.ru domains fly off the shelf as Western sanctions bite

Russia’s ccTLD has posted very impressive growth in registrations for 2023, attributable largely to sanctions related to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

ccTLD.ru, the registry for .ru and .рф, reported that it ended 2023 with 5,439,137 .ru domains, an increase of 506,024 or 10.3% over the year. It said 85% of the names were registered by Russians.

It said 1,709,718 new domains were registered in .ru, with over 200,000 being registered per month by December.

For comparison with fellow top-10 ccTLDs, Germany’s .de grew by 201,000 names last year, and Brazil’s .br grew by 220,000. The UK’s .uk shrank and the Netherlands’ .nl was basically flat.

In the smaller Cyrllic .рф, the growth rate was even greater — 13.7%, with 768,883 domains in total at the end of the year, up 92,769 names, the registry said.

Despite the rapid growth, .ru is still a bit off its 2017 peak of around 5.53 million domains, according to my database.

In a press release, ccTLD.ru director Andrey Vorobyev admitted that one of the “main drivers” of the growth were Russians transferring their sites to Russia “under the pressure of sanctions”.

After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, many domain registries and registrars in the West unilaterally decided to stop doing business with Russian citizens and organizations, despite US government sanctions specifically not applying to domains.

GoDaddy cut off Russians and .ru while Namecheap, which has many support staff in Ukraine, cut off Russian customers and continues to prominently fund-raise for Ukraine on its storefront. Other companies announcing boycotts included 101domain, IONOS and Nominet.

Ukraine’s ccTLD, .ua, has fared less well during the crisis. Its total domain count shrank by about 77,000 to 514,000 in 2023, according to my database. The local registry, Hostmaster, had frozen deletions for a period to give people who had been displaced or mobilized more time to renew, but started releasing those domains last year.

Hostmaster has reported adoption of certain third-level geographic .ua domains that use Latin transliterations of Ukrainian place names, rather than Russian — .kyiv.ua versus .kiev.ua for example — as citizens seek to “de-Russify” their holdings.

2 Comments Tagged: .ru, .ua, cctld.ru, hostmaster ua, russia, sanctions, ukraine, war

ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court

After foot-dragging for a decade, ICANN has finally approved a slate of a dozen jurists to act as its de facto Supreme Court.

Its board of directors voted at the weekend to create the first-ever Independent Review Process Standing Panel, a pool of legal experts from which panels in future IRP proceedings — the final appeals process for ICANN decisions under its bylaws — will be drawn.

ICANN has not named the 12 people yet. The names are redacted from the published resolution, presumably because they haven’t signed contracts yet. ICANN said they are “well-qualified” and “represent a diverse breadth of experience and geography”.

The names were put forward by a cross-community working group called the IRP Community Representatives Group, which looked after the application and interview process. A thirteenth CRG pick was deemed “ineligible” by ICANN for undisclosed reasons.

The Standing Panel is intended to make IRPs faster and cheaper by drawing the three-person panel in each case from an established pool of experienced professionals. The panelists will be contracted for staggered terms of service.

The ICANN bylaws have called for the establishment of such a panel for over a decade, but its timely creation was another victim of the lethargy that consumed ICANN for years. The lack of a Standing Panel has been raised by claimants in multiple IRPs, some of which are ongoing.

Elsewhere in IRP policy-making, a separate staff/community working group called the IRP Implementation Oversight Team expects to shortly publish certain revisions to the IRP rules for public comment, but the fact that the legal language of the rules is to be written by the law firm Jones Day, which represents defendant ICANN in IRP cases, has raised some eyebrows.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, irp, irp-crg, irp-iot, jones day, standing panel

Lebanon’s ccTLD going back to Lebanon after ICANN takeover

ICANN’s board of directors has voted to redelegate Lebanon’s ccTLD to the country’s local Internet Society chapter, six months after the Org took it over as an emergency caretaker.

The resolution, passed at the weekend, as usual with ccTLD redelegations does not get into any depth about the switch, other than to note IANA has ticked all the requisition procedural boxes. IANA will publish a report at a later date.

ICANN took over the ccTLD, .lb, last July after the former registry was left in limbo following the sudden death of its founder and manager. It was only the second time ICANN had made itself a ccTLD’s “caretaker”.

The board also voted at the weekend to redelegate Cameroon’s .cm, best-known in the Anglophone world for enabling .com typos purely by existing, to Agence Nationale des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication, the local technology ministry.

