He was the keynote speaker at the Russian IGF, but the local organizers, the Russian Coordination Center for the .ru ccTLD decided to use him even more, and invited Jeff also to join a panel discussion on DDoS attacks, with Natalia Kaspersky and Andrea Rigoni.

At the panel, Jeff spoke after some other prominent panelist, who discussed the topic “Combat with cybercrime: cooperation and collective initiatives” – like Michel Moren, Acting Assistant Deputy Director, INTERPOL and Alexey Moshkov, Head of the Bureau for Special Technical Measures of Department “K” of the Ministry of Interior of Russian Federation, Police Major General. Full program of the event (in English) is at their web site.

After the panel was over, and without giving Jeff a break, the Minister of telecom and mass communications, I.O. Schegolev, invited Jeff to officially open the 23rd international exhibition SvyazExpoCom. Jeff was in a good company – besides the Russian minister, the other dignitaries, who spoke at the opening of the exhibition included Slovenian member of the cabinet Ziga Turk, ITU deputy Secretary-General Houlin Zhao, and the deputy-chairman of the Russian Chamber of Commerce Vladimir Strashko. Interesting moment, and hardly with equivalent, was that Jeff’s speech was translated by the deputy-minister of communications (sic!).

After the opening of the exhibition, Jeff was rushed back to the main plenary hall, where hundreds of people were patiently waiting to hear his keynote (video to be posted soon).

I won’t write here about the presentation, but will note that after it was over, we had a number of meetings, one after the other, until late at night, with people from across the Internet specter – from law-enforcement, through academia, through business and non-profit, and government representatives.

Here’s what the CEO of the Russian Coordination Center for the .ru ccTLD, Andrei Kolesnikov, wrote about Jeff’s presentation and interaction with the participants at the event:

“Having spoken with a number of our guests, including government representatives and professionals, I am pleased to let you know everyone cited your presentation as a candid and provocative account which helped raise awareness of critical challenges in the cybersecurity area and ways to address them.”

I can also confirm that this opinion was indeed shared by many.

The Russians now want Jeff to visit again, and not only for a one day stay, but to stay longer. Some are already asking if he could join, in 2013, the 16th Russian Internet Forum, or the 20th Relarn Internet geeks boat cruise on the Volga river.

I am thinking, “Maybe I should recommend him to take part in both!”

It turned out they needed less than three hours to reach to the 100,000 domain names! Such a gold rush was not expected, and numbers continued to grow – 200,000 within 6 hours from the beginning of the registration period. And more than 460,000 by today.

The registration process, which clearly exceeded (and continues to exceed) all expectation, includes some interesting details, for example there is a list of 4023 words, which are not allowed for registration. The so-called “black list” contains variations of all different vulgar words, known in the Russian language. However, users have already found ways to bypass it, with simply adding another word in front, or after the blacklisted words.

We’ll be waiting to hear more on the history and the development of the Russian IDN ccTLD during the ICANN meeting in Cartagena, where several of the Russian ccTLD top management people will be present.
And we’ll prepare a posting on that topic, with more details for the general public. We hope that these details might be helpful in the launch of other new TLDs.

There are hundred of publications in the Russian central media, and even more all over the web, with people sharing opinions about who might be these registrants, why there are so many domains registered, and what does the fact of so many domains mean for the Russian Internet. It will be also interesting to see in exactly one year how many of these domains will be renewed. But certainly the Russian IDN ccTLD has made history.

More on the Russian ccTLD Coordination Center here (in Russian).

More on the ICANN IDN program here.

Interesting background information
The Cyrillic IDN ccTLD started as an idea, discussed during the meeting of the Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov with his Russian colleague President Vladimir Putin on January 18, 2008 in Sofia, Bulgaria. The Bulgarian President’s office published last week the transcript from that meeting. Asked by President Putin, the Russian foreign minister responds, “As for the usage of Cyrillic in the Internet, our experts have already reviewed these issues, we have contacts with the international structures [ICANN], now we are solving the technical questions and the contacts between our specialists on that issue, of course, will confirm our commitment that Cyrillic should be used in the domain names. As for the consultations, as a whole, we are very happy from our cooperation [between Russia, Bulgaria, and ICANN].”

UPDATE FROM November 18, 2010:
As of today, November 18, the number of domains in .рф (.rf IDN ccTLD) passed half a million. As the Coordination Center announced, the 500000th domain registered was металлоконструкции74.рф (xn--74-6kctqamahahrlb5apjiu5d.xn--p1ai – in puny-code). This number brings .рф on 17th place among all European domains. Domains, which were delegated, or a working, account to more than 162,000. Most of them are already used in advertising, not only as single words, but as whole phrases, which are easy for the Russian speaker to understand.

