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Fears Russian Public Will Not Support Cyrillic TLD

Tuesday, 22 December 2009
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The Russian government is supporting the introduction of a Cyrillic internationalised Top Level Domain, but the Russian public does not seem so keen to follow, reports The New York Times.

The Times says "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."

One person quoted on the introduction of IDNs says "This is one more step toward isolation" with concerns about the ability of the Russian government to introduce more censorship.

And a representative from Yandex, Russia's leading search engine, says he does not see Cyrillic domains being popular. He believes that few than ten per cent of registrants would favour Cyrillic domains.

To read this New York Times report in full, see:
www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/world/europe/22cyrillic.html

David Goldstein