Comment Tagged: .cm, .lb, iana, ICANN, redelegation

ICANN picks the domain it will never, ever release

ICANN has picked the TLD string that it will recommend for safe use behind corporate firewalls on the basis that it will never, ever be delegated.

The string is .internal, and the choice is now open for public comment.

It’s being called a “private use” TLD. Organizations would be able to use it behind their firewalls safe in the knowledge that it will never appear in the public DNS, mitigating the risk of public/private name collisions and data leakage.

.internal beat fellow short-lister .private to ICANN’s selection because it was felt that .private might lure people into a false sense of security.

While it’s unlikely that anyone was planning to apply for .internal as a commercial or brand gTLD in future, it’s important to note that when it makes it to the ICANN reserved list all confusingly similar strings will also be banned, under the current draft of the Applicant Guidebook.

So reserving .internal also potentially bans .internat, which Google tells me is the French word for a boarding school, or .internai, which is a possible brand for an AI for interns (yes, I’m grasping here, but you get my point).

The public comment period is open now and ends March 21.

1 Comment Tagged: .internal, ICANN, name collisions, new gTLDs, private use

ICANN approves domain takedown rules

ICANN’s board of directors has formally approved amendments to its standard registry and registrar contracts aimed at forcing companies to take action against domains involved in DNS abuse.

At its meeting last weekend, the board passed a resolution amending the Registrar Accreditation Agreement and Base gTLD Registry Agreement to include tougher rules on tackling abuse.

Registrars must now “promptly take the appropriate mitigation action(s) that are reasonably necessary to stop, or otherwise disrupt, the Registered Name from being used for DNS Abuse” when provided with evidence of such abuse.

Registries have a similar obligation to take action, but the action might be to refer the abusive domain to the appropriate registrar.

The rules follow the now industry-standard definition of DNS abuse: “malware, botnets, phishing, pharming, and spam (when spam serves as a delivery mechanism for the other forms of DNS Abuse listed)”.

The changes were crafted by ICANN along with registries and registrars and voted through late last year by a hefty majority of both camps.

The two contracts are now in the hands of the ICANN CEO and her lawyers for final action before becoming enforceable.

Comment Tagged: dns abuse, ICANN, ra, raa

Has Epik gone “woke”?

The epic saga of disgraced registrar Epik has taken a weird twist this week, with the company appearing to do a 180 on its longstanding devotion to “free speech”, going on a Twitter rampage, sarcastically embracing “wokeness”, and ejecting one of its most controversial anchor tenants, which is now threatening to sue.

On the face of it, it seems quite possible that the company’s official Twitter account may have been compromised. So take any quotes here from @EpikLLC with a pinch of salt. There’s also a non-zero chance that the account has shared child sexual abuse material this evening, so be careful.

The current chapter of the story appears to begin in mid-December, when the owner of the web forum KiwiFarms.net — which Wikipedia says “facilitates the discussion and harassment of online figures and communities” — claimed that Epik suspended his domain for an unspecified terms of service violation.

The domain seems to have moved to Namecheap a couple of days later, where it still sits today.

A month of online drama later, earlier today the person running Epik’s Twitter account either changed, or lost their mind. This was posted this morning as the company’s pinned tweet:

Alright all Whiny, Beta Snowflakes. Our DEI hires of the month cancelled #Kiwifarms @XJosh sorry. We don't like hate speech, porn, or doxxing. #JoeBiden will fix it! 2024! @EndWokeness

— Epik LLC (@EpikLLC) January 23, 2024

DEI stands for “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” a workplace buzzword in some parts of the world, loved by some on the political left, hated by some on the right. @XJosh is KiwiFarms.net owner Josh Moon.

The content of the @EpikLLC tweet and the @EndWokeness mention suggests sarcasm. Epik has been known for the last several years for being a relatively safe home for some of the web’s most controversial content — typically sites for those with hard-right views.

After a series of tweets along the same lines, the @EpikLLC account reappeared this evening to post a screen grab apparently of a KiwiFarms.net page. The image in the tweet contained censored personal details and blurred photos of a naked male.

I won’t post the full tweet containing the image here, but the accompanying tweet text reads: “Here’s the complaint received that violated our TOS for doxxing. We believed this to be underage porn also. Regardless, Epik doesn’t want to do business with websites like this. If we misread this we apologize. Did we make the right choice in cancelling KF?”

Other Twitter users immediately pointed out that the Epik account had just shared an image it “believed to be underage porn”. Others said that the image showed a 19-year-old man rather than a child.

