Auction Confrontation: The Anatomy of Conflict in the Russian Domain Market
The registration of Cyrillic domain names on the Russian internet has begun actively, sparking serious debate not only among specialists working in this field but also among the entire internet community. Registrars have received warnings from official and regulatory bodies about their dishonest practices, yet they continue to claim to be in the right. The standoff between registrars and official bodies continues to this day.
Late last week, Andrey Kolesnikov, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD RU, decided to freeze some of the .РФ domains listed for auction at Ru-Center. The center's objection was the very fact that the auction was being held.
The blocking will continue until the violations are corrected or another decision is made by the CC.
Interestingly, the controversial auctions didn't result in huge domain name prices. According to Ru-Center, the average domain price was $104. The most expensive domain was "lotto.RF," which sold for $1,000. Other domains with high prices (over $100,000) were unpaid. These included "office.RF," "gold.RF," "igry.RF," "maxim.RF," "poligrafiya.RF," and "mashina.RF."
Experts note that some auctions devolved into robot battles, with software "bots" automatically raising domain bids in response to competitors' actions. However, the very fact of holding auctions sparked a storm of protest from those who had applied for domain registration in advance.
These protests led to claims against Ru-Center from the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (FAS).
Outrage erupted among those who attempted to register domain names by submitting applications in advance. These protests were not ignored by the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia, which opened a case against six registrars, including the largest, RU-Center, accusing them of concerted actions. According to various sources, between 24,000 and 34,000 domain names were included in these domain auctions.
The question of the legitimacy of such auctions remains open, although the domain rules do not prohibit the registration of domains with registrars.
Today, November 29, the CC Council will meet to discuss the procedure for revoking registrars' accreditation. There are currently no clear rules for this procedure.
At the same time, analysts emphasize that "the current situation is in some contradiction with previously adopted decisions regarding the Cyrillic domain .РФ."