A delegation from ICANN, headed by President and CEO Rod Beckstrom and including Barbara Clay, Tina Dam and Veni Markovski, was in Moscow on a 3-day visit, and participated actively in a number of events (in time order):

- A meeting at the Institute for Information Security Issues (IISI) – the organization that has signed an MoU with ICANN and that is organizing the Garmisch Meeting on Security*. Col.-Gen. Sherstyuk** discussed with ICANN opportunities for further cooperation in the field of internet security.

- Visit to former Soviet President M.S. Gorbachev – the conversation covered a number of issues, not only related to the Internet, and gave us the opportunity to explain the development of the IDN ccTLD, and the gTLD policies. Mr. Gorbachev was particularly impressed by his guests’ remarks about his role in changing the history of Eastern Europe, and the freedom and opportunities this brought to the whole world.

- Rod gave five exclusive interviews, including Reuters and four major Russian media. The Reuters interview was published in many media in countries all over the world, and in Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, French, etc. Some of the Russian language pieces could be found here: Rossiiskaya gazeta, Chastnii korrespondent, and Computerra, and some of the English langauge ones are at Radio Free Europe, and at RT (watch the video there).

Russian Internet Governance Forum and official Launch of the Russian .рф IDN ccTLD
The Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications and the Russian ccTLD Coordination Center organized a great Internet Governance Forum – IGF. The Coordination Center arranged an amazing list of speakers, proving that they are indeed a professional registry, with great staff and leadership.

At the opening of the Forum, the Russian Minister of Communications, Igor Schegolev, praised ICANN for the work it has done, and Rod delivered a special plaque to Andrei Kolesnikov (attached), CEO of the Coordination Center for .ru ccTLD, to confirm the Center was approved as the operator of the new .рф Cyrillic IDN ccTLD.
The opening session included Rod’s keynote address and speeches by Larry Strickling, Col.-Gen. Sherstyuk, Chuck Gomes (GNSO), Chris Disspain (ccNSO), Wolfgang Kleinwachter (NomCom) as well as Russian politicians and businessmen. A full recording (MP3) could be downloaded from the site of the organizers (110 Mb)
here was a VIP lunch, given by the Minister for the top Russian and US officials*** and the ICANN delegation. With lots of greetings, and in a cheerful atmosphere, the lunch allowed informal communication to take place.
Later that day Rod participated in a panel discussion on security, sharing the stage with cyber experts from CISCO, Kaspersky, Lille University, the Russian Parliament, and others.

ICANN’s press activities for these two days produced stories in more than 100 publications, all of them positive about ICANN and the IDN ccTLD program.

But that was not all – IDN “guru” Tina Dam participated in a panel on IDNs, and special attention was paid to her for her achievements, and Veni Markovski was a panelist talking about the governance of the Internet critical infrastructure.

The first day of the Russian IGF ended on a high note, with a cruise for all participants on the Moscow River.

In conclusion, the visit was a big success. ICANN is today more respected, has more friends, and is better known in Russia, than it was before.

Having said that, the work is not done. There are a number of items on the agenda in Russia and the region which require constant attention, cross-cultural knowledge, and good communication. ICANN top executives were able to see and understand this with their own eyes. The investment in improving relations with Russia paid off – less than two years ago nobody believed that ICANN would be welcome in Russia, that Russia would join the GAC, and that such good and positive relations were possible.

The launch of the Cyrillic IDN ccTLD was the focus of this visit, and it was well navigated on two continents, with a 9 hour time zone difference, and included dedicated work between IANA, Tina Dam, regional liaisons, top management, to make sure that not only it will be successful, but it will be a great celebration for the Russian Internet. ICANN performed at its best, and so did the Russians.

Congratulations, Russia! And good luck to the new IDN ccTLD .рф! And thank you, everyone, for the great time, wonderful launch, and being such good hosts!

Notes:
- Pictures from the Russian IGF could be seen here, and from the other meetings – here.
- We are deliberately not putting the names of all the people from Russia, who organized the Russian IGF, and who helped for the success of the ICANN’s visit. We don’t want to omit anyone, but we are thankful to everyone. Спасибо!
__________
* – The Garmisch meeting takes place every year in April, and ICANN is an active participant and supporter; last April George Sadowsky, Greg Rattray, Yurie Ito and Veni Markovski spoke there.
** – Col.-Gen. Sherstyuk is head of the IISI, and undersecretary of the Russian National Security Council to President Medvedev
*** – Besides Assistant Secretary Strickling, the US delegation included Ambassador Philip Verveer, Fiona Alexander, as well as representatives from State Department, Department of Commerce, the US Embassy in Moscow, and others.

