GOpenCDR terms

What GOpenCDR is

GOpenCDR, the Gelhaus Open Community Domain Registry, is an alternative namespace that works alongside the normal internet. Its top-level domains live in a root of their own, signed with DNSSEC and operated by Gelhaus Solutions as Tier 0. Each TLD is run by a TLD registry, and resolvers called mirrors serve the namespace to whoever wants it. Names in it resolve for anyone whose resolver follows GOpenCDR. They do not resolve through the IANA root the rest of the internet uses, and nothing here changes that.

These terms cover every name you register or manage through GOpenCDR. They sit under the general terms of service, which carry the liability limits, the governing law and everything else that is not particular to GOpenCDR, and they are read together with the acceptable use policy, which you accept with them. Your account is governed by the GOpenCSR terms, as described under "Your account" below. What we process about you is in the privacy notice. The provider is Gelhaus Solutions, whose details are in the legal notice.

The documents, and which one wins

GOpenCDR has a document for each role: these terms and the acceptable use policy for everyone who registers or manages a name, the mirror operator terms for mirrors, and signed agreements for TLD operators, registrars and enterprise customers. Where two of them speak to the same point, the one written for the role in question wins on that point, and an agreement signed by both sides wins over anything published here. In the order the general terms set out, all of them together are the terms for this particular product.

A document signed by one role binds nobody else. A registrant is not a party to the TLD operator agreement, and cannot be held to anything in it.

Your account

Your account is your G Open account, the one account for GOpenCDR, GOpenCNR and GOpenCSR. It is kept by GOpenCSR at csr.gplatform.org and governed by the GOpenCSR terms and the GOpenCSR acceptable use policy. They set out how you sign in, how the account is kept safe, restricted and closed, and how sign-in moves to GPlatform SSO. These terms govern your names.

Registering a name needs an account with a verified email address. When you first become a holder of resources, for example by registering your first name, you also give your legal name and your country. GOpenCSR holds them and screens them against the EU sanctions list; only Tier 0 sees them, and they are never public and never in RDAP. An organisation is screened by its verified name and country instead. That address, and that name and country, are the only personal data a registration requires: GOpenCDR's floor is an account with a verified email address and a name and country for screening, and a TLD may ask for more only where its own published policy says so.

Keep your password, your passkeys and your API keys to yourself. You are responsible for keeping them safe and for what you do with your account. If you suspect somebody else has access, tell us at once at contact@gplatform.org so that we can lock it. Root and TLD roles must sign in with a passkey.

When you accept these terms, GOpenCSR records which versions of these terms and the acceptable use policy you accepted, and when, by their identifiers in the document archive.

You may close your account at any time, as the GOpenCSR terms set out. Closing it ends every registration it holds, as described under "When a registration ends" below.

A registration is a right to use a name, not property

Registering a name gives you the right to use it in its TLD for as long as the registration is kept up and these terms are kept. It does not make the name your property. It is not a trademark right, and it gives you no claim against anybody who uses the same string elsewhere, including in the IANA namespace.

The right belongs to your account. It moves to another account only through a transfer carried out on your instruction, and only where the TLD allows transfers.

Free names stay registered while you confirm them

Names in community TLDs are free. To keep them, confirm your email address once every 12 months. One confirmation covers every name the account holds: the mail carries a link, and one click is enough.

If the confirmation does not arrive in time:

1. Grace, 30 days. The names keep resolving. Confirming restores everything as it was.
2. Redemption, 30 days. The names are taken out of their zones and stop resolving, but they stay registered to you. Confirming restores them.
3. Deletion. When redemption ends, the registrations end and the names become available to others.

We write to your address before each step. A TLD may lengthen these periods but not shorten them. A TLD that charges for names says so in its own policy, and its renewal rules apply there instead of these.

The test TLD

gelhaus is GOpenCDR's test TLD, and different rules apply in it:

• Registration is by invitation only. An invitation can be revoked until it is used.
• Nothing in it is a promise. It is early access under the general terms; where they set notice periods for changing or ending it, the rules here take their place. Names, zones and the data in them may be changed, reset or removed at any time, all at once if need be, and the TLD may be closed. Every such step is recorded in the transparency log, and holders of names in it are told by email, without notice in advance.
• The root trust anchor is published as a test anchor. It may be replaced at short notice, and every replacement is announced as the DNSSEC practice statement describes.
• No service level applies, as for any early access under the general terms.

IANA always wins

GOpenCDR adds names only where the IANA namespace has none. That rule is enforced at every layer, and it takes precedence over your registration.

Withdrawal. If a name, or a whole TLD, comes to exist in the IANA root, GOpenCDR withdraws it everywhere within one hour of the IANA delegation and blocks it for good. A withdrawn name cannot be registered again, by anybody.

