On March 21-22, Bordeaux, France was the venue for the 61st General Assembly of the Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries. It brought together over 60 delegates, including representatives of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ.
Participants at the conference discussed the possible influence of the DNS over HTTPS protocol (DoH) on the industry. ICANN representative Roy Arends spoke about how the DoH protocol differs from the traditional DNS and why the development of a technology initially created to improve the privacy of the user is becoming an issue of concern. The same matters were discussed at a panel discussion with the participation of employees of national registries and invited experts. (More details can be found in an article on DoH on the website of the Netoscope project of the Coordination Center https://netoscope.ru/ru/daytheme/4058/).
Another important topic for the CENTR community is Brexit, after which the registry of the European domain EU will face major changes.
Another subject on the agenda was a discussion concerning the role of national domain registries in counteracting illegal content. The European community is focused on counteracting two major problems, online shopping scams and counterfeit products sold online. Led by European and national law, registries are developing their own instruments and procedures to counteract fraud on the internet. For instance, the registry of the European .EU domain detects domain names that are used for addressing websites that are likely to be fake online shops, and submits this data to relevant agencies. This is done by comparing registration data of domain owners with the information of the website content collected using a crawler. A similar method (comparing crawler-collected data) is used by the SIDN registry. Representatives of the Belgian .BE domain explained to the audience that they have developed an official procedure of interacting with the state Federal Public Service Economy in order to counteract online fraud.
Irina Daneliya, Deputy Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ and CENTR member of the board, delivered a report. She spoke about the latest legislative initiatives in Russia, including the ‘autonomous Runet’ law which has become known abroad. “Our colleagues read foreign media publications on the matter and asked whether Russia really wants to shut down the internet. In my report I will try to explain what this draft law is about and how it can affect the development of the Runet,” Daneliya pointed out.
“We would like to thank the CENTR administration and the French registry Afnic for the wonderfully organized event. The regular CENTR meetings, including general assemblies and working meetings to discuss the use of domain names, information security and marketing communications help us act together, learn what is going on in other domain zones, exchange experience and practices with our colleagues. The internet has no borders and we are all dealing with the same problems. Only together will it be possible to find ways to counteract the illegal use of domains, provide security and the development of domain zones,” said Coordination Center Director Andrey Vorobyev.
