The Public Announcement of Starting TW English Second Level Domain Name Registration Service

Approved by the 41st Domain Name Committee on June, 28, 2005

1.     Qualification:
Application for the service may be filed by a company, business establishment, or legal entity that has been registered in the Republic of China or in any other competent jurisdiction, or by any natural person.

2.     Interpretation of TW English Second Level Domain Name
TW English Second Level Domain Name means the name to be directly used at the secondary level of domain name.
For example, TW English Second Level Domain Name=> twnic.tw; TW English Third Level Domain Name =>twnic.net.tw

3.    Reserved words
In considering of the future need for the Internet communities and public interest, there are six types of reserved words in TW English Second Level Domain Name Registration Service:

(1) 78 reserved words for governmental use.

(2) 120 reserved words for specific numbers based on for public interest.

(3) 17 reserved words which have been approved by ICANN as Top Level Domain Names for registration at present.

(4) 187 reserved words which have been applied with ICANN as Top Level Domain Names.

(5) 465 reserved words for the countries name in the world and their 3-character abbreviations.

(6) 36 reserved words for TWNIC.

The above-mentioned reserved words are not available for registration. If there are any needs for registration, approval by the Domain Name Committee of TWNIC shall be required. 

4.    Guidelines for registration and usage

4.1    Rules to name a TW English Second Level Domain Name

(1) There is a total of 63 usable characters including 26 of English alphabets  either in upper case or lower case, digits 0-9, and hyphen (-), but the first byte and the last byte must be an alphabet or a number.

(2) Hyphen (-) cannot be the first character or last character, and cannot show up in the third and fourth places at the same time.

(3) Rules of length in bytes: A domain name should have at least 3 bytes and not more than 63 bytes.

 

4.2    Rules of using TW English Second Level Domain Name

Registrants of TW English Second Level Domain Name shall not directly collect fees from providing the third level domain name registration service.  If any occurrence of such forbidden act has been proved, TWNIC has the right to cancel the related registered TW English Second Level Domain Name. Any damage arising therefrom shall be borne by the registrants.

5.     Fee Schedule
The registration fee shall be NT$ 450 and the management fee shall be NT$ 1200 annually.

6.     Pre-registration period

6.1     Reference of the start-up of the service shall be made to the Appendix I “The Time Schedule for Starting TW English Second Level Domain Name Registration Service” attached hereto.

6.2     The categories of registrants with priority right

(1) Three groups of registrants with priority right are listed below:

a. Governmental Agency: The governmental agencies (or organizations) in theRegistration Requirement List .

b. Educational Institute: schools which registered by R.O.C. law and in the Registration Requirement List .

c. Existing Registrants under “.tw” English Third Level Domain Name: existing registrants of 7 types English Third Level Domain Name, including com.tw/org .tw/net.tw/idv.tw/game.tw/club.tw/ ebiz.tw. before (and including) the cut-off date.   

(2) Process of pre-registration with priority right

a. The specific period of accepting the application for registrants with priority right shall be provided by “The Time Schedule for Starting TW English Second Level Domain Name Registration Service”.

b. Application by “Governmental Agency”: Governmental agencies listed on the Registration Requirement List may apply for the Domain Names reserved for them during the specific period.

c. Application of “Educational Institutes”: Schools listed on Registration Requirement List may apply for Domain Names reserved for them during the specific period.

d. Application of “Existing Registrants under “.tw” English Third Level Domain Name”: A existing registrant of Third Level English Domain Name registered before (including) cut-off date of either one of the following conditions may apply for the same Domain Names for TW English Second Level Domain Name during the specific period.

(a) registration of its Domain Name has been completed  (the completion date shall be subject to the day when the registrar confirms the registration of and payment by the registration and sends an e-mail to the registrant for the use of such Domain Name), and the use of such Domain Name is still within the effective period;

(b) The effective period of the use of such Domain Name has expired, but such Domain Name is still available within the 30-day freezing period thereafter before being deleted.  

If a registrant has applied to transfer or change its English Third Level Domain Name before (including) cut-off date but such application has not been completed  before (including) cut-off date, the registrant shall not have right to  apply for pre-registration of TW English Second Level Domain Name by using the English Third Level Domain Name which is under transferring or changing process.  In case the transferee wants to apply for pre-registration, the transferee may provide the transfer agreement between the registrant and the transferee, and file an application with TWNIC for pre-registration in written form.

(3) Principles governing the grant of registration to the registrants with priority right 

a. Existing Registrants under “.tw” English Third Level Domain Name: If multiple applications for the same Domain Name have been filed, the grant of the Domain Name shall be subject to the registration time of the English Third Level Domain Name (the time shall be counted to date/hour/minute/second).  If the English Third Level Domain Name has been changed (ex. abc.com.tw to xyz.com.tw), the registration time shall be the time as the change completed.  If theEnglish Third Level Domain Names are registered at the same time, the grant of the Domain Name shall be decided by drawing lots.

b. If multiple applications for the same Domain Name have been filed by Governmental Agencies, Educational Institutes and/or Existing Registrants of “.tw” English Third Level Domain Names, the applicants shall coordinate with each other for the registration priority. If the applicants do not produce any concluded documents for such coordination before the appointed date, TWNIC shall grant the registration priority by drawing lots.

6.3      TWNIC will announce the result of application for pre-registration according to the time schedule provided by Appendix I.  If multiple applicants are qualified to have the priority right of pre-registration of the same TW English Second Level Domain Name, the announcement shall include the priority among such applicants.

6.4  An applicant, who has already filed pre-registration application in accordance with relevant rules, may have the right to file a complaint with TWNIC in accordance with “Rules of Complaint Raised against the Grant of TW English Second Level Domain Name Registration” as provided by Appendix II attached hereto if TWNIC does not announce the result of pre-registration application in accordance with the rules publicized by TWNIC.

6.5      If there is no complaint raised during the  period set forth in Article 6.4, TWNIC shall notify the applicant of first priority to pay the related fees to the registrar specified by it upon application within 7 days after receiving the notification. If the applicant of first priority does not complete registration by paying related fees, its priority right shall be cancelled, and then TWNIC shall notify the applicant of the priority next to the previous one to complete registration by paying related fees, and the period for such payment is 7 days for each applicant. If all the applicants listed on the announcement publicized by TWNIC of a certain Domain Name do not complete registration by paying related fees, TWNIC shall cancel the status of pre-registration and then release that Domain Name to the public for registration.

7.     Registration rights opened to the public:
Except the Domain Names which have been applied by applicants during the pre-registration period, the TW English Second Level Domain Names Service shall be opened to the public and TWNIC shall follow the ”first come, first serve” principle to provide this service since November 1st, 2005.

8.     Dispute Resolution:
All applicants shall agree to subject all disputes with third parties pertaining to the domain names as registered to them, to the dispute resolution mechanism under the “Taiwan Network Information Center Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy” and the “Rules for the TWNIC Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy” and other related regulations.

9.     Miscellaneous
This Announcement shall come to effect after approved by Domain Name Committee, and same shall apply to revisions thereof.

* In case of any discrepancy between this translation and the original Chinese text, the Chinese text shall govern. Terms in this translation expressed in the singular should be construed as also including the plural, and vice versa.