.gal Pre-Register Domain - .gal Domain Information

The .gal TLD application is submitted by Asociación puntoGAL in name and on behalf of the Galician linguistic and cultural community, which originated in Galicia, an area in northwestern Iberian Peninsula.
The goals of the .gal TLD are to:

(a) facilitate digital communications from, to and within the Galician linguistic and cultural community;
(b) provide a platform for the development in the digital space of the Galician linguistic and cultural community.
(c) strengthen the image of the Galician linguistic and cultural community in the on-line world.
(d) promote Galician language and culture and foster the development of the community.

This is to be achieved by:

(i) actively designing and developing the .gal TLD name space with a focus on the needs of the Galician linguistic and cultural community, involving cultural, welfare, business and public stakeholders;
(ii) allowing registrations of second-level domains in the Galician linguistic and cultural TLD by individuals and organizations with a bona fide nexus to the Galician linguistic and cultural community; the basic criterion to elucidate this bona fide nexus will be set by the requirement to use the domain names registered for the purpose of online communications in Galician and/or related to the Galician culture
(iii) operating the .gal TLD under the stewardship of the Galician linguistic and cultural community: As will be elaborated and detailed under 20 b), Asociación puntoGAL has the explicit support of the Galician public authorities, its most relevant cultural and professional institutions, private sector stakeholders, as well as the support of more than 12,500 individuals.

The .gal TLD will contribute to increase the linguistic and cultural diversity of the DNS, which is one of the main objectives of the gTLD process.
The above-mentioned general goals of the .gal TLD are further developed as follows:
- Meeting point of a lively cultural community: the .gal TLD will serve approximately four million people all around the globe who constitute a community with a rich cultural, social and economic life with unique characteristics and activity. This community is conformed by a language and a culture of great historical relevance and that is nowadays official in the community of Galicia. The Galician language has a remarkable amount of publications and translations and has a very dynamic Internet presence. As an example, Galician ranks as the 43rd language in entries on the Wikipedia.
- Contributing to the normalization of Galician language and to promote its culture: the .gal TLD will be a powerful tool to make Galician more visible and to improve its normalization. In the future, presence on the Internet will be as critical for small languages as having access to the media, education and publishing have been in the past.
- Improving language transmission between generations: The influence of the Internet is specially important for the youth. The .gal TLD will undoubtably help in the re-enhancement trend of the prestige of the Galician among its own speakers, especially among the younger users of the language. Because prestige is an essential factor for ensuring that older generations transmit their language to new generations, it can be said that the .gal TLD will contribute to improve intergenerational language transmission.
- Increasing benefits for Galician cultural industry and its economic life: the .gal TLD will contribute to highlight the public relevance of Galician creations and products both inwards and outwards, increasing their beneficial effects towards both the community and the cultural industries and economy, and offering a vehicle to foster the evolution of Galician cultural industries and economy. The .gal TLD will also serve as a recognizable item and a tool to smooth the cultural industriesʹ transition to the digital-based era.
- Increasing audience for websites in Galician: Internet search enginesʹ usage of the .gal TLD will serve as a tool to offer more accurate results in regards to content in Galician or related to Galician culture. This will help websites in Galician hits increase, improving their advertising revenues and, therefore, fostering lawful commercial visibility of the contents in Galician. Contents aggregators in Galician suffer from low visualization in search engines, who usually give higher ranking to websites in foreign languages, even for domestic content. Furthermore, there are no news search engines for news in Galician. The .gal TLD could be used both to improve search results in Galician and to develop new specific search engines.
- Improving consumer choice by facilitating online marketing and promoting Galician economy: the .gal TLD will help long tail companiesʹ strategies to focus the marketing of their products to the community in Galician or designed for the Galician cultural community. Logically, the companies' adoption of the .gal TLD to address the Galician market will be key to measure how the .gal TLD has increased consumers' choice. In addition, it will be easy to measure whether the .gal TLD has contributed to make available more products in Galician, especially Information Technologies and Internet solutions like, for example, news aggregators, directories, blogging platforms, etc.
- Promoting the relations with and within the diaspora: the .gal TLD will contribute to making the huge Galician diaspora more visible and to improve the relations between its nodes and different generations. Websites of Galician emigrants social centers could adopt the .gal TLD to highlight that they are part of a large community. Furthermore, these groups of emigrants will have an important asset at their availability in order to promote the transmission of the language to the younger generations, most of whom have never been in the original territory of the language and who use the Internet as their main source of entertainment and information. An efficient way to measure the .gal TLD performance will be to determine how many of the hundreds of Galician emigrants centers have adopted the new gTLD. At this moment, twenty of them have already joined Asociación puntoGAL. The .gal TLD will also encourage IT companies to launch products specifically designed for the diaspora community.
- A new type of linguistic gTLD: the Galician linguistic and cultural community has a relevant part of its members beyond Galician's original and historical area of influence. The .gal TLD will be very useful for academics and ICANN to study whether this kind of linguistic and cultural gTLDs effectively contribute to the preservation of a culture among emigrants.
- The previous experience of a linguistic and cultural TLD, .CAT, offered the possibility to evaluate the beneficiary ripple effects of such a TLD and its significant contribution to the profile of the Catalan speaking community on the Internet. Asociación puntoGAL's cooperation with Fundació puntCAT throughout ECLID - European Cultural and Linguistic Internet Domains - the working group which both entities are founding members of, will contribute to the benefit of the linguistic and cultural TLDs' knowledge. More information about ECLID: http://www.eclid.eu/
- Reinvest all the benefits in the community: Asociación puntoGAL is a non for profit collective. According to the provisions of Asociación puntoGAL's bylaws, that state that contributing to normalization of the language on the Information Technologies field is one of the objectives of the association, all the benefits from the registration of domains will feed a program to offer economic support to projects that promote Galician in information industry or on the Internet. Asociación puntoGAL will launch this support program after ensuring the financial stability of the new gTLD. Consequently, part of the benefits that online content and product in Galician already generate will return to the linguistic community

