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Russia May Say 'See Ya' to Dot-Su
Oct. 19, 2002
The Soviet Union dissolved more than 10 years ago, and the dot-su Internet domain may finally follow.
A spokesman for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced recently at a Moscow conference on Internet development that the domain dot-su will be revoked sometime next year. As innocuous -- and logical -- as that may sound, however, there are many in the former Soviet Union who are fighting to save
dot-su.
In 1990, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) registered the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) dot-su, for the Soviet Union. Later, a Russian non-governmental organization, RosNIIROS, was delegated to manage it. The dot-su zone included second-level domains (like www.yourname.su) as well as third-level domains (like www.subname.yourname.su).
When new, independent states founded after the Soviet Union's fall created new ccTLDs, the registration of second-level domains was frozen, but third-level domains were permitted. So, the general number of domains in the dot-su zone continued to increase. As of May, there were more than 28,000 registered, according to the RIPE Network Coordination Centre.
A year ago, RosNIIROS and the Foundation for Internet Development (FID) unfroze the registration of second-level dot-su domains. In a bid to protect new domains from cybersquatters, the FID set a $15,000 price tag on registering a dot-su domain. Registration for the top-level Russian domain, dot-ru, costs less than $30.
More at: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,55687,00.html
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