Moon, who goes by the handle “Null” on his web site, is currently asking his users whether they would be willing to crowd-fund a defamation lawsuit against Epik for claiming on Twitter that law enforcement had ordered the suspension of the domain and that the site hosted “child porn”. He says both claims are false.

KiwiFarms.net moved to Epik in September 2022 after its previous registrar, Cloudflare, kicked it out citing an “an imminent and emergency threat to human life” believed to relate to the targeting of a transgender Twitch streamer.

It’s not currently clear who owns or manages Epik. After a financial mismanagement scandal lasting many months, the company said last June that it had changed ownership. Contact details published by ICANN show it “belongs” to a company called Registered Agents Inc, which specializes in anonymous company formations.

ICANN said in June that it was doing due diligence on the new owners, but that the process could take several months.

Comment Tagged: epik, ICANN, kiwifarms

First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week

The internet community will officially get eyes on the draft Applicant Guidebook for ICANN’s next new gTLD Applicant Guidebook as early as next week.

The ICANN staff/community Implementation Review Team crafting the language of the AGB is targeting February 1, next Thursday, for opening a formal Public Comment on drafts of seven sections of the document.

These sections mostly cover some of the low-hanging fruits — explanatory text or rules that have not changed a great deal from the 2012 round. They are:

• Code of Conduct and Conflict of Interest Guidelines.
• Conflicts of Interest Process for Vendors and Subcontractors. Along with the above, these sections specify what ICANN’s vendors (such as application evaluators) must not do in order to avoid the perception of conflicts of interest, such as not accepting gifts and not entering into deals to acquire applicants.
• Applicant Freedom of Expression. This section is a single-paragraph disclaimer warning applicants to be “mindful of limitations to free expression”. In other words, if your applied-for string breaks ICANN rules, your free speech rights are forfeit.
• Universal Acceptance. A brief warning or disclaimer that even successfully applied-for gTLDs may not work everywhere on the internet due to lack of software support.
• Reserved and Blocked Names. Covers the variety of reasons why an applied-for string will be rejected or subject to additional review, including names that break technical standards, are geographic in nature, or refer to organizations in the ICANN ecosystem.
• Geographic Names. Specifies when an applied-for string is considered a Geographic Name and is therefore banned outright or requires governmental approval for the application to proceed. There’s at least one potential applicant, thinking of applying for .eth, that I predict will not be happy with one of these rules.
• Predictability Framework. This is new to the 2026 round. It’s a procedure designed to tackle unexpected changes to process or policy that are required after applicants have already paid up and submitted their paperwork. In some circumstances, it requires ICANN to consult with a community group called SPIRT to make sure applicants are not affected too adversely.

The full AGB is not expected to be completed until May 2025, with ICANN currently hoping to open the next application window in April 2026.

The public comment period on the first batch of docs is expected to run from February 1 to March 19. If you want to get the jump on what is very likely to be published, drafts can be found here.

Comment Tagged: applicant guidebook, ICANN, new gTLDs, next round, spirt

ICANN bans closed generics for the foreseeable

There will be no applications for closed generic gTLDs in the 2026 application round, ICANN has confirmed.

While the Org has yet to publish the results of last weekend’s board meeting, chair Tripti Sinha has written to community leaders to let them know that companies won’t be able to apply for exclusive-use, non-trademark strings for the foreseeable future.

The ban follows years of talks that failed to find a consensus on whether closed generics should be permitted, and subsequent advice from the Governmental Advisory Committee, backed up by the At-Large Advisory Committee, that they should not.

Apparently quoting board output from its January 21 meeting, Sinha wrote (pdf):

the Board has considered the GAC Advice and has determined that closed generic gTLD applications will not be permitted until such time as there is an approved methodology and criteria to evaluate whether or not a proposed closed domain is in the public interest.

Closed generics were permitted — or at least not explicitly outlawed — in the 2012 application round, but were retroactively banned by ICANN following GAC advice in 2013, stymying the plans of dozens of applicants.

Ironically, it was the clumsy wording of the 2013 advice that saw the debate re-open a few years ago, with the initiation of a closed-doors, Chatham House Rules “facilitated dialogue” between the pro- and anti- camps, which also failed to reach a consensus.

By drawing a line under the issue now, ICANN has finally officially removed closed generics as a potential delaying factor on the next gTLD application round, which is already 13 years late.

2 Comments Tagged: alac, closed generics, gac, gnso, ICANN, new gTLDs

You can’t use money to buy .box domains

In what is probably the strangest domain launch to date, the crypto-focused new gTLD .box has gone on sale, but you can’t use actual money to buy domains there.