The key benefits to all stakeholders of the .gal TLD are derived from the intrinsic link of the TLD string to the Galician linguistic and cultural community, from the specifically dedicated policy to ensure full respect to the linguistic and cultural objectives of the TLD, from the ability to design and develop the name space from inception and from the clear accountability to the Galician linguistic and cultural community, being Asociación puntoGAL a non for profit entity composed of a wide array of Institutions from the Civil Society.
The specificity to Galician linguistic and cultural community of the TLD string and the TLD policy enable registrants to communicate in a way that demonstrates their commitment to the Galician linguistic and cultural community. A potential registrant interested in a given domain under the .gal TLD is more likely to be able to register it because the potential of contention from other parts of the world is reduced.

The ability to design and develop a planned portion of the name space creates a web of predictable and memorable names that will facilitate access to key resources for users. Predictability relates both the choice of the name and the content the user may expect from a name corresponding to a certain pattern.
The launch process and the community nexus compliance program are designed to achieve a high degree of relevance of .gal domain names for the Galician linguistic and cultural community. The focus on language and cultural manifestations facilitates clear and easy communications from, to and within the Galician linguistic and cultural community. Along with a policy providing strong intellectual property support, this benefits local and international trademark holders as well as local and international Internet users.

Answers to enumerated question points:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Users will have greater comfort on the context of naming variants: in key portions of the .gal name space, alternative names and variants (redirected to the canonical forms) will systematically be activated. Users in the Galician linguistic and cultural community will get increasingly used to the predictability of .gal domain names. As a result, they also avoid stumbling upon typo-squatting, robotized pay-per-click traps or domain-for-sale pages.


