Weaning from the Internet
The Russian Research Institute for the Development of Public Networks (RosNIIROS) will be deprived of the right to register domain names in the RU zone. This was stated by the Minister of Communications and Informatization of the Russian Federation Leonid Reiman, who came to the Norvecom exhibition in St. Petersburg. However, the reasons for such a decision do not seem convincing.

According to Leonid Reiman, the decision to deprive RosNIIROS of registration rights was made on the basis of complaints received by the Ministry of Communications against this government agency. As an example, Reiman referred to a collective complaint he received from ten of the world's largest automakers, which include Mercedes, Fiat and Ford. The complainants accused RosNIIROS of registering the names ford.ru, fiat.ru, etc. to structures that have nothing to do with the manufacturers of cars of these brands. Leonid Reiman also expressed personal complaints against RosNIIROS for the fact that the latter registers “registered” Internet addresses (such as the notorious site putin.ru). “It is necessary that the registration of domain names be carried out competently and thoughtfully,” concluded Reiman. And for this purpose, the rights to register domain names will be transferred to a new structure, which will be created either with the participation of the state or the largest Internet providers.
However, the claims of the head of the Ministry of Communications to RosNIIROS do not seem justified. First, the automakers' collective complaint is rudimentarily verifiable. The RosNIIROS database (www.ripn.ru) contains information that the fiat.ru domain is registered by Fiat International SpA, and the fact that the site is empty is the problem of the Fiat people themselves. The domain ford.ru is registered by a large Web studio Alter Media, but it did this (along with the development of the site) at the request of Ford. A visit to the ford.ru website leaves no doubt about who it belongs to, and it has long been advertised on the RuNet as a Ford website. The domains mercedes-benz.ru and mercedesbenz.ru are assigned to DaimlerChrysler AG and its Russian representative office. True, someone was ahead of the Germans with the registration of mercedes.ru.
Secondly, the accusations of RosNIIROS that it gives away “other people’s” domains to the first person they come across are, to say the least, incorrect. The institute simply does not have any legal basis for pursuing any policy on domain name registration. In many countries there are lists of world-famous trademarks that unauthorized persons will not be allowed to register. We do not have such a legally approved list, and Rospatent, which is responsible for this issue, refers to the fact that it does not have the funds to carry out such work. But if there is no corresponding law, then refusing to register a domain to anyone can be considered arbitrary. When domains in the RU zone were rarely registered, the director of RosNIIROS, Alexey Platonov, tried to somehow regulate the process on the basis of his personal initiative. For example, he dissuaded people from applying to register the cisco.ru domain when Cisco Systems had not yet taken care of this issue. Now hundreds of sites are registered every day, and it is simply impossible to implement any policy.
“RosNIIROS has long wanted to move away from the registration process,” Platonov told Kommersant. “We are preparing an institute of independent registrars, it will start working in March, and we will reserve only technical support functions. If the state really wants to streamline the registration system in RuNet, it should accept our proposals."

VASILY Kommersant-BUROV, IGOR Kommersant-PICHUGIN

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 27 dated 02/18/2000, p. 4

Disconnection from the Internet