A new legal entity has been registered in the Ministry of Justice – the Center for the “KG” ccTLD administration under the State Intellectual Property Service of the Kyrgyz Republic. Thus one more crucial step has been made for realization of the Presidential Decree on redelegation of “KG” ccTLD administration functions to Kyrgyzpatent. Mr. Nurlan Bayaman, Director of the Center, narrated on activities of the newly established structure.

- In what stage is the process and what relationships exist now between the newly established Center and the current administrator “AsiaInfo” Company?

- Our relations with this Company are based on the Protocol on Intentions, signed in July 2009. I would like to stress the difference between registration and administration functions. “AsiaInfo” will keep its functions to register and sell domain names, i.e. there will be no changes for average users. Whereas Kyrgyzpatent, through its dependent structure, the «KG» ccTLD Administration Center, will act as administrator. These functions include the realization of state policy, regulation of relations between users and actors in domain names market, training of specialists in the field of technical maintenance, as well as establishing of regulative framework for domain names functioning. As you can see, the Center will not deal with direct registration of domain names; only registrars will do so, i.e. all leading IT companies, including “AsiaInfo”. As a result, a real competitive market of domain names registration will appear, the Internet use in the country will be extended, as well as reliable system will be in place for registration and maintenance of domain names in the “KG” zone.

- What are the guarantees of nonintervention into content of the web sites by the national domain zone administrator?

- Let me present a simple analogy. A domain name is only an address in the Internet. The address of your home is available in your passport as residence permit. It only certifies your permanent location, but does not influence neither technical condition of your house nor its architecture. Therefore statements on Kyrgyzpatent’s attempt to breach freedom of speech in the Internet are nothing more than a false representation.
The Center’s activities will be directed at regulation of distribution and use of domain names. For instance, the Center will shortly put in order domain names of public bodies to locate them in the “KG” zone. First of all it relates to web sites of embassies. This work will not be realized through administrative tools but only as recommendations and will simplify the access to information by public bodies for average users.

- Recently the mass media informed that Kyrgyzpatent had received a status of official representative of our country in the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC ICANN). Is it beneficial for Kyrgyzstan?

- For a long time the entire Internet policy for assigned domain names was controlled by the ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, under the US Ministry of Trade. Such situation was unacceptable for the global Internet community, which insisted that the Internet policy should be based on principles of international cooperation. Therefore the Governmental Advisory Committee under the ICANN, having earlier a status of advisory body now received an opportunity to give recommendations and proposals, influencing on rule- and policy-making in this field. Member states of the GAC ICANN are able to promote their national interests in policy making to develop the domain names system. By the way this Committee includes certain international organizations – the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Telecommunication Unit (ITU). Totally GAC includes 109 representatives.
The fact that Kyrgyzstan now has its own voice in the GAC ICANN gives us the opportunity to discuss issues, which are viable for the Internet users of Kyrgyzstan. For instance – use of non-Latin names in domain zone. Registration of Cyrillic domains provides a set of advantages for Russian-speaking users. In addition these domains permit to represent specific letters of Kyrgyz language (ө,ң,ү), without analogs in the Latin script.

In early March the GAC regular meeting will take place in Nairobi (Kenya), but for the first time in a new format. We hope that during this meeting the basic normative acts will be discussed and approved, which would be a guideline for GAC and ICANN. Moreover we expect to resolve a series of other questions, for example adoption of non-Latin designation of the domain zone «КГ». In case of approval of this name by ICANN it would be possible to open the web-site of Kyrgyzpatent by printing «патент.кг» and the web site of the “Slovo Kyrgyzstana” newspaper by pressing «ск.кг». But there are some difficulties here. For instance Russia has approved a designation of the «РФ» domain zone. The designation «РУ» was declined as it is similar to the domain name of Paraguay - “PY”. Firstly we intended to assign to the national domain zone the name «КР» (Kyrgyz Republic in Russian). But it is graphically identical to the Latin way of writing “KP” for the North Korea. It is necessary to note that some specialists assert that the Cyrillic domain «КГ» has also a twin: a small Cyrillic letter «г» is similar to the Latin “r” and the “kr” ccTLD belongs to the South Korea. That is why we have to put this question for discussion among the Kyrgyz Internet community posting the information on popular Internet forums. Such dialogs about the future of Kyrnet become traditional also on our web site www.cctld.kg.

Interviewed by: Ludmila Pavlovich

February 16, 2010