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

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

(i) generally accepted as legitimate; and

(ii) beneficial to the cause and the values of the Galician linguistic and cultural community; and

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

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

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

1, Pre-launch phase

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

2.Launch phase

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

- Entities which have a specific vocation in promoting Galician language and/or culture, including Public Administrations with competences in those territories where Galician is official.
- Trademark and other distinctive signs rights holders. This includes trademarks validated by the Trademark Clearinghouse designations of origin, and commercial names of companies having their legal seat in Galicia.
- Entities with previous online communications in Galician. Applicants will be requested to provide the URL where their significant content in Galician may be found and checked. (This category is restricted to legal entities, and does not allow "fantasy names")
- No prior rights. Eligible registrants not able to claim any of the priorities listed above will be able to apply during the whole duration of the Launch phase, as a preparation for an orderly and transparent Landrush.

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

The Pre-launch negotiations involving calls for projects by innovators and pioneer users. They foster the intuitive usability of the .gal TLD with a focus on the needs of the Galician linguistic and cultural community. Once these domain names are active, they become an outreach mechanism in their own right because they establish the touch-and-feel of the .gal TLD in the minds of the users.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All applications are published on the Whois service. Applicants mark their prior rights, if any, in the application. There are four categories: entities which specific goal is to promote Galician language and culture; trademark-based applications; previous online content in Galician; and no prior rights.

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


Answers to enumerated question points:

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

As described above, during pre-launch and launch phase, the first-come/first-served principle is NOT applied. If there is more than one application for the same domain in a given category (or subcategory), a contention resolution process begins. The contention resolution process allows agreement between contenders (withdrawal and refund of application), random selection (if all contenders agree), mediation and arbitration and, as a tie-breaker of last resort, auction.