Sunset. If one of our TLD strings enters ICANN's application pipeline, the TLD goes into sunset within 7 days. Registrations in it close, every registrant is told, renewals are capped at the expected delegation date, and tooling to move elsewhere is offered. The migration window lasts until ICANN delegates the string. If the application is withdrawn or rejected, the sunset is lifted and the TLD carries on.

In a TLD whose string also exists in the IANA root, the rule applies name by name: resolvers ask IANA first, and a name that exists there always hides the same name here.

None of this is a breach of these terms, and none of it gives rise to a claim against us or against the TLD operator. Withdrawal and sunset follow the IANA root and ICANN, so the notice periods the general terms set for changing or ending a service do not apply to them.

What may be restricted, and how it is decided

This section is also the information Art. 14 of the Digital Services Act requires. It applies with the general terms of service, which set out in full how we restrict, suspend and end, and adds what is particular to names. Your account is restricted, suspended or closed under the GOpenCSR terms.

What can happen to a registration. A name can be put on hold, which takes it out of its zone so that it stops resolving; it can be locked against changes or transfer; it can be suspended; or it can be deleted. A possible match on the EU sanctions list places holds on the holder: no new names and no transfers out, while the names it has keep working. A sanction may cover a holder's names in GOpenCDR and its addresses in GOpenCNR together.

On what grounds. DNS abuse as the acceptable use policy defines it, a binding order of a court or a competent authority, a breach of these terms, a decision under the name dispute policy, and a possible or confirmed match on the EU sanctions list, as the GOpenCSR terms describe it. We do not judge content or speech at the DNS layer. A name is not restricted because of what a website under it says, unless a court or an authority orders it.

Who decides, and how. Every report becomes a case in GOpenCSR's one case system, run under the abuse and sanctions policy; for names, it follows the route of the acceptable use policy. The TLD acts first. For a hosted TLD, the root abuse desk acts on the name itself if the TLD operator has not acted within the time the acceptable use policy sets; for a self-hosted TLD, it escalates against the TLD. A person takes every decision to restrict a name on the grounds above. Automated checks, such as a blocklist match or a failed probe, find candidates and never decide on their own. Three things run automatically because they follow from rules rather than from a judgement: the steps after an unconfirmed address, on the dates above; withdrawal when IANA wins; and the holds a possible sanctions match places until a person at Tier 0 has reviewed it, which are automated decisions under Art. 22 GDPR with the safeguards the GOpenCSR terms set out.

What you are told. You get a statement of reasons no later than when a measure takes effect: what was done, why, under which rule and on which facts, whether it followed a report or our own findings, whether automated means were used, how long it lasts, and how to challenge it. Where the law forbids telling you, you are told as soon as it no longer does. Only in the cases the general terms name, such as active phishing or malware, a threat to life or limb, or a binding order of a court or an authority, do we act before hearing you, and hear you afterwards; even then, the statement of reasons reaches you no later than when the measure takes effect.

How to challenge it. Within six months, reply to the notice, appeal from the case in your account, or write to contact@gplatform.org. The GOpenCDR Registry Council hears the appeal; where a decision covered names and addresses together, each product's Registry Council hears its own part. The person who took the decision does not vote on the appeal. While the council's seats are still held by Tier 0, before people are elected to them, Tier 0 reviews the appeal and says so in its answer. A measure stays in place while the appeal is heard, and the answer gives reasons. The courts remain open to you whatever the outcome. The abuse and sanctions policy sets out how appeals are heard.

Points of contact. For authorities, and for anyone using GOpenCDR, the single point of contact under Arts. 11 and 12 DSA is contact@gplatform.org, in English or German. Reports of abuse go to abuse@gplatform.org, or to the address the acceptable use policy gives.

When a registration ends

A registration ends when you delete it, when you close your account, when redemption runs out, through withdrawal or sunset, through a decision under the section above, or when the contract for GOpenCDR ends. The name then leaves its zone and, unless it was withdrawn or blocked, becomes available to others. You may end the contract at any time; we may end it without giving reasons, with at least four weeks' notice by email, as the general terms allow for a free service, and if we stop offering GOpenCDR altogether, we tell you at least 60 days ahead. After the contract ends, you can have your data exported for 30 days, as the general terms set out, by writing to contact@gplatform.org. What we keep after a registration or the contract ends, and for how long, is in the privacy notice.

What is public

Some things are public by design, and it is worth knowing which before you register:

• The zones. Your name, its nameservers and its DS records are published in the TLD zone, and every resolver that follows GOpenCDR serves them.
• Registration data is public through RDAP, except the parts that concern you, which are redacted. The registration data disclosure policy says who may see them and how.
• The transparency log. GOpenCDR's entries go to the one transparency log GOpenCSR keeps for GOpenCDR, GOpenCNR and GOpenCSR, at csr.gplatform.org/tlog; GOpenCDR's own log ended with an entry pointing there and stays readable. The log is an append-only public record of every change to a name signed in the signing step, with its signature, and of root changes, key events, policy changes and abuse actions. It names domain names and TLD strings, and the account identifiers of people who hold root roles and of whoever proposed, signed or decided a change it records. It never holds an email address, a name or an IP address. An entry in it cannot be removed, because removing one would break every checkpoint signed after it.

