.free Pre-Register Domain - .free Domain Information

THE .FREE TOP-LEVEL DOMAIN

For many goods and services, including purely digital works, free is the best possible price. Whether used to label promotional giveaways, advertising subsidized downloads, or open source software, ʺfreeʺ can be the most important factor in a userʹs decision to try something new.

.FREE will serve Internet users as a clear, specialized, and semantically meaningful name for a wide variety of individuals and businesses. Whether used for coupons, downloads or promotions, .FREE will convey the kind of content available from any publisher.

New top-level domains represent the future of naming for Internet-based resources. For a significant number of registrants and users, .FREE will be the most accurate description of the content of the works or services a registrant might provide, or a user might seek, online.

DNS-based addressing brings with it unique advantages for branding Internet-based resources with semantic meaning and easily communicable and remembered labels. Domain Names are mnemonic devices, designed to help users remember and invoke the ʺlocationʺ of web sites, email servers, and the like (as opposed to having to remember IP addresses). The addition of many new, semantically meaningful, TLDs will enhance this mnemonic function, helping users to discover pertinent resources, differentiate among stored links, and remember how to reach sites they have visited before.

Top-level domains with specific semantic meaning, like .FREE, will thrive when operated by a neutral registry-services provider like Uniregistry. A neutral registry does not provide preferential registration opportunities to any particular market participant, create anti-competitive rules that prevent domain name registration by competitors, or become so deeply involved in the target market that its presence as the registry services provider creates the appearance of impropriety or bias. Uniregistry always will act as a neutral services provider for .FREE.

A specialized top-level domain string, like .FREE, immediately conveys the purpose for which the user is seeking to access a site. Registrants who might get lost in a larger, undifferentiated TLD, and who seek to convey the specific purpose of the site or services, or who are unable to find a satisfactory SLD within existing TLDs, will find it easier to reach potential users.

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

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

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

ABOUT UNIREGISTRY

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

The mission and purpose of Uniregistryʹs .FREE gTLD is to be the pre-eminent general and generic Top Level Domain (GTLD) choice for registrants seeking to provide no cost goods and services or promotional items through the use of a Second Level Domain (SLD) name.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

18.B USER BENEFITS

Uniregistry will offer .FREE as an intuitively relevant top-level domain serving registrants seeking to provide information about no cost content and promotional giveaways.

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

18.B.1 Competition, Differentiation, and Innovation

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

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

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

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

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

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

18.B.2 User Experience

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

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

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

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

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

18.B.3 Registration Policies in Support of the User Experience Goals

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

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

18.B.4 Protecting the Privacy or Confidential Information of Registrants or Users

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

18.B.5 Outreach and Communications

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

18C - Operating Rules To Reduce Social Costs

18.C.1 Assignment of Domain Names

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

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

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

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

18.C.2 Cost Structure and Increases

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

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

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

18.C.3 Mitigating Externalities

18.C.3.1 Pro-Active Abuse Prevention, Monitoring, and Mitigation

Historically, domain name registries have viewed their companies as purely technical service providers and seen socially undesirable Internet behavior, such as abuse, criminality and fraud, as someone elseʹs problem. The Internet increasingly permeates human interactions and processes, whether those interactions are social, commercial, financial, industrial, or governmental. Uniregistry believes that a registry should possess sophisticated technical tools to identify and redress behavior, wielded by experienced and knowledgeable management committed to rapid response to clearly abusive behavior. While what may be a criminal act in one jurisdiction might be a lawful expression in another, we believe it is possible, and necessary, to define and respond to behaviors which constitute, in their motivations and consequences, attacks on the Internet itself as a reliable medium for the free expression of ideas, information and commerce. Fraud, cybervandalism, identity theft and other universally recognized forms of cybercrime can adversely impact utilization of the Internet to advance the human condition in ways that are as insidious as the injudicious application of policies designed to combat them.

