Date
Author
Виктория СОКОЛОВСКАЯ; Itoday Ru; -- Специально Для «Времени Новостей
Source
Preserved copy
Translated material
Point er ef
In a year, Cyrillic domains should become a reality
On June 26, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is an organization that determines the procedure for assigning domain names) announced the possibility of registering top-level domains using non-Latin alphabets IDN (Internationalized Domen Names). The estimated date for the official appearance of domains in Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and other languages is mid-2009.ICANN, an organization sponsored by the US Department of Commerce, has been involved in Internet domain name issues since 1998. It is she who distinguishes first-level domains. Now there are 249 national ones and 11 “registered” ones, like .museum and .aero, and all of them are Latin. On June 26, the IDNs WG, a specially created working group within ICANN, proposed allowing a fast track procedure for introducing non-Latin top-level domains for those countries that want to receive them as quickly as possible. And Russia and Bulgaria, in particular, want it.
The word “accelerated” should not be taken literally. Neither tomorrow nor in a month a Russian-language domain will appear. The document proposed by the IDNs WG will be finalized and adopted, most likely, at the next ICANN meeting in November. At the same time, the administrator of non-Latin domains will be determined, to whom domestic registrars (companies involved in registering domain names) will have to turn. According to the general director of Ragtime LLC (Russian domain name registrar) Sergei Sharikov, the introduction of a Russian-language domain should be expected approximately next summer.
Work is currently underway to create a Punycode encoding system, thanks to which web browsers will correctly interpret website addresses written in any language. Addresses like name.ru could be registered and used back in 2001. However, to access such sites, you need to install a special plugin (addition to standard software) in your web browser. This solution has a lot of limitations and serious inconveniences, the main one of which is that such sites cannot be viewed using a regular browser.
Russia's new national domain on the Internet will apparently be .рф. This option follows the rules set out in the IDNs WG document, according to which the country code must be written in the state language and match the full or abbreviated name of the country. The option that many would consider more correct - .ru - was rejected for the reason that its spelling coincides with the Latin .py domain allocated by ICANN for Paraguay. It is possible that by the time the official regulations on non-Latin domains are adopted, other options will appear.
It is expected that only ICANN-accredited companies will have the right to register websites in non-Latin domains. Mr. Sharikov noted that Ragtime will make every effort to obtain accreditation. The Ru-center company, one of the largest Russian registrars, will also not stand aside, its press secretary Andrey Vorobyov assured.
According to registrars, the use of Cyrillic addresses will simplify Internet navigation for those users who do not speak foreign languages and do not want to understand the Latin alphabet. The innovation will make life easier for some Russian-speaking companies, especially those whose names do not have a clear Latin spelling. Mail.Ru Vice President and Marketing Director Anna Artamonova said that the company has already registered several Cyrillic domains - for example, mail.ru. “If this innovation really turns out to be popular, we, of course, will register domains for ourselves,” Ms. Artamonova clarified (translated from corporate into Russian, this means that Mail.Ru will spare no effort in acquiring the Mail domain .RF, as soon as such an opportunity presents itself). Daniil Kozyakov, public relations manager of the Russian representative office of ASUSTeK (a Taiwanese manufacturer of computers and components), believes that until the appearance of Cyrillic domains, it is too early to talk about the company’s intention to create a website with a Russian address.
Regarding the decision made by ICANN to open the registration of Cyrillic domain names, it should be borne in mind that ICANN is an inertial bureaucratic structure that functions according to its own plans. The decision to expedite the procedure for introducing Cyrillic domain names, which followed shortly after the Russian President’s speech at the X World Congress of the Russian Press, where Dmitry Medvedev spoke about Cyrillic domains as a “symbol of the importance of the Russian language,” may have been a very fortunate coincidence. After all, the problem of non-Latin domains is really ripe.
Elena Lashkina, press secretary of the Minister of Communications and Mass Communications, told Vremya Novostei: “Indeed, there was a decision by ICANN, unanimously adopted by an open vote of the board members of this organization. Russian representatives did not participate in this. However, on our part, we did everything necessary so that ICANN could make such a decision. The Minister (Igor Shchegolev - Ed. ) submitted an official appeal to ICANN - Russia became the first country to do this."
Before ICANN, we argued the need to introduce top-level domains in Cyrillic through an accelerated procedure by the fact that there are over 40 million users in Russia and more than 1.5 million domains are registered. Moreover, the increase in the number of domains over the past year was over 60%. By 2010, Russia is expected to overtake Germany in the number of users and become the largest European Internet power. ICANN President Paul Toomey received an official letter on behalf of Minister Igor Shchegolev, and on June 26, the ICANN board unanimously decided that Russia would receive a Cyrillic domain through the fast track procedure. According to Paul Toomey, the ability to begin registering domains in languages that do not use the Latin alphabet will appear in the second quarter of 2009.
As for who will become the domain administrator and what exactly the Russian Cyrillic domain will be, there are formal ICANN requirements for first-level domain administrators. It must be an organization with a certain experience and set of competencies. In Russia, several applicants meet these requirements.