The corresponding countries are:
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Russian Federation, and Egypt.

This essentially means that we have started seeing domain names where the top-level/extension is either: امارات. السعودية. .рф مصر.

Congratulations to the teams behind:

• United Arab Emirates: امارات.
• Saudi Arabia: السعودية.
• Russian Federation: .рф
• Egypt: مصر.

The simultaneous delegation of the three Arabic based IDN ccTLDs was completed last week, and the delegation of the Russian IDN ccTLD was completed this week in conjunction with the Russian Internet Governance Forum: http://russia2010.intgov.net/eng/program.php

This is an history milestone and an achievement reached due to years of hard work by so many people across the world, including: technical developments with the core group in the IETF’s IDNA protocol working group; development of the policies and procedures; application development to ensure IDNs work across browser and other software; and so forth.

ICANN would like to thank everyone involved in making IDN TLDs a reality, and we look forward to seeing how IDN TLDs are embraced by users globally, and to the introduction of the next group of IDN ccTLDs. The full list will continue to be updated and can be found here: http://icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/string-evaluation-completion-en.htm

Some of the milestones leading to the last week’s great IDN result:

12 May 2010: Delegation of the Russian Federation IDN ccTLD

5 May 2010: Simultaneous delegation of the three first IDN ccTLDs for United Arabic Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt.

22 April 2010: ICANN Board approval of the first four country delegations, for Saudi Arabia, United Arabic Emirates, Russian Federation, and Egypt.

21 January 2010: ICANN announces the first four IDN ccTLD requests as having completed step 2 (of 3) in the Fast Track Process, thereby the requested IDN ccTLDs have been approved.

16 November 2009: ICANN launches the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process thereby opening up for countries and territories to submit requests for IDN ccTLDs.

30 October 2009: ICANN Board approves the Final Implementation Plan for the IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process, and announces the launch.

Oct 2008: First draft implementation plan for IDN ccTLD Process

Feb 2008: First report from the IDNC WG leading to IDN ccTLD Fast Track Process

Jun 2003: IDNA protocol, IDN Guidelines, initiation of browser implementation

An area of the ICANN website is dedicated to IDN resources, and includes links to all the milestones and news announcements: http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/

Цель проведения Российского форума по управлению Интернетом – объединить все профессиональные точки зрения и организовать дискуссию для поиска консенсуса между государственными органами, профессиональным телекоммуникационным сообществом, бизнесом и гражданским обществом по вопросам дальнейшего развития Интернета в России. Форум станет отправной точкой для активизации участия российских представителей в работе международных организаций, занимающихся вопросами интернет-управления.

К совместной работе в рамках форума приглашены представители Правительства РФ, руководители крупнейших российских компаний, эксперты телекоммуникационного бизнеса, известные общественные деятели, представители зарубежных интернет-организаций

Официальный сайт: russia2010.intgov.net/

—-
The first Russian Internet Governance forum will take place on May 13 and 14, 2010 at the Moscow Expo Center. It is organized by the .ru ccTLD Coordination Center, with support from the Ministry of Telecom and Mass communications.

The goal of the Russian IGF is to combine all different points of view and organize a discussion in search of consensus between the government, businesses, and civil society in the issues, related to the future development of the Internet in Russia. The Russian IGF is the starting point for active participation of Russian representatives in the work of Russian and foreign organizations, dealing with the questions of Internet governance.

Among the invited guests are representatives of the government of the Russian federation, CEOs and Presidents of the largest Russian companies, telecommunications experts, recognized individuals, representatives of foreign Internet-related organizations.

More details can be found at the official site of the Russian IGF: russia2010.intgov.net/eng/

These are associated with: Egypt, the Russian Federation, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

See the full announcement here: http://icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-21jan10-en.htm

So what does that mean?

It means that these may now initiate the String Delegation process, which is the last step before the strings are actually in the DNS root zone and hence available for use.

The remaining 12 requests are still being processed and at ICANN we are very much looking forward to completing more requests as well as receiving additional new requests

Overall, the Fast Track Process has three main steps:

1) Preparation (by the requester in the country / territory). Community consensus is built for which IDN ccTLD to apply for, how it is run, and which organization will be running it, along with preparing and gathering all the required supporting documentation.

2) String Evaluation: incoming requests to ICANN in accordance with the criteria described above: the technical and linguistic requirements for the IDN ccTLD string(s). Applications are received through an online system available together with additional material supporting the process at http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/

3) String Delegation: requests successfully meeting string evaluation criteria are eligible to apply for delegation following the same ICANN IANA process as is used for ASCII based ccTLDs. String delegation requests are submitted to IANA root zone management.

