On 26 January 2010 at RIA-News, the Coordination Center for TLD .RU, represented by Messrs. Mikhail Yakushev, Chairman of the Council , Andrey Kolesnikov, Director and Maxim Bobin, Council Member , held a press conference on first results of the domain names priority reservation in the new Cyrillic domain .рф.
While opening the press conference, Mikhail Yakushev emphasized that today Russian Internet users are on the forefront of scientific and technological progress: the ICANN made its final decision on introduction of national domains in the autumn 2009 and already on 21 January 2010 Russia became one of the four countries whose applications on obtaining national domain were approved by the ICANN, .That is to say, it is Russia that will introduce technological innovations thanks to which domains with national (non-Latin) alphabets will become available to the whole global Internet community.
“The issue of introducing national domains is not a simple one even on a global scale, the most unanticipated problems arise and the international cooperation is required in this sphere”, Mr. Yakushev noted. Nevertheless, the application to IANA, the ICANN’s authorized technical organization, has already been submitted and on its receipt the IANA will place information about domain .рф on the root servers of the global domain name system (DNS).
Mr. Andrey Kolesnikov briefed of main results of the first two months of the second-level domain names priority reservation in domain .рф. As of 25 January 2010, as many as 6,808 names were registered in domain .рф, Applications for domain names reservation are received both from Moscow and St. Petersburg and other regions. All applications for priority reservation pass through a careful verification procedure on compliance with the rules; in other words, all reserved domain names constitute script representations of registered trade marks. Domains consisting of simple (common) Russian words account for not more than 12 percent of the overall number of all domain names registered to date. At present about 7 percent of the total number of domain names is reserved for the government use in domain .рф.
The audience was most curious about reservation of domain names “медведев.рф” and “путин. рф”. As of today, these domain names are in stop-list. They have been reserved at the presidential Administration’s request.
While focusing on the domain names priority reservation chart, Mr. Kolesnikov has drawn their attention to the fact that the peak of applications on priority reservations had been passed at the onset of the procedure and at present the chart shows a straight line. “Our registrars process now up to 40-50 applications a day combined, so the process of priority reservation rolls out smoothly enough, as we have expected”, noted Mr. Kolesnikov.
Will domain .рф enjoy popularity? Mr. Kolesnikov referred to an example of domain names ежик.рф и ejik.ru. If the firstformer domain name is simple in the Cyrillic script, the Latin spelling of the other for a Russian-speaking user is hard to memorize. However, journalists’ concerns that unfolding of domain .рф will result bring advancement of domain .ru to a halt were immediately dispelled. Domain .рф will be growing in parallel with domain .ru. Many already existing Russian-speaking resources will be use a complementary name in domain .рф in order to attract larger number of users.
Mr. Maxim Bobin, spoke in detail about the work of the Committee on improvement of Terms and Conditions of domain name registration. At present all the Committee focuses primarily on improvement of priority reservation procedures. The Committee is facing a difficult task: we must promptly reduce to a minimum the number of controversial issues which are popping up during reservation process,” said Mr. Bobin. The Committee has already completed a draft procedure for domain names priority reservation in domain .рф. The document factored into interests of owners of the trade marks which use the Latin script, graphic elements, etc., those of firm-names which are not trade marks, as well as political parties, religious organizations and mass media. “This will help us solve the most pressing issues connected with domain names reservation in domain .рф,” explained Mr. Bobin.
“We are keen to make sure all who are eligible for the priority reservation in domain .рф would get the possibility to exercise this right,” stressed Mr. Kolesnikov.
In response to questions regarding envisaged growth rates of domain .рф, the CC representatives noted the advancement of the domain space is inseparable from the process of the general “internationalization” of the country. The more residents of the country have access to the Internet, the more domain names are registered and the more Internet resources are emerging. That is why growth rates of domain .рф are directly correlated with the growth of the Internet audience and users and advancement of the Internet in Russia.
