The last week a series of mass media of the Republic has distributed the information of Mr. Ulan Melisbek, Director of the State Patent Service of the Kyrgyz Republic, regarding the necessity to transfer in nearest future the right to administer the national KG ccTLD under the State control. “Vecherniy Bishkek” newspaper (“Vecherka”) decided to ask Director of Kyrgyzpatent about the planned changes in this specific field of Internet.

- Mr. Melisbek, please explain briefly to not well-informed people, what does “national domain zone” mean? What are you targeting by your last initiative?

- I suggest starting from a more comprehensible for Internet users conception of domain name or in other words, alphanumeric indication of IP-address of any web site. For example, the web site of “Vecherka” is located under the address 65.23.159.28 and all requests to this address are sent to more understandable indication - www.vb.kg. The “vb” here is a second level domain name and “kg” is a top-level domain. All second level domain names are included into the KG top level and by such a manner they form the national zone of Kyrgyzstan.

Country code top top level domains are given to sovereign states. For example, RU is the national zone of the Russian Federation, US – of the United States, KZ – of Kazakhstan, UZ – of Uzbekistan and so on. Registration of the ccTLDs is connected with specific requirements and one of the most important conditions is recognition of a state in the global arena.

No wonder, due to importance of the state approach to issues of ccTLDs development, almost all countries administer their own national domain zones via different organizations in one way or another affiliated with the state bodies.

- Can you give any examples?

- Initially, the American organization IANA was dealing with the issues of establishment, support and administration of top-level domains on the base of contract with the US Ministry of Defense. Then these functions were transferred to another organization - ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and functions of supervising state body were given to the US Ministry of Trade. Currently, the ICANN provides support and administration of all address space in the Internet.

The Russian national zone is supervised by the Coordination Center of National Internet domain, which creation was supervised by the Russian Ministry of Communication. The State Association of Documentary Electric Communication were also among the founders of the Coordination Center. The Center has been established in 2001 aiming to develop the rules for domain names registration in the «RU» ccTLD, accredit registrars and search for perspective projects connected with Russian national domain development.

There are organizations with similar objects also in the European Union, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other countries, which are in any event connected with state agencies. Keeping in mind the experience of these countries and international practice we are initiating now an establishment of a special center under Kyrgyzpatent that will develop the uniform state approach in issues of the national KG zone management. It is also necessary to build the legislative base to ensure competitive environment and to distribute the right for registration to all Internet providers and other participants of IT sector of Kyrgyzstan.

- Do you mean that it is more difficult for a private company to protection the Internet from influence of different stakeholders?

- From the point of view of international law as well as numerous national legislations a domain name is considered a mean of individualization and intellectual property subject matter. However in our country some local companies use in their sites domain names of famous trademarks to gain commercial profit. Genuine owners of these intellectual property subject matters abroad hardly suppose that their rights are violated in Kyrgyzstan.

The main problem is a simple lack of any rules to determine the competence or priority rights of applicants for domain names, identical with trademarks. A private company does not possess all necessary technical and juridical possibilities to prevent cyber squatting (i.e. raiding the web sites with names containing trademarks of other companies). But if a state body will be authorized to administer the national zone, from public, non-governmental and international organization the strict control will be provided. Moreover, a public administrator of domain zone will ensure a balanced policy among registrars, meeting all required criteria. Otherwise a commercial interest would prevail.

- What are the internationally recognized requirements in this field?

- The most important duty of authority responsible for ccTLD – is to encourage domain names use, its expansion not narrowing, creation of competitive not monopolistic position on the market. Under such conditions they will determine prices level for respective services.

The other duty of a ccTLD delegee is to assist to more active use of Internet in a geographical region with a code given by the ISO-3166-1 list. They should take the main role in Internet providing, as well as access to it and usage inside the country. They will eventually make a wide dialogue with different community sectors, including the Government, educational institutions, public health, cultural and nonprofit organizations, business circles and other fields, that could be involved in the Internet and form the Internet community. At the same time they should periodically depending on their financial situation determine the activities of the community’s interests and commonly stimulate a wide usage of the Internet through educational programs aiming to broadening public access to the Internet, technical assistance, innovations attraction. Moreover, in the framework of effective Agreement with ICANN they should develop a plan, correlating with proper financial possibilities to meet their obligations in favor of a local Internet community, based on wide consultations, both public and confidential. In general they should make every effort to ensure the best available services.

- Why do you consider just Kyrgyzpatent as the coordinating authority?

- The State Patent Service of the Kyrgyz Republic has of all required capacities including operative control of filed applications by databases of intellectual property subject matters.

I have to confess that initially I did not intend to trigger the question on transfer of administration right for national zone to the state body. Just after my appointment as Kyrgyzpatent Director, I invited Mr. Alexander Samoilenko, Director of “AsiaInfo” Company, which is the current national zone administrator, to discuss this issue honestly. I hoped for understanding in the issue of prices reduction for domain names registration. Let me assure that I was thinking about interests of the Internet community of our country. What kind of user would have an objection against such a reduction?

Unfortunately, after our conversation “AsiaInfo” has reduced the prices from 100 USD to 60 USD, although, for instance, in the US a domain costs about 7 USD, in Russia – 600 rubles or 16,5 USD, in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan – 20 USD. For such a small country as Kyrgyzstan, 60 USD is too much. We have to reduce prices up to minimal level, covering real technical costs of administrator to achieve a growth of sites numbers in the national zone.

Nowadays according to different sources, we have 1400 to 1700 web sites. For a sovereign state with 5 million people this is definitely not a satisfactory number.

At the same time it is necessary to note that unfortunately even many qualified Net community misunderstand the notion of administrator of the national domain zone and registrar of domain names. These are two completely different things. From technical side only one organization may administer the national domain zone, no disputes. The essence of Kyrgyzpatent’s proposal is to delegate the right to register domains to as many registrars as possible, including Internet providers along with “AsiaInfo”, as well as other organizations, having technical capacities to do so. It will contribute to a “healthy competition” and finally will lead to prices reduction for obtaining and support of domains.

- In this connection the CIS countries’ experience is very important, as they are facing the same problems.

- For instance, the Computerization and Information Technologies Developing Center (UZINFOCOM), established in 2002 and affiliated with the Uzbek State Information Agency is dealing with “UZ” ccTLD. In the “UZ” zone, 7 main Internet providers of Uzbekistan act as registrars of domain names. The Kazakh Center of Net Information, established under the Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Information and Communications is the administrator of the Kazakh national zone; 11 Internet providers are registrars not only in Kazakhstan, but also in other countries. We can not mention Russia and European and American counties, where hundreds and thousands of registrars.

- Maybe there are some counter-evidences against your arguments.

- We are open for constructive dialogue keeping in mind the interests of the whole Internet community of the Republic. The state must help to create the national zone conception, infrastructure development of domain zone. I would also to stress that Kyrgyzpatent will have regulating not prohibitory functions. An average user tends to connect the state administration with a possible blocking of specific resources. It is not true. Kyrgyzpatent will regulate only technical issues of the national domain zone administration, not the content of web sites.

Evgeniy Denisenko
Photograph by Vladimir Pirogov
http://members.vb.kg/2009/03/06/www/1_print.html