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.ru ready to crash as Draconian new rules come in
One of the world’s most-popular ccTLDs could be on the verge of losing a substantial number of domains after extremely strict eligibility requirements come in to force just weeks from now.
Registrants of new and existing .ru domains will need to prove their identity via a system administered by the Russian government from September 1 or risk losing their names.
In addition, only Russian-registered companies are authorized to act as registrars, on a list managed by government-selected non-profit entities. That rule came into effect in March.
Machine-translated, the law that was signed by President Putin last December states:
Domain names are registered in accordance with the domain name registration rules only after the person in whose name the domain name is registered has completed identification using the Unified Identification and Authentication System.
The identification system referred to here is also called Gosuslugi or ESIA. It’s the government-run program that enables Russian citizens to access government services online.
Signing up for Gosulgi requires government-issued documentation such as a passport or social security number. Foreigners resident in Russia are able to obtain documentation, but the process is much more complex.
In a recent interview, Coordination Center for TLD RU director Andrey Vorobyov said the move was designed to help prevent fraud and abuse in Russia-focused ccTLDs.
.ru is the 11th-largest TLD and the fifth-largest ccTLD after China, Germany, UK and (barely) the Netherlands, with 6,137,523
registered domains as of today. .РФ has 805,571 and .su (representing the former Soviet Union) has 110,369.
If .ru follows the trend set by other ccTLDs, it could be ready to fall off a cliff. When China’s CNNIC introduced similar rules in 2010, it lost millions of names.
While most Russians already have a Gosuslugi account, foreign-based .ru registrants could find themselves unable to sign up or decide they are unwilling to hand over their ID to the Russian government.
Some registrars, such as Com Laude, are looking into ways to get around the rules with local presence services.
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