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

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

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

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

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

The .gal TLD will serve the needs of the Galician linguistic and cultural community on the Internet. The community consists of those who use (or commit to use) the Galician language for their online communications, and/or promote the different aspects of Galician culture online, and/or intend to specifically address their online communications and services to that community. Registrations under the .gal TLD are restricted to bona-fide members of the Galician linguistic and cultural community, and subject to the further requirement that the registrant's actions in the the .gal TLD community, as well as the registrant's use of the registered domain name, must be: (i)generally accepted as legitimate; and (i)beneficial to the cause and the values of the Galician linguistic and cultural community; and (i)commensurate with the role and importance of the registered domain name; and (iv)in good faith at the time of registration and thereafter. The Galician language is recognized as the autochthonous language in the area where it originated, and the Galician government has the right and obligation to use and promote it at all levels. Galician is established in all the educational levels. In addition, the administration promotes the language in the areas outside Galicia where people speak Galician and among the diaspora. According to official data from Observatorio da Lingua Galega (a public body that researches in linguistics), Galician is spoken by more than 98% of the inhabitants of the territories where Galician is official. Asociación puntoGAL has a clear and strong endorsement from the most relevant Institutions related to the Galician linguistic and cultural community. This also includes relevant business and professional associations, representing interests from every sector. The representativity of these institutions invests PuntoGAL with a clear mandate to serve a linguistic and cultural community of approximately four million people in different territories, and whose size ranks in position 136th among the more than 6,000 languages of the globe. Many among the biggest Information Technologies companies are aware of the economical significance of Galician for their products. Google is currently available in 118 languages, and Galician is one of them. OS Windows can run in 95 languages, and Galician is available. Facebook only works with 70 languages and among them is Galician. On Twitter, Galician ranks 22nd in the list of languages used and first among languages that are official in only part of a state. Almost everyrelevant free software initiative (Mozzilla, OpenOffice, etc.) has its own Galician translation, completed by an active network of volunteers who work for the normalization of Galician in the software industry. Volunteers also feed the Galipedia, the Galician Wikipedia. Galipedia ranks 41th in number of entries. Galipedia has more than 39.000 articles. Besides language, the Galician culture has an ancient legacy with unique characteristics. The Way of St. James one of the oldest pilgrimage routes across Europe that finish in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela; music which is similar to the musical traditions of Ireland, Scotland and other Atlantic European territories; ancient traditions like Galician carnival, literature medieval Galician lyric poetry had a special cultural role during the Middle Ages in the whole Iberian Peninsula; and cuisine -famous for the quality of its shellfish and seafood are just a few of the most internationally know examples of Galician cultural landmarks. Answers to enumerated question points: •How the community is delineated from Internet users generally. The objective of the .gal TLD being to serve the Galician linguistic and cultural community, and to contribute to the promotion of the Galician information society sphere, the community is defined by those Internet content creators and end users using online communications in Galician or related to the Galician culture. The article 2 of Asociación puntoGAL's bylaws enshrines this Mandate by establishing that "entities, companies or people that use the Galician language and/or promote the Galician culture may register a .gal domain name" •How the community is structured and organized. Asociación puntoGAL has been established for the purpose of creating and managing the .gal TLD. To that purpose, it created an structure that represents a wide array of Institutions from every area of the Galician society, and gathered the support of the most relevant Institutions related to the Galician cultural, technologic, media, professional and Civil Society sectors. PuntoGAL therefore, represents a community established centuries ago, with a longstanding existence and consolidated cultural heritage, organized throughout the centuries in many different layers of political, administrative, commercial, cultural and social organizations, that exceed by far the scope of this question. •When the community was established, including the date(s) of formal organization, if any, as well as a description of community activities to date. Due its nature, there is no date of formal organization of the community. However, the Galician language belongs to the family of Romance languages -like French or Spanish- and is the result of the evolution of Latin, which was introduced by the Romans in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. The Romans named Gallaecia the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula and the first references about the Gallaeci people were written by Latin and Greek authors in chronicles written during the first century AD. From the 9th century onwards, the language spoken in the area of the Kingdom of Galicia (founded around 409) was so different from Latin that the existence of two languages could be considered: Latin and Galician. There are many areas with a large concentration of Galicians and Galiciansʹ descendants all around the world. These emigrants preserved their language as a communication vehicle -not only in the private field but also in the public field- through periodicals, literary publications or even in radio stations. There are large Galician-speaking communities in plenty of the main cities of Spain (Barcelona, Madrid, etc.), the rest of Europe (Zurich, Lisboa, etc. ) and America (Montevideo, Buenos Aires, etc). One of the main aims of the .gal TLD is to serve as a link between these diaspora communities. In fact, among the more than 100 members of Asociación puntoGAL there are twenty associations of Galician diaspora. There are members form two continents and ten countries. Researchers of Galician also participate in this community. Currently, there are 43 centers of Galician studies located at several universities in Europe, America and the Australian Continent. •The current estimated size of the community, both as to membership and geographic extent Four million people approximately form this community. Almost three million of them live inside Galicia, in the North West of the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish Constitution states that Galicia is an autonomous community and a historic region. In addition, Galician language and Galician culture have a relevant presence in other autonomous communities of Spain. Galician emigrant populations in France (15,798), United Kingdom (10,358), Germany (13,076), Switzerland (29,772), United States of America (11,549), Mexico (9,100), Cuba (24,546), Argentina (135,741), Brazil (34,700), Uruguay (33,739), Venezuela (36,586) and Australia (841) are relevant. It is important to bear in mind that these data only include people living abroad and who are registered in the official census. The total amount of Galician descendants of different generations and their relatives living abroad multiplies by six or five the number of Galician registered in the official census

