Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

Russian firm fined millions over domain land-grab

Kevin Murphy, July 4, 2011, Domain Registrars

RU-Center, Russia’s largest domain name registrar, will have to repay 240 million rubles ($8.6 million) for grabbing thousands of domain names and auctioning them during the .РФ landrush.
The company could also be fined up to 75% of its 2009 revenues for breaking competition law, according to a statement from the country’s Federal Antimonopoly Service.
When .РФ was launched by the .ru registry launched last November, it offered domain names on a first-come first-served basis, without the premium landrush period offered by other TLDs.
RU-Center took this opportunity to register 60,000 domains in its own name and sell them off to the highest bidder, essentially bringing the landrush to the registrar level.
Some ccTLD Coordination Center council members, responsible for setting the launch policies, had ownership interests in RU-Center either directly or through family members, according to FAS.
The registrar is currently being acquired by a company called RBC.

New Russian TLD hits 800,000 domains mark

Kevin Murphy, April 5, 2011, Domain Registries

Russia’s Cyrillic internationalized domain name, .РФ, received its 800,000th registration last night, according to the registry.
Coordination Center for TLD RU said this puts it 15th place in terms of European ccTLDs, pushing past the Czech Republic’s .cz in the rankings.
That’s pretty good going for an IDN TLD of interest primarily only to citizens of one country, a ccTLD which didn’t exist until early November 2010, less than five months ago.
It’s probably even larger than .co, which I believe has yet to reach the 700,000 domains mark.
The Russian Federation has almost 60 million internet users, 43% penetration, according to InternetWorldStats. That’s about 10 times more than the Czechs.

Gaming scandal hits Russian domain launch

Kevin Murphy, November 24, 2010, Domain Registries

The launch of Russia’s .РФ country-code top-level domain, widely lauded as a runaway success story, has been tainted by a registrar gaming scandal.
Government antitrust authorities are investigating six registrars over claims that they registered tens of thousands of premium domains in order to auction them to end users, according to local reports.
The registrars in question are thought to have colluded, using each others’ services to register the names, hence the competition probe.
The largest registrar, Regional Network Information Center, aka RU-Center, is alleged to have registered 65,000 domains during the first days of the .РФ launch in order to profit from auctions.
These domains have been frozen pending resolution of the dispute. The registry, Coordination Center for TLD, is thinking about cancelling the registrars’ accreditations.
RU-Center is quoted as saying, laughably, that the premium domains were registered in order to prevent cybersquatting.
In a statement, the registry questions the public good of registering проститутки.рф, which apparently means “prostitute.rf” and is currently asking $190,000 at auction.
The investigation certainly takes the gloss off the launch, which has so far racked up well over 500,000 registered domains and was put forth as case study for internationalized domain names.

New Russian TLD is a smash hit

Kevin Murphy, November 11, 2010, Domain Registries

Russia’s new Cyrillic top-level domain, .РФ, has gone down a storm, beating even the recent launch of .co in terms of the speed of first-day registrations.
The Russian registry is reporting that it broke through the 200,000 domains mark within the first six hours, after it opened its doors at noon local time today.
By my calculations, that’s less than half the time it took .co to hit the same benchmark, despite the fact that .co did not have the same residency requirements as .РФ.
Andrei Kolesnikov, director of the CCTLD Coordination Center, which runs the domain, told the GNSO Council mailing list:

This clearly demonstrates a great demand for domains in national languages and proves Russia’s position as a leader in terms of the dynamic of TLD launch.

There were already 18,000 .РФ domains before the floodgates opened this afternoon, following a sunrise period for trademark owners.
The TLD transliterates as .rf, for Russian Federation. The country has 142 million citizens and is believed to have almost 60 million internet users. The .ru namespace has about three million domains.