PARIS, June 22 (Itar-Tass) — The number of Russian Internet domains may rocket if it is permitted to give Cyrillic names to domains, a member of the Russian delegation to the Paris meeting of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) on internationalized domain names told Itar-Tass on Sunday.

Russia is taking part in the GAC forum for the first time ever and has the status of an observer.

The GAC working group members stated high rates of computerization in Russia on Saturday. The number of Russian Internet users has exceeded 40 million and may outrun Germany within the next two years. If that happens, Russia will be the European leader of the Internet.

President Dmitry Medvedev said at the World Russian Press Congress earlier this month that it would be necessary to give Cyrillic names to Internet domains in the future. He said that was “the symbol of the significance of the Russian language and the Cyrillic alphabet.”

“I think we have rather good chances for this decision of the Internet community,” the president said.

The organizers of the Paris meeting agree with the need to internationalize the Internet. They think that the use of national languages in domain names will increase the number of Internet users and make the worldwide web truly international. Their opinion complies with the UNESCO goals. The UN agency proclaimed 2008 the World Year of Languages.

Results of the Paris meeting will be summed up at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Thursday.

According to the ICANN website, the GAC plays a key role within the ICANN, particularly with regard to public policy issues, as the Internet continues to expand and command greater influence within all our societies.

The GAC has grown and evolved considerably since its inception in 1999 and its relationship with ICANN and the wider Internet community reflects both the principles and the international multi-stakeholder model successfully applied also during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

GAC membership is open-ended and is drawn from all regions of the world. It includes representatives of governments, public authorities of distinct economies, as well as several intergovernmental organizations.

The Committee is committed to engaging more directly with all ICANN constituencies to ensure that public policy perspectives can be factored into their work at a constructive stage. Recently the GAC adopted a set of general principles guiding the introduction of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), a set of principles concerning gTLD WHOIS services, and an advice concerning the “ICANN draft procedure for handling potential conflicts between WHOIS requirements and privacy laws”.

The focus of the GAC is turned to Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), which will mark a rapid expansion of the Internet space into a more global resource but which also come with significant public policy considerations.

The Domain Name System (DNS) helps users easily send e-mail and find their way around the Internet. Similar to telephone numbers, every computer on the Internet has a unique address, called an Internet Protocol or IP number. Because these numbers are hard to remember, the DNS was created to allow easy to remember names, called domain names, to be used instead of numbers.

For many years, the operation and management of the DNS was performed on a mostly informal, ad hoc basis. Generally, these functions were performed by a global network of academic researchers, technical organizations, Internet engineers, volunteers, and contractors to the United States government. The emergence of the Internet in the 1990’s as an important global tool for commerce, communication, and education, however, necessitated the development of a more robust, formal, and representative system to manage these functions.

Based on global input, the United States Government began the process of privatizing and “internationalizing” the management of the DNS and related Internet co-coordinating functions. In 1998, the U.S. Government began to transfer responsibility for DNS management to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an organization formed by the global community of Internet stakeholders. ICANN is an independent, not-for-profit, private sector corporation based in California tasked with managing the technical co-ordination functions for the Internet. If any single organization can be said to have overall responsibility for Internet technical functions, it is ICANN.

ICANN has an international board of 19 directors that is supported by professional staff. It works by trying to develop a consensus approach to issues and DNS policy through discussion in its three supporting policy organizations. These “supporting organizations” represent a wide range of interest groups including businesses, consumers, and Internet service providers (ISPs), among others.

Since its formation, ICANN has undertaken several important initiatives and activities including:

_ introducing global competition in the registration of domain names by accrediting over 100 retail domain name registrars from around the world;

_ developing and adopting a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) to resolve disputes related to “cyber squatting” — the bad-faith registration of

domain names in violation of trademarks — based on recommendations made by World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO);

_ undertaking a process to select seven new Internet top-level domains (TLDs), .biz, .info, .pro, .name, .museum, .aero, and .coop — the first expansion of gTLDs since the development of the DNS; and

_ establishing working groups to undertake studies on matters such as the introduction of multilingual domain names, co-ordination of the domain name registration “WHOIS” database, and IP numbering issues, among others.

source: http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=12800585&PageNum=0