All the main organizations of the Galician cultural and linguistic community, both the major official institutions and the biggest grassroots organizations are members of the Asociación puntoGAL. The Asociación puntoGAL also has the support and endorsement of 12.563 individuals. The amount, relevance and diversity of its members allows Asociación puntoGAL to say that is the Galician linguistic and cultural community who is applying for the gTLD. As the complete list and description of the 110 members does not fit within the strict character limits of this question, please check Asociación puntoGAL's membership at: http://puntogal.org/actualidade/nova.php?id=455&lg=ing Institutions The Real Academia Galega (RAG) is the top institution regarding Galician language. The RAG promulgates norms of grammar, spelling and vocabulary. It also promotes the language in society. The RAG is formed by some of the most prestigious Galician linguists, poets and writers. It was created more than one century ago.This institution is one of the founding members of the PuntoGAL. In fact, the main office of this candidature is located in RAG headquarters in A Coruña. The main Galician law, Estatuto de Autonomía de Galicia, passed by Spanish Parliament, also entitles the autonomous government to "promote Galician cultural values" creating the Consello da Cultura Galega (CCG). The CCG is the institution in charge of cultural research and is the top advisory committee regarding linguistic and cultural public policies. The CCG is also a member of PuntoGAL. The Xunta de Galicia, the Galician Autonomous Government, has been supporting the Asociación puntoGAL since 2006. Academic All three Galician universities (Santiago, A Coruña and Vigo) are members of Asociación puntoGAL. Moreover, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, one of the oldest in Europe, provides Asociación puntoGAL its administrative office, from which this candidature has been promoted for six years. Furthermore, the most important teachers union in the public education system (Conferencia Intersindical Galega), the main research group into innovation in education (Nova Escola Galega) and the main association of specialists who promote the normalization of Galician language are members of this candidate (Coordinadora de Traballadores/as de Normalización da Lingua). Information Technologies industry This sector participates both collectively, as employeesʹ associations, and individually, as companies who offer tools in Galician. One of the associationʹs original members is EGANET, an employers organization in which more than 70 Internet companies cooperate. For instance, the only ICANN accredited registrar located in Galicia, Dinahosting, is a member of Asociación puntoGAL. Other IT companies that participate individually are Inxenio Internet Consulting S.L, RedCoruna S.L.U. , Quobis Networks S.L., Interdix Galicia, Pexego Sistemas Informáticos and Openhost S.L. Among the members are some of the principal associations of graduates in Computer Science (Asociación de Enxeñeiros en Informática de Galicia) and in Telecommunications (Asociación de Enxeñeiros de Telecomunicacións de Galicia). Media industry and communications From employersʹ associations to unions, the media sector who publishes in Galician has a relevant representation in Asociación puntoGAL. Some of the main broadcasters (CRTVG, the publicly owned radio and television company, which is the most popular in the region and that only broadcasts in Galician) and newspapers in Galicia (for instance, Editorial Compostela, who publish Galicia Hoxe, an online newspaper in Galician, and El Correo Gallego, the main newspaper in Galiciaʹs capital Santiago de Compostela) are members of puntoGAL. Furthermore, the professional association of journalists (Colexio de Xornalistas de Galicia) and the main union of journalists (Sindicato de Xornalistas de Galicia) joined Asociación puntoGAL from its beginning. Among its members, Asociación puntoGAL includes publishers specially focused on IT and the Internet (Código Cero newspaper), local magazines (A Voz de Villalba for instance) and most of the council- owned local radios (EMUGA). Some of the most important print media in Galicia created the Asociación de Medios Escritos en Lingua Galega, which also participates in this candidature too. Grassroots cultural collectives Asociación puntoGAL will manage a gTLD for a community that largely participates in the association. This can be said because Asociación puntoGAL includes plenty of grassroots entities that promote Galician heritage and the use of the language in daily basis in many different towns of Galicia.  For instance A Mesa pola Normalización is the most popular grassroots association among all the ones working on Galician normalization. Asociación Cultural Ventiños da Ponte, Asociación Cultural PX, Aula Castelao, Centro de Estudios e Documentación Blas Espín , Asociación Cultural Komunikando.net, Asociación Cultural Arumes do Corgo, Asociación Amigos do Patrimonio de Castroverde and Centro Veciñal e Cultural de Valladares are other cultural entities that collaborate.  In adittion, there are six members who regularly organize cultural activities for the young people and women (Asociación Xuvenil PX-Ponte do Porto, Asociación Xuvenil Amencer, Asociación Xuvenil ʺXuntanza Xuvenilʺ de Valladares, Asociación O Fervedoiro and Asociación Ghandalf Xuventude de Galicia). Diaspora Galician history shows cultural that promotion and scientific production has depended heavily on emigrants associations. In fact, the Galician diaspora played a key role both in the renaissance of Galician literature in the 19the century and in the exile during the decades before democracy arrived in the 1970s. Nowadays, Galician diaspora associations act as a link between the emigrants and their cultural roots. As it was mentioned before, twenty of the organizations of thcounce huge Galician diaspora are members of this application, including collectives from three continents (Europe, North America and South America) and ten countries. Professional associations Finally, the membership and support of professional associations of activities as diverse as Psychology, Computer Science, Architecture, Dental Surgery, Industrial Engineering; companies who work in tourism and child care; associations of elderly people and of women; all these demonstrate that Asociación puntoGAL has a widespread support among all the groups of the Galician speaking community. b) iii. Accountability mechanisms. How would all these organizations control the correct performance of the .gal TLD? Very simple, the bylaws of the Asociación, attached in this application, state that the board of directors is democratically elected by and among the organizations who join Asociación puntoGAL. Every member has one vote. In the last step, the accountability to Galician speaking society in general is guaranteed because both local and regional administrations (like Xunta de Galicia, the Galician Autonomous Government) , that are democratically elected, participate in Asociación puntoGAL in many ways. Sometimes directly, for instance, there are two local councils among the Asociación puntoGAL members (Rianxo and Redondela). Sometimes indirectly, for instance EMUGA, a group of council radio broadcasters which at the end of the day depend on their local government. The accountability to the community who launched Asociación puntoGAL six years ago is guaranteed by - the widespread and grassroots membership of the Asociación including the top cultural and academic institutions; - Asociación PuntoGALʹs bylaws, that guarantee that the Board of Directors is elected from the members of the Association in one member one vote basis; - and by the participation in the Asociación of dozens of official bodies whose directors depend directly or indirectly on the citizenʹs vote.

