Recent Developments in the .РФ Domains Public Registration

Public registration of .РФ domains started on November 11, 2010. On that day, RU-CENTER registered domains according to the preorders submitted by the company's clients in the period from September 21 to November 10, 2010.

According to the terms of the Domains Preorder Registration Service, in case of two or more preorder requests for one domain, the latter shall be registered on the registrar's name and the domain name ownership right shall be established in a private auction between applicants.

In total, RU-CENTER received about 135 thousand of preorders for public registration of .РФ domains.
By the results of preorders processing, 24.7 thousand of .РФ domains went to private auctions.

During the auctions, about 200 domains have been withdrawn on the basis of item 4.1.3. of Domains Preorder Registration Schedule in РФ TLD. Domain names withdrawn from the auction have been given to governmental and municipal authorities, trademark owners and other means of individualization.

By now, all auctions have been closed. RU-CENTER published the summary statistics on the auction results on a special corporate web-page.

Alexey Lesnikov stated: "Money is a by-product. In the very beginning we stated that all profits from auctions would be directed to charity".

Temporary locking of certain .РФ domains registered in RU-CENTER has been widely discussed by the public.

On November 22, 2010, at 05.16 p.m. MSK, RU-CENTER received a fax message with Notification from Coordination Center for TLD RU (CC) on imposing sanctions against RU-CENTER with an order to cancel the auctions publically. The Notification was signed by Mr. Andrei Kolesnikov, CC Director. It should be noted that possibility of conducting the auctions by the registrars had been discussed with the Coordination Center members prior to commencement of public registration, and the Council had no objections against the auctions (all the more, this is in line with the global practice of opening new extensions).

Besides, Mr. Andrei Kolesnikov, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD RU, explained that the registrars have possibility to register domains in their name for conducting auctions. "Then, everything depends on the amount and type of received orders. Some of them may be in duplicate, and, consequently, the registrar shall buy such domains in its name and then conduct an auction between applicants."

In reaction to the mentioned Notification RU-CENTER addressed Mr. Mikhail Yakushev, Chairman of CC Council, with a request to call an extraordinary meeting of CC Council and create a work group (committee) to check the registrars' activities during commencement of public registration of .РФ domains.

On November 23, 2010, an extraordinary meeting of CC Council members was held. In the meeting, RU-CENTER representatives brought to the attention of the Council members their position on auction for domains, for which two or more requests have been received during the preorder period.

On November 24, 2010, Mr. Andrei Kolesnikov, CC Director, without waiting for CC Council conclusions, took an individual decision to lock .РФ domains which have been put by RU-CENTER for private auctions.

On November 29, 2010, the first meeting between conciliatory commission of the Coordination Center for TLD RU and accredited RU-CENTER registrar was held. The following issues were discussed in the meeting: interaction between the Coordination Center and the registrar on handling the users' applications during private auctions for the ownership right to the domain, when two or more preorder requests have been submitted to the registrar.

In accordance with the reached agreements disputable domains were released on November 30, 2010. Conciliatory commission has just started their work.

In the future, the commission will review the documents related to the registration of the disputed domains and the actions of the registrar that auctioned the domain names. Besides, in accordance with the decision of Coordination Center Council held on November 29, 2010 another commission is to be set up in the next few days. This commission will include representatives from the Internet community, State Duma deputies, FAS and Ministry of Telecom & Mass Communications experts to study the course of public registration of .РФ domain names and to assess the results of launching the extension, and in particular to define recommendations to the Coordination Center Council with regard to possible breach of registration regulations.