The Internet week in St. Petersburg started with the 25th HostObzor conference at the suburban resort Raivola. Held for the first time under its new name, the Russian National Forum of Hosting Providers and Domain Registrars, the conference covered a wide range of issues related to domain name registration. ICANN representative for Eastern Europe and Central Asia attended the event and praised its new format.
In his presentation at the forum, Georgy Georgievsky, head of the Registrar Department at Coordination Center for TLD RU, touched on the main trends in the development of domain name registration system, highlighted the typical mistakes committed by registrars, and spoke about development plans. Mr Georgievsky said that the number of registrars accredited within .RU and .РФ zones is steadily rising, and new registrars are expected to be accredited in the near future.
Technical Center of Internet’s Dmitry Belyavsky made a presentation on the tools that help companies start a domain registration business, while preserving their existing partner relationships. “Obtaining domain registrar accreditation for .RU/.РФ domains comes with multiple benefits. For instance, a registrar can directly engage with its clients and better control its business processes. The Virtual Registrar tool by the Technical Center of Internet enables its users to have full-fledged access to registries and manage all their accounts using a single interface,” the expert pointed out.
The forum also featured a special session with representatives of the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science to discuss the licensing of hosting providers, relations with rights holders and draft amendments to the Domain Name Registration Rules for .RU and .РФ domains.
Hosting provider licensing appeared on the forum’s agenda for the first time last year. Back then, officials from the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media joined the discussion. Following up on the debate during the forum, the ministry issued a letter to other government bodies saying that hosting services are not subject to licensing. This year, a representative of the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science confirmed this position. At the end of the session, participants passed a resolution to issue an official explanation that hosting providers could refer to.
Forum participants showed the most interest in the issue concerning relations between hosting providers, registrars, and right holders. According to Deputy Chief Legal Officer at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU Sergei Kopylov, it will be possible to build up consistent case law on the responsibility for intellectual property rights violations only through a systemic public awareness campaign targeting those judges who rule in such cases.
The draft amendments to Domain Name Registration Rules for .RU and .РФ were also discussed at the forum. The Coordination Center for TLD .RU is expected to review these amendments at its upcoming meeting. Specifically, it is proposed to add a section related to the stop-listing of domains containing resources that face a lifetime ban. This would prevent situations when a domain containing a blocked resource is transferred to a third party and the new administrator may suffer from the automatic suspension of his resource.
