On June, 21 the 60th APTLD Members’ Meeting opened in Moscow. The Coordination Center for TLD.RU/.РФ is a member of APTLD and this year it has become for the first time the host party for this major international event gathering national Registries of the Asian-Pacific Area.
The Chairman of the APTLD Board of Directors Jonathan Shea, .HK who opened the meeting pointed out that the APTLD meeting was held outside the Asian-Pacific Area for the first time. He defined the main theme of the 60th APTLD meeting: discussion of new gTLD program. He paid special attention to the growing cooperation between European and Asian Registries.
The currently acting Director of the Department of the Creation and Development of the Information Society of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media of the RF Tariel Gappoev emphasized that the Internet in Russia became a commonly accessible resource of exchanging information, running business, providing education, and art and non intervention of the government played an important role in it, it gave the Industry an opportunity to work out its rules independently. Speaking about the ICANN’s new gTLD program T. Gappoev marked that the program was a major step to customize the Internet resources to the needs of each specific user. “Russia is represented in this process by a wide range of stakeholders applying for various domain categories. It reflects the variety of the social life of our country,” said Tariel Gappoev.
Andrey Kolesnikov, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ started his speech with the review of the Internet situation in Russia. “Nowadays, Russia has already become the biggest Internet market in Europe and it is the fastest developing market for the Internet in the world,” said A. Kolesnikov. “We have a reasonable state policy in terms of the Internet, our growth in the last years has been due to the understanding position of the government in relation to the Internet and today it is perhaps the least regulated industry of the Russian Economy,” said Andrey Kolesnikov.
Kolesnikov also said about Russian ccTLDs .RU and .РФ: “Domain .РФ has been experiencing the phase of stable growth and the most pleasing is that the number of delegated domain names is growing. It means that .РФ is needed and it works.”
Veni Markovski, ICANN, called the participants of the meeting for greater activity in ICANN. He brought an example of Russia which has been lately actively involved in work in the management bodies of this organization. He spoke in detail about the new gTLD program bringing the main figures: 1930 applications, including 66applications for ccTLDs, 116 applications for non-Latin domains, and the applicants represent 60 countries of the world. He also informed the participants of the meeting of the issues to be discussed at the 44th Conference of ICANN starting this week in Prague. He said that the name of the new President of ICANN would be announced at the press-conference that would take place in Prague the next day, June 22.
The panel discussion, conducted by Edmon Chung, .ASIA, was devoted to applications made to ICANN within the framework of the new gTLD program from countries - participants of APTLD and also to the future of these domains and the whole domain space. Andrey Kolesnikov told about the applications which Russian organizations made for new gTLDs. He called the pool of applications from Russia balanced and reflecting various sides of the life of Russian Internet. Werner Staub, CORE, called all for a weighted attitude to new domains: “It is necessary not only to use the chance of making an application, it is necessary to understand what for this or that domain is meant and whether it is needed by the community.”
A heated discussion was caused by the ICANN’s decision to consider applications with the help of "batching" – the procedure to define what applications will be considered first and what later. Edmon Chung, marked that contest for the applications turned into the competition of robots. Werner Staub, said that he did not understand why applications of different matter had to be considered on the same principles. He informed the participants of the meeting that the procedure of "batching", that caused discontent of many applicants, was not discussed with the Internet community at all. “I believe that ICANN can afford processing applications in one portion without making a useless lottery for anybody. Let it take a bit more time,” said Andrey Kolesnikov.
