase
-Identification of key systems for further exploitation is conducted
-Exploitation of the identified systems is attempted.

Each phase of the audit is supported by detailed documentation of audit procedures and results. Identified vulnerabilities are classified as high, medium and low risk to facilitate management’s prioritization of remediation efforts. Tactical and strategic recommendations are provided to management supported by reference to industry best practices.

30.(a).3 Augmented Security Levels and Capabilities
There are no increased security levels specific for 〈.ART〉. However, Neustar will provide the same high level of security provided across all of the registries it manages. 

A key to Neustar’s Operational success is Neustar’s highly structured operations practices. The standards and governance of these processes:
-Include annual independent review of information security practices 
-Include annual external penetration tests by a third party
-Conform to the ISO 9001 standard (Part of Neustar’s ISO-based Quality Management System)
-Are aligned to Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and CoBIT best practices
-Are aligned with all aspects of ISO IEC 17799
-Are in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) requirements (audited annually)
-Are focused on continuous process improvement (metrics driven with product scorecards reviewed monthly).

A summary view to Neustar’s security policy in alignment with ISO 17799 can be found in section 30.(a).4 below.

30.(a).4 Commitments and Security Levels
The 〈.ART〉 registry commits to high security levels that are consistent with the needs of the TLD. These commitments include:
 
Compliance with High Security Standards
-Security procedures and practices that are in alignment with ISO 17799
-Annual SOC 2 Audits on all critical registry systems
-Annual 3rd Party Penetration Tests
-Annual Sarbanes Oxley Audits
 
Highly Developed and Document Security Policies
-Compliance with all provisions described in section 30.(a).4 below and in the attached security policy document.
-Resources necessary for providing information security
-Fully documented security policies
-Annual security training for all operations personnel
 
High Levels of Registry Security
-Multiple redundant data centers
-High Availability Design
-Architecture that includes multiple layers of security
-Diversified firewall and networking hardware vendors
-Multi-factor authentication for accessing registry systems
-Physical security access controls
-A 24x7 manned Network Operations Center that monitors all systems and applications
-A 24x7 manned Security Operations Center that monitors and mitigates DDoS attacks
-DDoS mitigation using traffic scrubbing technologies