Temporary Locking of Certain .РФ Domains

Following the decision of A.V. Kolesnikov, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD RU, starting from November 25, 2010 "any transactions with domain names in .РФ TLD auctioned and administered by RU-CENTER are temporarily suspended". The official statement of the Coordination Center says that temporary suspension of the transactions with the specified domain names will stay in effect until the end of the proceedings.

The accreditation agreement prescribes the procedure of settling disputes. In compliance with this document on Monday, November 29, 2010, at 3 p.m. a conciliatory commission is to start working at the Coordination Center and in the evening a regular session of the Coordination Center Council will take place. It is planned that among other issues the session attendees will also consider the beginning of a public registration of .РФ domains.

RU-CENTER underscores that the blocked .РФ domain names have been registered by our company in accordance with the applicable law of the Russian Federation and in the manner stipulated in the Domains Registration Rules in RU TLD. All information confirming that RU-CENTER is the administrator of the aforementioned domain names and that our clients legally own these domains can be found in the publicly accessible Whois service.

Due to the fact that in September of 2010 the Coordination Center changed the rules of public registration for .РФ domains, one and a half months before the launch of the general availability stage RU-CENTER, taking into consideration the foreign experience of opening new extensions, offered its clients an optional service — preorder registration which raises the chances of regular users to get an attractive domain name once the public registration begins. This service has been offered along with the standard domain registration service since noon of November 11, 2010.

The clients got an opportunity to choose. Those clients that opted for the optional service automatically agreed with the condition for holding a private auction, should two or more requests for one and the same domain be placed. Taking part in the auction the clients set the prices for these services at their own discretion. As a result of the auction the winner gets the "Domain ownership" service which is the registrar's optional service based on the basic principle of civil law — freedom of contract. The terms of domain ownership are clearly stipulated in the schedule and all clients are aware of their rights and obligations.

The rights of domain owners are confirmed by the agreement concluded with our company and by registration requests as well as invoices and other documents. It means that if the above mentioned documents are available there are no legal reasons to cancel their rights for the domain.

One should bear in mind though that in line with the agreements concluded with our clients all information about the clients that already own and administer their domains will be added by our company to the domain names registry immediately after the term of restrictions imposed by the Coordination Center expires.

A reminder: in compliance with the decision of the Coordination Center, domain registrants are not allowed to transfer their domains for at least one year.

The standard .РФ domain registration service is provided starting from November 11, 2010 at a fixed price which is the same for all clients; moreover, at all times the key principle of public registration is observed: "first come — first served".

All cybersquatting allegations against our company are absolutely groundless since all the registrations have been executed on preorder basis strictly in the interests of our clients. The company has registered 172 domain names for personal use.

RU-CENTER is confident that the dispute will be settled in the nearest future with the interests of users of the country-code Cyrillic .РФ TLD and those of the entire Russian internet community taken into account.