c) i. Intended registrants in the TLD. The intended registrants of the TLD could be differentiated in three main different groups: Individuals and entities with online activity living in those areas where Galician is an official language; the communities of the diaspora and the societies where they have been formed; and those willing to address and engage in online communications with the Galician linguistic and cultural community. c) ii. Intended end-users of the TLD. The intended end-users are as varied as the people with a certain interest in the Galician linguistic and cultural community. But for taxonomy purposes, four main targets could be identified: The general public living in those areas where Galician is an official language; the communities of the diaspora and the societies where they have been formed; the academic interest in the Galician language and culture; and those willing to be informed about the different aspects related to the Galician language and culture. c) iii. Related activities the applicant has carried out or intends to carry out in service of this purpose. All the activities developed so far by the Asociación puntoGAL have been focused on raising awareness in regard to the development of the .gal TLD space, and in gathering the support of representative Institutions of every field. The explicit and decided support from more than 100 of the most representative entities of the community is proof enough of how these two objectives have been met, as well as of the overwhelming endorsement from the Galician community. The activities of the Asociación puntoGAL from the delegation of the TLD onwards will be twofold: to foster the development of the .gal TLD space for the benefit of the Galician linguistic and cultural community, and to promote the development of the Galician linguistic and cultural information society, being both objectives clearly are hand in hand with each other. c) iv. Explanation of how the purpose is of a lasting nature. The purpose of the .gal TLD is indeed of a lasting nature. The name, as referred in 18 and in 20 d), is a long established and widely used contraction of the name of the Galician language and of its linguistic and cultural community, that has had a centuries' longstanding existence and continued presence, and a firm and vibrant community.

