[Infowarrior] - Russians Are Wary of Push for Cyrillic Web Domains

[Richard Forno]

December 22, 2009
Russians Are Wary of Push for Cyrillic Web Domains
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/world/europe/22cyrillic.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
MOSCOW — The Kremlin has long been irritated by the way the United  
States dominates the Internet, all the way down to the ban on using  
Cyrillic for Web addresses — even kremlin.ru has to be demeaningly  
rendered in English. The Russian government, as a result, is taking  
the lead in a landmark shift occurring around the world to allow  
domain names in languages with non-Latin alphabets.

Russians themselves, though, do not seem at all eager to follow.

Cut off for decades under Communism, Russians revel in the Internet’s  
ability to connect them to the world, and they prize the freedom of  
the Web even as the government has tightened control over major  
television channels.

But now, computer users are worried that Cyrillic domains will give  
rise to a hermetic Russian Web, a sort of cyberghetto, and that the  
push for Cyrillic amounts to a plot by the security services to  
restrict access to the Internet. Russian companies are also resisting  
Cyrillic Web addresses, complaining about costs and threats to online  
security.

“This is one more step toward isolation,” said Aleksei Larin, 31, a  
construction engineer in Tula, 115 miles south of Moscow. “And since  
this is a Kremlin project, it is possible that it will lead to the  
introduction of censorship, which is something that certain officials  
have long sought.”

Besides startling Russian officials, the reaction has offered insights  
into the evolution of the Internet as it has spread from the West to  
the rest of the world. People in places like Russia have created a  
hybrid Web, typing domain and e-mail addresses in Latin letters and  
the content in native ones. However loyal they may be to the language  
of Dostoyevsky, many here do not want to embrace another system.

The most widely trafficked search engine in Russia, Yandex, estimated  
that fewer than 10 percent of the country’s Internet users would  
favor Cyrillic addresses in the near future. Livejournal, the busiest  
blogging platform in Russia, said it would not employ Cyrillic domains.

“I really do not see Cyrillic domains being popular,” said Dmitri  
N. Peskov, a prominent computer consultant who organizes Internet  
conferences in Russia. “People just do not see the point in having  
them.”

More than 30 million Russians use the Internet weekly, out of a  
population of 140 million, and the country’s growth in use is among  
the fastest in Europe, officials said. There are 2.5 million domains  
with the .ru suffix, with the address written in Latin letters.

The Cyrillic domains are likely to be activated next year. Russia is  
ahead in setting up its system, and its experience could be an  
indication of what is in store for other countries with non-Latin  
alphabets, like China, Japan and Egypt. Internet cultures, though,  
develop unpredictably, so the reaction elsewhere could be more positive.

The decision to allow non-Latin domains was approved in October by the  
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, the  
supervisory body based in the United States. More than half of the  
world’s 1.6 billion Internet users speak a native language that does  
not have a Latin alphabet, Icann said.

Supporters of the change, including Russia’s president, Dmitri A.  
Medvedev, who prides himself on his Internet knowledge, said the new  
domains would open the Internet to a whole class of people who are  
unfamiliar with Latin characters or are intimidated by them.

Andrei Kolesnikov, director of the agency that coordinates Cyrillic  
domains, said he was at first skeptical that they were needed. But he  
said he had turned into a strong proponent, pointing out that Internet  
penetration in Russia was confined largely to big cities, and Cyrillic  
domains would help it grow in the provinces.

“For many people, the Cyrillic domains work much better than Latin  
names,” Mr. Kolesnikov said. “The professionals, they don’t get  
it, they don’t understand the whole power of this, but they will get  
it.”

Mr. Kolesnikov said fears of censorship of Cyrillic domains were  
unfounded and based on a misunderstanding. He said Internet filtering  
and fire walls, like those enforced by the Chinese government, had  
nothing to do with domains.

If the Russian government wanted to, it could censor .ru domains, he  
said. But it has not, he said, and will not do so with the new ones.  
“This has no relationship to filtering or huge K.G.B. walls,” Mr.  
Kolesnikov said.

The .ru suffix will remain when Russia rolls out its Cyrillic  
suffix, .рф, which stands for Russian Federation.

But holders of .ru Web sites will have to decide whether to establish  
companion sites with Cyrillic addresses and the Cyrillic suffix. Many  
may not be enthusiastic.

In late November, Mr. Kolesnikov’s agency opened up registration to  
companies with Russian trademarks that wanted to use them as Cyrillic  
Web addresses. Of about 50,000 trademarks that were available, only  
about 4,000 had been registered as addresses so far.

“The new system will be very inconvenient,” said Aleksandr Malis,  
president of Evroset, one of the largest cellphone and electronics  
retailers in Russia, which has not applied for a Cyrillic domain. “It  
will not give us any more clients because I do not see a way to get  
people to use these new Web sites.”

Some companies said they would acquire Cyrillic domains mostly to  
protect themselves from so-called cybersquatters who might otherwise  
take over the domains and harm their businesses. Others worried about  
viruses or scams.

“This is a major headache for Russian companies,” said Aleksandr  
Gostev, an executive in Moscow at Kaspersky Lab, an Internet security  
company. “It is a wide new field for fraudsters.”

The authorities countered that they did not believe that the domains  
would touch off more crime.

Still, the early process of registering Cyrillic domains has been  
rocky. It was temporarily halted after a dispute over domains with  
generic names, like the Russian words for sports and sex. A company  
had registered several of those words as trademarks in anticipation of  
the new system, and officials ruled that the company was entitled to  
them because it had followed the rules.

Individuals and businesses without trademarks will be able to register  
Cyrillic addresses next year. The question now is how many will want to.

“Cyrillic domains are a major mistake because Latin symbols are the  
only symbols available on keyboards all over the world,” said Ilya V.  
Ponomarev, an opposition member in Russia’s Parliament who is a  
leading voice on technology. “And there is a real concern that non- 
Latin domains are going to help governments that are not fully  
democratic, including the one in Russia, to better control their  
information space.”