On August 29, 2019, the office of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) held its Open Doors Day – iЮНЬ-DAY (10). The participants discussed RAEC’s fall projects, including those that are part of the celebrations of .RU’s 25th anniversary.
The Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ plans to play an active role in these events. Thus, at the 12th Russian Internet Week – RIW 2019 – the Coordination Center will present its stand with an emphasis on the 25th anniversary of the national domain .RU. Visitors of RIW 2019 will have an opportunity to take part in quizzes and quests from the Coordination Center and accredited registrars, and receive souvenirs with the anniversary logo. Coordination Center experts will participate in the fall series of regional RIWs, where they will tell the audience about the history of the Russian domain .RU and prospects for its further development.
A number of thematic sessions were held during the latter part of the event. Coordination Center experts took part in the expanded meeting of the cluster “RAEC/E-Commerce,” which was attended by representatives of the biggest online stores, logistics and payment companies, and major trade aggregators.
The participants discussed self-regulation of e-commerce, in particular, sectoral proposals to establish a registry of bona fide online stores. Recently, there has been an increase in fraud in the e-sales of goods and services. The accessibility of online trade gives rise to many resources that want to steal money from their customers.
The participants believe that it is very important to enhance trust in online stores and e-commerce in the Russian domains .RU and .РФ. They proposed various ways of confirming the integrity of online stores, which would help lower the risks of dealing with a fake resource. This process would require many organizational measures that should be adopted as part of self-regulation. The participants agreed to start drafting versions of such mechanisms with due account for the views of all stakeholders and present the first proposals at the next session of the cluster.
“Cracking down on fraudulent online stores is a very urgent task not only for Russia but also for other countries that are actively developing online trade. We are actively studying the experience of other countries in this area, for instance, the registrars of the CENTR association. I am confident that it will help us find the most balanced solution,” said Coordination Center Director Andrei Vorobyev.
“Back in 2015, we discussed in practical terms the creation of a registry of bona fide online stores. In cooperation with the Regional Public Center of Internet Technology (ROCIT) and the Internet Development Institute (IRI), RAEC studied this issue in detail at that time. It was also one of the main topics at the Internet+Trade Forum in 2016. The concept of the relevant registry was also drafted in the same year. However, this project was not developed further. We see that now RAEC is revisiting the issue, and the discussion continues in the RAEC/E-Commerce cluster. Now that this discussion involves interested government agencies and the Coordination Center, we can hope that it will move forward. We in RAEC believe that given the current development of e-commerce, such an instrument of self-regulation is much in demand both for consumers and in the B2B segment,” said RAEC Director Sergei Plugotarenko.
At the cluster venue, the participants discussed not only arguments in support of the online store registry but also serious arguments against it having close links with store ratings and high-quality labels. They agreed that self-regulation in this area is much more appealing than external regulation, but it will take much time and effort to develop a concept of such self-regulation. RAEC and ROCIT will update their proposals on this matter in the near future. The first results of this work will be presented in the next 3-5 months.