"gal" are the three first letters of this language in Galician ("galego"), English ("Galician"), French ("galicien"), German ("galicische") and almost any other language written in latin alphabet, which is the one used for Galician language and in all the regions where the Galician cultural community lives. Furthermore, there is an archaism in English for Galician, Gallegan, that also has the ʺgalʺ string. Asociación puntoGAL has been working to consolidate this link between the Galician cultural community, the string and the associationʹs logo, which is being shown in banners on hundreds of websites that support this application. For instance, in 2007 the Oficina Española de Patentes y Marcas (the official administration for trademarks in Spain) granted the Asociación the exclusive use of the trademark puntoGAL in eight types of economical activities, including online communications and telecommunications. The Asociaciónʹs logo was also registered. Asociación puntoGAL was granted its exclusive use by the aforementioned official authority in 2011. d) ii. Relationship to the identification of community members. "gal" is usually applied to Galician language in the Information Technologies field. For instance, the Galician chapter of the Internet Society is know as "ISOC-GAL". The public telecommunications operator in the autonomous region is know as RETEGAL. The administration in charge of the coordination of coordinating the development and promotion of terminological resources and products in linguistic engineering is known as TermiGAL . The Galician Governmentʹs Information Technologies plan, to be applied until 2014, was named ʺ2014.gal Axenda Dixital de Galiciaʺ. Most multilingual websites use "gal" to label their Galician version. The same applies in many others fields. In economy, the ticker for the Argentinian bank "Banco de Galicia", which was created by a jeweler with Galician origins, in the Argetinian stock market and in NASDAQ stock market is "GGAL". A ʺGALʺ label is also frequently used in European libraries to identify Galician books. In addition, "gal" is usually used as a suffix or prefix to highlight that events and trademarks are related Galician. For instance, one of the main cultural events in Galicia is known as "Cultur.gal". The same applies to business names. There is a information technology company called Inforgal, a frozen fish company named Galfrio, a car dealer called Motorgal, a motorcycle shop called Motogal, a fisheries company named Galfood, etc. d) iii. Any connotations the string may have beyond the community. The word "gal" has no other meaning in Galician. Neither in Spanish nor in Portuguese, nor in any other relevant language in the relevant area, apart from a well known and extensively used contraction of the name of the community. It has an anecdotal different meaning in some English speaking countries, as it might also be the case in other languages, but completely irrelevant to the community or the purposes of the TLD.