This Application proposes a suite of abuse prevention, investigation and response tools, including active monitoring of WHOIS accuracy; participation in ISCʹs Security Information Exchange; detection of anomalous network traffic consistent with abuse profiles; agents for service of legal process, warrants and subpoenas in the United States; a single point of contact for abuse reporting and response with 24x7 availability; a directory of abuse response resources for third party responders; zone file access; searchable WHOIS; anti-terrorism measures; and graduated tiers of registrar incentives and disincentives based on policy compliance and responsiveness. As undesirable Internet behavior continues to evolve in sophistication and creative unpredictability Uniregistryʹs commitment to be an active participant in the relevant cooperative law enforcement and industry and anti-abuse communities, and the demonstrated record of Uniregistryʹs contractor Internet Systems Consortium in that regard, is perhaps of greater importance than the rules, policies and services which Uniregistry will provide and enforce.

18.C.3.2 Civil Disputes

Uniregistry will require and enforce registrar compliance with the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy, Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS), and all requirements of the RAA relevant to civil disputes. The URS is not currently offered by any dispute resolution provider which has committed to ICANNʹs target estimate of $300 for URS disputes. Uniregistry believes that cases of clearly unambiguous, facially apparent cybersquatting against established brands can be resolved fairly, promptly and economically, because the type of cases qualifying for the URS are precisely the sort of cases which do not require analysis at length. Uniregistry will seek to implement a URS equivalent to be administered by recognized experts in the field of domain name disputes in the absence of URS availability at the cost target established by ICANN. In conjunction with Sunrise registrations, Uniregisty will implement Sunrise challenges to address abuse of the Sunrise registration system; a trademark claim notification service for pre-empting a defense of ignorance as an excuse for cybersquatting; designated resolution of suspended or blocked domains to prevent ISP re-direction of non-resolving names; and a registration string watch service to permit policing of domain registrations containing strings of interest to users.

18.C.3.3 Technical Security and Stability

Uniregistryʹs technical services provider, ISC is well known in the domain name services community as the operator of the F-Root, and its personnel include highly respected and experienced participants in the Internet Engineering Task Force, and numerous ICANN working groups, task forces and committees. ISC brings decades of experience in operating high reliability and high security systems to the operation of the .FREE TLD. The application proposes a modular, scalable, and geographically diverse registry platform which can accommodate registration volume and name resolution second to none, independent of whether the actual volume fails to meet or overwhelming exceeds expectations, and can accommodate addition or replacement of capacity without service interruption. The WHOIS system described in the application is further designed to accommodate selective publication of WHOIS data on a jurisdictional basis, as various standards for the handling of personal data continue to evolve.

18.C.3.5 Financial Stability

Experience gained since the launch of new TLDs and general marketing of certain ccTLDs since 2000 has demonstrated that treatment of a TLD delegation as a privately-owned balance sheet asset or private fiefdom does not inspire user confidence. Uniregistry believes that delegation of a TLD is an appointment of a private steward of a public trust. Accordingly, a registry should be prepared to execute a plan of operation which does not rely on rosy scenarios, unrealistic projections and revenue gimmicks.

Uniregistryʹs business plan is based on providing registry services to end users, and not on ʺpremium nameʺ sales, extorting trademark owners, or returning gains to passive outside investors. Uniregistry is not seeking to obtain any necessary capital based on the prospect of selling a stake in Uniregistry ownership contingent upon approval of this application. Uniregistry is well-capitalized, fully funded and ready to commence operation rapidly upon approval of this application. Uniregistryʹs financial reserve is held in gold, and thus immune to currency fluctuations from global economic uncertainty.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

22.1 RESERVED NAMES
22.2 RELEASE AND USE OF RESERVED NAMES
22.3 POST-REGISTRATION ABUSE CHALLENGE PROCESS
22.4 RESERVATION AND CLAIM PROCESS
22.5 COMPLIANCE WITH FUTURE POLICY DEVELOPMENT

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22.1 RESERVED NAMES

In accord with Specification 5 of the Registry Agreement, Uniregistry will reserve the country and territory names contained in the following internationally recognized lists (ʺReserved Geographic Namesʺ) at the second level (which is the only level within the .FREE top-level domain at which registrations will be provided by Uniregistry):

- the short form (in English) of all country and territory names contained on the ISO 3166- 1 list, as updated from time to time, including the European Union, which is exceptionally reserved on the ISO 3166-1 list, and its scope extended in August 1999 to any application needing to represent the name European Union 〈http://www.iso.org/iso/support/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists/iso-3166- 1_decoding_table.htm#EU〉;

- the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, Technical Reference Manual for the Standardization of Geographical Names, Part III Names of Countries of the World; and,

- the list of United Nations member states in 6 official United Nations languages prepared by the Working Group on Country Names of the United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names.