What you can take with you

When you switch to another provider under the general terms, or at any time before, you can take the following with you. The list is exhaustive; our switching page describes the formats and every limit we know of.

• your account: email address, display name, roles, the documents you accepted, and the names and dates of your passkeys, API keys and sessions;
• invitations and role grants;
• your TLDs, domains, hosts and their addresses, nameserver delegations and DS records, and their health checks;
• your mirrors, with their traffic, events and reports;
• your policy comments and the approvals you took part in;
• anything else you or your users put into GOpenCDR or generated by using it, with its metadata.

How. We hand all of it over as JSON when you ask. Registration data is also public through RDAP, a mirror's traffic downloads as CSV from the mirror's page, and zones and trust anchors are published in their standard formats.

Formats. JSON; RDAP (RFC 9083); CSV; DNS zone files (RFC 1035); DNSSEC trust anchors (RFC 9718).

What stays behind. Only DNSSEC private signing keys, the private keys of mirrors, passkey credentials, the secrets of API keys and sessions, and our internal database identifiers. Leaving these behind never delays or prevents a switch.

A name itself does not move. A registration is a right to use a name in GOpenCDR's namespace, not property, so its records go with you and the name stays where it is registered.

Your content, your account and these clauses

The general terms of service set out in full the licence you give us to your content, how we may move your account between our own sign-in services, how new terms come into force, and how we restrict, suspend and end. This section adds only what is particular to GOpenCDR.

Your content. You keep all rights in what you submit. In GOpenCDR, the licence covers your registration data (each name with its nameservers, glue addresses and DS records), the zone data published from it, and the reports you send us, such as abuse reports with their evidence. It is used only to run GOpenCDR. For that purpose only, we may sublicense it to:

• IONOS SE, which hosts the portal, the databases, the DNS servers and our mail server for us;
• GOpenCSR, our own product, which keeps your account, the signing step, the cases and the transparency log;
• the operator of your name's TLD and the mirror operators, to serve the namespace, and the witnesses that cosign the transparency log and anyone mirroring it, to serve and verify it;
• a successor of the business and companies affiliated with Gelhaus Solutions, as the general terms set out.

Showing your content where GOpenCDR shows it (a name in its zone to every resolver that follows GOpenCDR, registration data through RDAP, a report to the TLD operator and the registrant who must act on it) is part of running the service and gives nobody a licence. Nobody receives a licence to your content for their own purposes.

What is permanent. These are permanent records, and this is your notice of it before you submit them: the zone data published for your names, and every entry in the transparency log, both GOpenCSR's one log at csr.gplatform.org/tlog and GOpenCDR's own earlier log, which stays readable. For them the licence has no time limit: you allow us, and anyone mirroring or verifying the record, to copy and publish them as part of it, as the general terms set out. Nothing else in GOpenCDR is a permanent record: registration data and reports are kept only as the privacy notice sets out.

Your account. It is kept by GOpenCSR and governed by the GOpenCSR terms, as described under "Your account" above. The move between our own sign-in services that the general terms allow is, for your account, the move of sign-in to GPlatform SSO, set out in the sign-in transition terms. Your names stay in GOpenCDR, and the move does not touch them.

GOpenCDR is free of charge. So when new terms come, the general terms' rule for free services applies: if you have not accepted the new version when the six weeks' notice is over, your use of GOpenCDR is restricted until you accept, in the way the general terms set out. The restriction does not itself end anything you hold: your names stay registered and keep resolving. While it lasts, though, you cannot confirm your names, so a yearly confirmation that falls due goes through grace and redemption as usual, as "Free names stay registered while you confirm them" describes. If you, or an organisation you act for, have a paid order with us, such as under GOpenCDR's enterprise terms, your use is never restricted this way: you stay on the version you accepted until we end the paid contract at its next ordinary end date, as the general terms set out.

Changes to these terms

These terms change only as the general terms set out under "New versions of these terms". A material change is emailed to your address at least six weeks before it takes effect, and at your next sign-in you are asked to accept the new version, which is shown to you in full and linked in the document archive. A new version applies to you only once you accept it. What applies if you have not accepted it when the six weeks are over is set out under "Your content, your account and these clauses" above. Every version stays in the document archive, so the version you accepted stays readable.

Everything else

Warranty, service levels and the limits of our liability are as set out in the general terms of service, which govern GOpenCDR and are not restated here. GOpenCDR is provided free of charge, and for what is given away, liability is limited to intent and gross negligence (Section 521 BGB).