Appropriateness of Sponsored TLD Community Please provide detail on the community to be served and explain why the defined community to be served is appropriate for the creation of an sTLD. As repeatedly stated in this application form, the .cat sTLD is requested on behalf of the Catalan Linguistic and Cultural Community. It might sound strange to request a TLD for a language (and this is not the case, even if it looks close to it). But then, it also seemed strange to some the idea of Sponsored TLD altogether! Why a sTLD for this type of community? puntCAT submits that this is precisely the type of sTLD we should think of. TLDs, the DNS as such, is used in many ways (and this has changed over time) but its main purpose is still to be unique identifiers of machines/services/people in the Internet. We all know that �services�, �products�, �people� are not exactly the object of the DNS domain name. But we grew used to see it that way. And social realities count. Similarly, and even if all domain names have exactly the same identification value from a technical point of view, �meaning�, both at the second level AND at the top level add critical values to users (domain name holders or not). Meaning, subjective identification, is as an important value as uniqueness and universal resolution of the name from the users point of view (and the various Internationalized Domain Names experiments would even suggests that in some cases, even more important). Users want choice. They want to be able to decide whether they identify themselves to the rest of the Internet with geographic/political criteria (ccTLDs); nature of their activity (commercial; non-commercial); sector of activity (aeronautic industry) type of service (Museum) or even corporate type (Cooperative). No one excludes another. Multiple identifications can be used, as we can visit different districts in a city for different types of activity. Choice and diversity, not mutual exclusion. ICANN decided therefore that it was worthwhile to experiment with a new type of TLDs, so-called �sponsored� TLDs, devoted to and managed by a given Community. This is a community with clear membership, needs and enough interest to apply for one. It is only natural therefore that puntCAT applies for a .cat sTLD. The Internet is a lot of things, but probably the most important is a communication space (and means). Human beings communicate in a variety of forms, but language is the most common, and the Internet is no exception. The vast majority of people will concentrate their communications to and with the services and people using their same language. If there is a real sense of belonging to a given community within the Internet this is precisely because those belonging to the community are communicating in their own language, no matter which one it is. The sense of sharing �commonalities�, of sharing common interests, needs, Internet landscapes is nowhere more evident than within the many different linguistic communities. Even if they are, most often, completely invisible to the predominant English-based Internet, which many assume to be THE only communications space. A clear and deep sense of community, and especially, a clear perception of online community, is far more relevant here. Far more dense and intense than those of the online (and we underline this aspect) communities served by many of the current sTLDs, and many of the proposals being submitted now. So a language community fits within the concept, but why .cat? Because it is a community interested enough to organise itself in order to apply and manage such TLD. It has sufficient size to make that proposal viable, because it has sufficient ideas to make it work, and to make it useful to he community and to the whole of the Internet. The first question puntCAT will be posed is: why Catalan and not English or Rom or Swahili or [insert your favorite language here]. puntCAT does not have an answer, but knows that it is a wrong question. We know our needs, but cannot speak for others. English has not one, but many ccTLDs and gTLDs which are predominantly, if not exclusively, devoted to communication spaces where English is the vehicle. Catalan doesn�t. And it doesn�t have a good substitute, either. Certainly not a DBS feature but one of the most common Net related behaviors for multinational firms is adapting their contents to the languages of different user groups. The universal solution is matching the language versions with domains of the ccTLDs where those languages are spoken (except for the US and English, as this is certainly not required). But Google or Yahoo cannot (yet!) use a google.cat or yahoo.cat for their (existing) Catalan-language versions. Sometimes this is not an issue in the commercial world as the language is associated with a local market. Therefore the ccTLD is suitable. But product and service markets are not all that we can find in the Net. Communities sharing cultures, not necessarily confine themselves to either market lines or political borders. Lots of languages are used across many different Countries. Catalan, for instance, is spoken in three adminsitratives divisions of Spain (and partly in a fourth), another in France and just one in Italy, as well as being the sole official language of a country, Andorra. The political and economic realities of the last 150 years have sent hundreds of thousands of Catalan speakers to all continents. Most languages share similar realities. And many share the feeling that ccTLDs are a different thing, that political (or geographic) entities and linguistic communities are not always the same. Note, for instance, that the Spanish Senate requested, some time ago, a TLD for the Spanish-speaking community (.his, they proposed). They are complementary, certainly not exclusionary. puntCAT knows the community wants it and can sustain it. Catalan, as a language, is not marginal at all in Internet usage terms. A couple of studies (http://www.vilaweb.com/especials/5anys/enquesta.html and http://www.softcatala.org/articles/article26.htm) rank Catalan as, respectively the 19th and 23rd language in terms of online use (the second study is more recent uses a much better methodology). The exact place tells very little, but the relationship with other languages is telling. It is not English, but is certainly not marginal. Catalan is not a marginal language offline either. Taking a single statistic, the number of books published in 2002, Catalan totals 8183, compared to roughly 7000 in Finland, 6000 in Greece of 9000 in Hungary (the statitistic only refers to books edited in Catalan, excluding for these purposes books in Spanish edited by Publishers based in Catalonia, which surpassed that number but should not be counted here in fairness). In relative terms, 0.76 books were published for each 1000 Catalan speakers, the same percentage as Italy or France. We could provide lots of statistics about people, companies, associations, etc. But puntCAT believes that this comparative numbers should suffice at this stage to proof viability. So Catalan-speaking people manage to keep more than acceptable statitistics in those areas, even if we all had the personal advantage of being at least bilingual, if not trilingual (normally with Spanish, less with French, some with Italian, the rest with different languages. Languages might sometimes compete in the territory, but not in cultural terms. Cultural socialization, even more than language, is the flavour we want to give to this TLD. Note that even if none of you (or few...) will know a catalan writer, you certainly know painters such as Salvador Dal�, Joan Mir� or Antoni T�pies, musicians like Pau Casals, Montserrat Caball� or Josep Carreras, architects like Antoni Gaud�, Josep Puig i Cadafalch or Ricardo Bofill. We stop here ;-) There are certainly wrters as remarkable as the artists mentioned here, but language is a bigger barrier in this case. We want the TLD as an identifier for all those using and promoting the Catalan language or Culture. But how can we define the community? How can we know who belongs to that community? Well, puntCAT knows. Because it is promoted buy the most relevant, and will be formed by nearly all, the Catalan language and cultural-related entities. They know their members. They know the criteria. They know they have to contribute to this effort, by helping sorting these questions out. Please refer to all the different registration procedures, Eligibility and Naming Selection services and compliance and dispute-resolution mechanisms. Perhaps someone will be able to point out a mistake one day (ie, someone registered a domain with puntCAT infringing the rules. Perhaps. But we will commit all our resources to prevent this from ever being a problem for any third party. And this is what counts. The next question would be: What happens if all languages and cultures also apply for a TLD? Why this one and not another one? puntCAT doesn�t know. But it is clear that it would be unfair to tell .aero that they cold not go until we had the complete taxonomy of all possible industries, present, past and future. It would be similarly unfair rejecting .museum because perhaps monument sites or oral archives are not prepared or willing or interested in managing a TLD. The final question would certianly be: .cat? Meow!! Yes ;-) But then .net means �clean� in Catalan, and .nu, �naked�. And this can be expanded to exhaustion. Some names are nicer in different parts of the world. That�s a fact, not a bug. puntCAT comes here, with huge support from its community, with a solid proposal, a viable registry and lots of innovative ideas. Give .cat a chance!