Ru-Center trial: auctions against the FAS
On November 1 of this year, a trial will be held in the case of Russia's largest domain registrar, Regional Network Information Center (Ru-Center).
The company filed a lawsuit to overturn the decision of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation, which found Ru-Center guilty of violating the law when registering domains in the .РФ zone. According to the disputed decision, Ru-Center is also obligated to pay 239.36 million rubles in revenue to the budget.
A preliminary hearing was held last week. The Federal Antimonopoly Service presented additional materials to the court. In JulyThe Federal Antimonopoly Service found registrar Ru-Center guilty.in violation of laws when registering domains in the Cyrillic domain zone .РФ.
Let us remember that a year ago, on November 11th, theFree domain registration in .РФTo apply for a domain, anyone had to sign a contract with one of 20 registrars and submit a request.
To organize this process, the Coordination Center for the National Internet Domain has set a limit on the number of applications processed – no more than 4.8 thousand applications per hour.
Some registrars submitted their applications through other companies, thus attempting to circumvent the established limit. Some of the names registered in this way were sold at auction, which Ru-CentersoldMore than 14,000 domains. On average, one domain cost about 15,000 rubles.
The Federal Antimonopoly Service found Ru-Center guilty of unfair competition and collusion with other companies: ANO Regional Network Information Center, Relcom. Business Network LLC, Demos-Internet CJSC, Registrar CJSC, and Elvis-Telecom CJSC.
In the first 12 hours of registration, 115,000 domain names were registered to these six companies involved in the conspiracy, 70,000 of which were registered on Ru-Center.
Ru-Center also registered domains with "nice" and commonly used names. Ru-Center explained that they registered domains for which more than one bid had been submitted. These domains were subsequently put up for auction. Ru-Center believes that auctions are the only way to give everyone the opportunity to obtain their chosen domain name.
The Federal Antimonopoly Service calculated that the amount of income received by Ru-Center from holding auctions was 239.36 million rubles.
Problems with registering .РФ domains have led to the fact thatnew domain rulesIt is prohibited to hold domain auctions and register names in one's own name