The unique selling point of .box domains is that they work on both the regular consensus DNS — .box is an ICANN-approved and contracted gTLD — and the Ethereum Name Service blockchain alt-root, so registrants can use their domains to address their crypto wallets.

From a business model perspective, registry Intercap is doing a lot of things differently.

For starters, it’s not accepting hard currency. The regular general availability price at My.Box, which appears to be the only registrar, is $120 a year, but you can only pay in crypto coins — either Ethereum or USD Coin, a crypto coin that has its value linked 1:1 to the US dollar.

My.Box is using ICANN-accredited top-10 registrar NameSilo to register names, but NameSilo’s own web store does not appear to support them.

The current Early Access Period is also different to the norm. Instead of the price reducing by a certain amount every day at midnight, it’s constantly ticking down, minute by minute, at a rate of 50% a day, so you can get a name for less if you just hang on a few hours (or minutes, or seconds).

EAP pricing started at $7,680 last Thursday and at time of publication is around $470. Judging by zone files, about 30 domains have been sold during EAP so far.

Dropping domains pricing is also handled in what I believe is a unique way. Instead of dropped domains entering the available pool at regular GA pricing, they instead are returned to EAP pricing — so they’ll cost $7,680 to re-register the moment after they drop and you’ll have to wait a full seven days to get them at the regular base price..

I can see the potential for controversy here, but it doesn’t seem much different to registrars auctioning off their customers’ domains after they expire.

My.Box also asks its customers to manage their domain via its app, and it does not allow them to assign their own nameservers — they have to use the nameservers assigned by the registry.

Comment Tagged: .box, intercap, my.box, namesilo

After 14 years, ICANN practices what it preaches on IDNs

Almost 14 years after the first non-Latin domain names were added to the DNS root, ICANN has finally declared itself IDN-compatible.

“ICANN staff can now send emails to and receive emails from internationalized email addresses,” the Org said in a blog post today.

“ICANN also supports short and long ASCII top-level domains in all systems, as well as ASCII-based Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) in Punycode (A-label) in public-facing systems,” Org added. “In addition, IDNs in Unicode (U-label) work in ICANN’s public-facing systems.”

It’s the weakest brag imaginable.

ICANN is the organization that is tasked with ensuring the internet’s naming and addressing systems are interoperable globally. It’s the one organization on the planet that absolutely, by definition, has to deal with the owners of IDNs.

And yet it’s taken almost 14 years for this milestone to be reached. The first IDN TLDs — the Arabic translations of the ccTLDs of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — were delegated to the DNS root May 5, 2010.

As my post from that time reflects, IDN support then, even in browsers, was awful.

There have been 159 IDN TLDs in the root since the first batch (about half a dozen or so were dot-brands that have since been retired) and a great many Latin-script TLDs support IDNs at the second level.

To be fair, ICANN cannot shoulder all the blame for this tardiness. Presumably, Org uses the same off-the-shelf email systems as the rest of us, so it would have been reliant on its vendors to add the necessary support.

Today’s blog post notes that ICANN had to work with its technology partners to impress upon them the importance of IDN support and Universal Acceptance in general.

ICANN has made greater IDN adoption one of its main goals of the forthcoming next application round of the new gTLD program, part of an effort to get more registries founded in currently under-served regions.

But there are some who believe this focus on IDNs has come at the cost of ignoring Universal Acceptance issues affecting Latin-script TLDs.

Popular social networking apps — surely the most common vector for link-sharing nowadays — have been found lacking in their support for the most recently created TLDs, and some say ICANN has failed its duty to reach out to developers to school them on UA.

Last year, the CEO of .tube discovered that popular software was relying on a hard-coded list of TLDs in the Android operating system that had not been updated since November 2015, meaning the 468 TLDs that have been delegated since then would not be recognized as domains and not “linkified” when shared on apps such as WhatsApp.

It also seems that Twitter as of this week is still relying on a hard-coded TLD list that has not been updated since 2020, meaning domains in the three TLDs that have been delegated since then — .spa, .kids and .music — are not linkified.

Given how simple updating a TLD list should be, and given that somebody at ICANN presumably has the ear of somebody at Twitter or Meta or Google or wherever — Android updated its list pretty quickly when alerted to to the problem by .tube — it’s baffling to me that these problems persist in the light of ICANN’s stated focus on UA.

2 Comments Tagged: .ua, ICANN, idns