Подписание этого соглашения стало возможным благодаря недавно принятому решению Корпорации по присвоению доменных имен и номеров в Интернете (ICANN) о введении многоязычных доменных имен на языках, отличных от английского.

До настоящего времени имена указывались только по-английски (например, .org , .com). С 16 ноября – даты начала первого этапа плана – ICANN стала принимать заявки от представителей всех стран и территорий на новые коды на арабском, русском, китайском и других языках. Пользователи нелатинской письменности получат, таким образом, возможность доступа к адресам на их родном языке.

Генеральный директор ЮНЕСКО Ирина Бокова приветствовала инициативу ICANN по введению системы многоязычных доменных имен, заявив, что «ЮНЕСКО была последовательным сторонником этой меры. Интернет должен быть лингвистический многообразным, предоставляя возможность всем языковым группам использовать его уникальные возможности. Благодаря подписанному соглашению ЮНЕСКО и ICANN смогут работать вместе ради того, чтобы еще больше людей подключалось к этой информационной сети».

На сегодняшний день для более чем половины всех пользователей Интернета в мире английский не является их родным языком. Использование многоязычных доменных имен позволяет Интернету стать поистине глобальным и общедоступным.

Договор между ЮНЕСКО и ICANN охватывает целый ряд областей сотрудничества, открывая новые возможности для максимально большого числа пользователей из различных языковых групп. ЮНЕСКО привлечет к этому процессу своих специалистов в области лингвистики, проинформирует государства-члены о новых многоязычных доменных именах, будет содействовать участию компетентных учреждений системы ООН, организует рабочие группы с целью оказания поддержки полноценному участию развивающихся и наименее экономически развитых стран.

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Источник: ООН

Андрей Колесников, директор КЦ .ру:
Прекращение действия Соглашения о совместной реализации проекта между Министерством торговли США и корпорацией ICANN – крайне важное событие для российского Интернета.
Уже давно было очевидно, что JPA носит символический характер, оставаясь приметой прошлого, когда США были и основным спонсором, и главным действующим лицом в развитии Интернета.
Динамичное развитие Глобальной сети, бурный рост количества ее пользователей по всему миру, число которых уже в разы превосходит сообщество пользователей в Северной Америке, привело к тому, что Соглашение стало тормозом для развития процессов интернационализации и демократизации управления Сетью, реализации инициатив по принципу «снизу вверх».
С отменой соглашения у мирового сообщества и России, в частности, появляется реальная возможность оказывать непосредственное влияние на определение стратегических направлений развития Сети при соблюдении интересов всех основных ее акторов.
Отныне новым вызовом в сфере управления Интернет становится необходимость поиска общемирового консенсуса по выработке новых правил и процедур управления Сетью. Для нас крайне важно не растерять накопленный опыт в этой сфере и обеспечить цельность и связанность Интернета – слишком ценен этот ресурс и слишком велики были инвестиции в его развитие, чтобы позволить себе роскошь радикальной ломки устоявшихся основ этой уникальной структуры.
Мне хотелось бы отметить, что отмена JPA в его историческом формате является результатом движения не только политических сил, но и в большой степени самой корпорации ICANN. В связи с этим мне хочется пожелать коллегам интернетчикам и дальше поддерживать высокие стандарты в области технологий, процессов и процедур и не стесняться демонстрировать уникальность интернет-явления под названием ICANN.

Я задал ему три вопроса:

1. Почему ты решил подать свою кандидатуру в gNSO Council?
Сначала я подал свою кандидатуру в ccNSO council и указал, что gNSO мне тоже интересно. В связи с территориальными квотами, были маленькие шансы пройти в ccNSO, поэтому я решил номинироваться в gNSO.

2. Есть ли в России интерес по запуску новых корневых доменов gTLD?
Безусловно есть. Россия в этом плане не сильно отличается от других государств. Во-первых у нас есть очень большие и известные бренды. Думаю .gazprom и .газпром и .роснефть будут весьма интересны для этих компаний. Во-вторых, есть серьезные веб порталы. Например .яндекс.

3. Какой будет твой вклад в работу GNSO?
Я вижу свою роль в работе по внедрению IDN gTLD и считаю, что можно использовать мои знания для разработки общих платформ и договоренностей между gTLD и ccTLD сообществ в части разработки принципов, которые являются универсальными для всех типов доменов. Например защита
торговых марок, описания принципов стоп-листов, проблемы возврата администраторов, срок действия доменов которых закончен. Также мне крайне интересна идея которая находится между cc и g миром: например домены для федеральных образований внутри страны (пример – Татарстан в России) и домены для крупных городов (.москва, .самара)