e) i. Eligibility: who is eligible to register a second-level name in the gTLD, and how will eligibility be determined. Elegibility requirement policies will be developed according to the definition of the Galician linguistic and cultural community, and a diversity of proceedings will be implemented to ensure accommodation of all its bona fide members. Registrations under the .gal TLD are restricted to those fulfilling these two requirements: a) bona-fide membership of the Galician linguistic and cultural community on the Internet. The community, as described above in 20 a), consists of those who use (or commit to use) the Galician language for their online communications, and/or promote the different aspects of Galician culture online, and/or intend to specifically address their online communications and services to that community. b) subject to the further requirement that the registrant's actions in the Galician linguistic and cultural community, as well as the registrant's use of the registered domain name, must be: (i) generally accepted as legitimate; and (ii) beneficial to the cause and the values of the Galician linguistic and cultural community; and (iii) commensurate with the role and importance of the registered domain name; and (iv) in good faith at the time of registration and thereafter. These conditions must always be fulfilled. The strength of the validation is kept in line with the importance of the underlying domain name based on the assumption that a typical user would reasonably make. To facilitate validation, registrants are required to state their intended use of the registered domain name. A false statement of intended use is an indication of bad faith and can be the basis for the suspension of the domain name. The validation may be assisted through pre-identification of potential registrants using existing community channels, through membership of qualified Organizations or the distribution of Promotion Codes to members. After the launch phase, the validation mode goes from pre-validation to post-validation, with statistically targeted random validation, backed up by an ongoing enforcement program. The validation and enforcement programs are supported by an integrated issue tracking system. This system allows validating agents and personnel to cooperate and interact with the registrant. The system keeps track of decisions made by the agents and stores supplemental documentary evidence that may be supplied by the registrants e) iii. Name selection: what types of second-level names may be registered in the gTLD. The fundamental rule on which name selection is based is part of the policy principles: the domain names may be registered considering the registrant‘s relationship to the Galician linguistic and cultural community, and the use of the domain name must be commensurate to the role and importance of the domain name. The role and importance of the domain name registrations is based on the meaning an average user would reasonably make of a domain name in the context of the Galician linguistic and cultural community e) iii. Content/Use: what restrictions, if any, the Registry operator will impose on how a registrant may use its registered name. Asociación puntoGAL, as the .gal Registry Operator, will adopt policies to ensure that the use of the domain names is: (i) generally accepted as legitimate; and (ii) beneficial to the cause and the values of the Galician linguistic and cultural community; and (iii) in good faith at the time of registration and thereafter. This will be verified according to: 1) the intended use statement supplied by the domain registrant at the time of registration and/or the explicit agreement to the terms and conditions including the .gal TLD use policies. 2) an ongoing enforcement program. e) iv. Enforcement: what investigation practices and mechanisms exist to enforce the policies above, what resources are allocated for enforcement, and what appeal mechanisms are available to registrants. The purpose of the enforcement program is to protect the credibility of the .gal TLD for its local and international public. In particular, upholds the community-based purpose of the .gal TLD and helps prevent misuse or malicious behaviour. The enforcement program is based on statistically targeted random investigations and on a complaint follow-up process. The statistical targeting is strongly automated and involves the use of search engines and the analysis of Registry data related to behaviour of registrants. Depending on the type of misuse to be investigated, web site content or content sent to victims of abuse will reviewed and analyzed by investigators. Enhanced investigation takes place if the registrant has a bad track record in terms of compliance with the rules of the .gal TLD. Other violations of public record (such as UDRP or URS cases) will also be taken into account. If content or use of an existing .gal domain name demonstrate that the registrant has shown bad faith by stating a false intended use, the domain name is suspended. If a registrar is complicit with systematic violations of the .gal TLD policies or causes an unacceptable burden for the validation and enforcement program by negligence, the Registry can restrict that registrar's access to the new registrations, subject its inventory of .gal domain names to enhanced investigation and require it conduct its own post-validation program. An appeals process is available for all administrative measures taken in the framework of the enforcement program. The first instance of the appeals process is managed by the Registry service provider. Asociación puntoGAL will engage the relevant ADR providers of its area to establish a second instance appeal process.

Protection of Geographic Names

1. Reserved List of Geographic Names

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

• the short form (in English) of all country and territory names contained on the ISO 3166-1 list, as updated from time to time, including the European Union, which is exceptionally reserved on the ISO 3166-1 list, and its scope extended in August 1999 to any application needing to represent the name European Union;

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

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

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

2. Additional protected names

The .gal Registry intends to translate all the list containing the names in the lists above to Galician, besides English and the other five official UN languages, as Galician is the most relevant language for this linguistic and cultural community TLD. Otherwise those names would not be effectively protected in ra meaningful way within the .gal TLD.

3. Exceptions

However, the .gal Registry recognizes that there may be cases where a request to register and use a geographic name at the second level should be considered legitimate, valid and useful.

Examples of such cases are:

* the local consulate wishing to use that name for itself, with the agreement of its Government;
* the countryʹs or territoryʹs relevant authorities wishing to use it, e.g. for touristic or cultural promotion purposes;
* other legitimate purposes.

For registration requests from the relevant public authority, the .gal Registry will put in place the procedure agreed between the GAC and Afilias for the .info gTLD, as referenced in the letter written by Mohamed Sharil Tarmizi, GAC Chair, on Sept 9, 2003; see

https://gacweb.icann.org/download/attachments/1540128/dotinfocircular1.pdf.
The current procedure is:

Technically, the registrar needs to use the authorisation code supplied by the registrant as the domain authinfo in the EPP 〈domain:create〉 request, which will let the request bypass the rule engineʹs blocking mechanism and permit the registration.

4. Additional monitoring

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