The .UKR domain: The Ukrainian Internet doesn't need it, ICANN doesn't want it.
The process of delegating the Cyrillic domain .УКР to Ukraine has been suspended. ICANN, which delegated the Cyrillic domain .РФ late last week, has postponed its consideration of this issue for Ukraine.
Let us recall that at the end of last year, namely on November 16, 2009, the Ukrainian Network Information Center (UNIC) submitted an application to ICANN for the registration and delegation of the .УКР domain.
In comments to Delo, USIC Director Yuriy Goncharuk stated that the suspension of the domain delegation procedure is due to the fact that the country has changed government and the State Committee for Information Technologies and Communications is temporarily left without leadership.
ICANN has questions for the management of the State Committee for Information Technologies and Communications, to which the organization has not yet received a response.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian internet community is concerned about the transparency of the future Cyrillic domain. Specifically, there is currently talk that only one company, the Center for Internet Names of Ukraine, is applying for the technical administrator status for the .УКР domain. To ensure transparency and development of the domain name market, the administrator company should be selected through a competitive process.
The Cabinet of Ministers could expedite the process of delegating a Cyrillic domain for Ukraine by intervening in the current situation. In this case, Ukraine would receive a domain in the national language within a few months. However, it is unlikely that the government will take such action. Furthermore, the introduction of a Cyrillic domain could lead to a number of other problems, among which the issue of cybersquatting appears to be one of the least significant. The Russian-language internet has already encountered problems displaying websites whose names are written in Cyrillic, and it is possible that Ukrainian internet users will also face similar problems.
The Internet Names Center is already offering domain name registration in the .БЛОГ and .УКР zones; more than 10,000 such domains have already been registered.
Since November 23, 2009, the Internet Names Center has temporarily suspended accepting applications for domain registration in the .УКР zone, later launching priority registration only for trademark holders. However, this did not prevent domains such as "sex.ukr," "areda.ukr," "hosting.ukr," "football.ukr," "vstrecha.ukr," "bank.ukr," "kyivstar.ukr," "mts.ukr," and "beeline.ukr" from being occupied.
Meanwhile, experts believe that Ukrainian companies are not yet interested in registering domains in the .УКР zone. This is due to a number of reasons, including the fact that the Ukrainian .UA domain zone is not yet available for free registration. Users will still have a long time to get used to the existence of such a domain zone, so companies are not yet particularly interested in obtaining a mirror site in the Cyrillic domain name space.
The priority registration period in the .РФ domain zone, even with well-written registration rules for trademark owners only, showeda whole range of problems. It is obvious that similar problems await the Ukrainian domain .УКР. The Ukrainian Internet community is stillundecidedregarding the need to introduce a Cyrillic domain, which shows that the start of delegation of .УКР is in advance.
