ʺAUTOʺ is most universally understood term for cars and automobiles.

Uniregistry plans to give drivers and the businesses serving them a new way to express their passion for automobiles.

The creation of .AUTO will create competition in the namespace and allow registrants to shorten their existing website name with a more meaningful marketing identity and marketing tool.

Whether providing a source of information about cars or an online portal for their sales and service, .AUTO will be a dedicated, neutrally-operated registry platform to serve drivers everywhere.

When the top-level domain ʺ.AUTOʺ is appended to the end of website name, the siteʹs viewers will have an immediate context for the content about to be viewed. A registrantʹs choice of .AUTO as a top-level domain will provide a lens through which a viewer will see the associated content.

New top-level domains represent the future of naming for Internet-based resources. For a significant number of drivers and automobile service professionals, .AUTO is the most meaningful and 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 .AUTO, 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 .AUTO.

A specialized top-level domain string, like .AUTO, 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.

.AUTO 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 registrations for the purpose of specialized content.

The registry will strive to bring value to both the users seeking information about automobiles 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 .AUTO top-level domain and the companies, organizations, and individuals choosing to register .AUTO 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 .AUTO top-level domain.

The mission and purpose of Uniregistryʹs .AUTO gTLD is to be the pre-eminent general and generic Top Level Domain (GTLD) choice for registrants seeking to discuss, advertise or sell automobiles and automotive services online through the use of a Second Level Domain (SLD) name.

We want registrants in .AUTO 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 .AUTO 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.