To the extent that additional reserved geographic names are incorporated into the Registry Agreement or sent to Uniregistry by the ICANN Board, such names will be added to the list of Reserved Geographic Names for protection at the second level.

22.2 RELEASE AND USE OF RESERVED NAMES

Uniregistry believes that governments and other entities represented on the list of Reserved Geographic Names may wish to make an active use of their reserved .FREE domain names.

To encourage the use of the Reserved Geographic Names, Uniregistry will hold a pre-sunrise redemption claim process for governments involved in ICANNʹs Government Advisory Committee (ʺGACʺ). Governments represented in the GAC will be allowed to designate the recipient of the Reserved Geographic Name corresponding to their country by submitting a Geographic Name Claim Form (the form of which will be subject to approval by ICANN). The Geographic Name Claim Form will allow the government representative to designate a Geographic Domain Name Registrant, which can be the government itself or any public or private entity or person willing to accept and use the domain name. Alternatively, for governments which do not participate in ICANN, a Geographic Name Claim Form may be certified and submitted under the authority of the national government or an authorized department thereof, designating a Geographic Domain Name Registrant, or waiving that governmentʹs claim to the corresponding name(s).

Under no circumstances will a reserved geographic name be registered or released to any government identified as a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States Department of State, or under equivalent sanctions programs administered by the United States Department of the Treasury.

Upon a representation that the designated Geographic Domain Name Registrant will place the Reserved Geographic Name in active use, Uniregistry also will allow the GAC Representative (or appropriate official body of a non-GAC nation) to pre-select up to ten (10) additional domain names that correspond to cities, geographic areas, or communities or monuments of cultural significance in the country. The Geographic Name Claim Form will allow the GAC Representative to designate domain name registrants for each of the additional names (which can be the same person or entity or multiple persons or entities), who will be given no cost registrations for the first five (5) years. To authenticate the government representative, Uniregistry will accept claims only from the then current list of GAC Representatives, as set forth on the GAC website, or which have been duly certified by an office, department, or agency of national authority of a non-GAC nation.

22.3 POST-REGISTRATION ABUSE CHALLENGE PROCESS

Uniregistry takes seriously the problems of phishing, fraud, counterfeiting, and other Internet crime designed to deceive consumers and other end-users. As detailed in response to Question 28, Uniregistry will have in place a comprehensive policy designed to minimize and redress abusive registrations and other activities that have a deleterious effect on Internet users. Because Uniregistry understands that governments and quasi-governmental agencies are frequent subjects of phishing and fraud, it will give contact information to governments and quasi-governmental agencies to use the Uniregistry abuse mitigation process for the cost-free rapid takedown of domain name registrations clearly designed to spoof, fool or defraud end users about the source of government services.

22.4 RESERVATION AND CLAIM PROCESS

The default state for all Reserved Geographic Names at the second level will be as reserved names, not for general registration. UniRegistryʹs registry services provider, Internet Systems Consortium (ʺISCʺ), will ensure that Reserved Geographic Names are incapable of general registration by third-party users.

In the event that a Reserved Geographic Name is claimed by an eligible government, the claim form will be received and reviewed by UniRegistryʹs legal and compliance department. Upon verification that the claim form is complete and submitted by an authorized representative of a government, UniRegistry will provide the authorized representative with a token for each of the claimed second-level names. The token can be used with any .FREE-acredited registrar to register the claimed .FREE domain names. After a previously Reserved Geographic Name is registered, UniRegistry will verify that the domain name contact information matches the contact information on the claim form and follow-up with the claimant to ensure that the name is now owned by the proper party. Once this verification is complete, the domain name will be treated as any other domain name, and the registrant will be responsible for its renewal (after the five-year free registration period) and management.

22.5 COMPLIANCE WITH FUTURE POLICY DEVELOPMENT

Uniregistry understands that both ICANN as a whole and the GAC specifically are reviewing the varying needs of governments with regard to the reservation and registration of geographic domain names. To the extent that the ICANN Board adopts revised rules for the registration for geographic names, Uniregistry will implement them.