New Top-Level Domain to Designate Majority of Profits to Fight for LGBT Civil Rights

NEW YORK, Oct. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- At next week's Internet conference in Seoul, the Dot Gay Alliance www.dotgayalliance.com will unveil plans to create the .GAY top-level domain that will provide a reliable and ethical source of funding for LGBT civil rights.

Website names and email addresses ending in .GAY - such as www.yourbusinessname.gay, www.londonbars.gay, www.news.gay and millions more - will create a new Internet community of self-identified LGBT businesses, individuals and organizations and all those who wish to communicate with them. And .GAY will be a community that gives back: A majority of all profits will be returned to the LGBT community to fight for equality in the US and around the world.

Everyone is familiar with generic web addresses (known as top-level domains) ending in .com, .org, .net, .edu and .gov. There will soon be many more when early next year the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will begin accepting applications for new web addresses from cities, companies, organizations and entrepreneurial ventures that want to create their own.

Prominent supporters of the Dot Gay Alliance include:

• New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn
• Daniel O'Donnell, Member of New York State Assembly
• Edmund White, Award-winning author and professor of Creative Writing, Princeton University
• Paula Ettelbrick, Civil rights lawyer, advocate, and non-profit executive
• Michelle Kristel, Executive Director of In The Life Media
• Sunil Babu Pant, the first openly gay member of the Nepal Parliament
  

The Dot Gay Alliance is led by Founder & Executive Director Joe Dolce, whose media strategy firm, DolceGoldin, provides communications services for the Alliance. The technical infrastructure is provided by Minds + Machines, the international Internet consulting group that is working with a number of new top-level domain efforts, including .NYC www.dotnyc.net with former New York City mayor Ed Koch, and .ECO www.supportdoteco.com with the Sierra Club and Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection.

"The LGBT community has always supported itself and its causes - no one was there to help us," Dolce said. "We've made amazing progress in the 40 years since Stonewall. Now in the digital era a .GAY top-level domain is a logical evolution in our history of self sustenance."

"We are delighted to be working with the Dot Gay Alliance to create .GAY. Their philanthropic business model represents what's best about the Internet. The LGBT community will gain an unmistakable, positive presence on the Internet and we're proud to be a part of that," said Antony Van Couvering, CEO of Minds + Machines.

The Dot Gay Alliance philanthropic plan will provide funding for LGBT civil rights groups in the US and abroad. Paula Ettelbrick, the well-known lawyer and civil rights advocate, serves as the philanthropic advisor for the Dot Gay Alliance.

SOURCE Dot Gay Alliance

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