Government Oversight of the Domain Market: Toward Greater Business Transparency
At the panel discussion “The Value of a Name: Domains as Digital Assets,” held on October 8 as part of the 2nd Global Digital Forum, experts explained how to choose the right domain name.
The discussion was moderated by Andrey Vorobyev, director of the Coordination Center for the .RU and .РФ domains, who noted that 2026 is shaping up to be a turning point, as government regulation begins to replace self-regulation in the domain industry.
“On August 31, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed new rules for domain name registration. First, the rules gain greater legal standing, as they are now approved by a Russian government resolution. Second, users can be identified exclusively through the Unified System of Identification and Authentication. Another important change is the introduction of a dedicated domain name registrar for government and municipal authorities and enterprises. This is intended to protect their online resources: if someone gains access to a government agency’s website settings and makes unauthorized changes, the consequences could be serious,” the moderator explained.
Marina Brik, business development director at Technical Center of Internet, emphasized that tighter regulation of the domain market is a sign that the industry is maturing. She said that special attention needs to be paid to domains that become available again and to the mechanisms for accessing high-demand names. Brik cited cases in which a domain was registered by a new owner almost immediately after being removed from the registry.
“We believe three issues need to be addressed. First, at what stage should the domain re-registration process take place, and are the rights of the previous registrant protected? Second, which domain names are covered by this process, and what happens to domains that attract no demand? Third, how should responsibilities be divided among the coordinator, the domain zone administrator, the technical center (registry operator), the registrar and the trading platform? We need clear participation criteria, payment rules and dispute resolution procedures,” the expert said.
Khan Mohammad Nakib, CEO of DianaHost (Bangladesh), described the challenges that specialists in his country have faced:
“Until January 2019, Bangladesh had no laws allowing top-level domains to be registered. Each domain name could be resold as many as nine times. A special sales portal was even created: applicants had to upload all the required documents, and if the documents proved invalid, the registration process would be suspended for 24 hours. Those involved in domain reselling would then look for other channels.”
Alexandra Pashko, head of IT projects at VK, explained how to choose a domain name. She identified three key criteria: how easy it is for users to understand, how closely it is associated with a brand or product, and how predictable it is to manage. Finding suitable, available domains is becoming increasingly difficult, leaving entrepreneurs to choose between looking for alternatives and deciding whether to buy an already registered domain and how much to pay for it. Pashko also noted that the value a domain purchase delivers can matter more than its price. For a service that relies on both a website and email, changing the domain name can ultimately cost many times more than the original purchase. In that sense, the price of a domain can also be the price of a mistake.
Andrey Savelyev, CEO of DOMENY.RF LLC, addressed a broader problem: how businesses view ownership of their online addresses. In his view, many companies lack the awareness and understanding needed to treat a domain name as an important business asset.
“For small and midsize business owners, a domain is like a newspaper subscription. They do not think about the consequences of losing it, but those consequences can be significant: they could lose their business. Entrepreneurs often register domains in someone else’s name rather than their own. When an employee leaves the company, the business owner can lose the domain. Registering a domain in your own name is therefore fundamental to running a business. We need to hold seminars at business schools, universities and corporations to explain why domain ownership matters.”
Mikhail Anisimov, adviser to the director for external communications at the Coordination Center for the .RU and .РФ domains, discussed the next round of ICANN’s New gTLD Program, which enables the creation of new generic top-level domains. Nearly 1,930 applications were submitted in the first round in 2012. That round also gave rise to the concept of the “brand TLD,” with domain names increasingly viewed as part of a company’s marketing assets.
“The second round has received 1,600 applications from 480 applicants. Europe and North America account for the largest share, followed by the Asia-Pacific region, which was much less represented in the previous round. There are also 30 applications for names written in local languages. In the first round, there were around 150 such applications, and they were among the first to be approved,” Anisimov said.
Experts agreed that neither the number of applications nor the growth in the number of domain zones has affected the secondary market for .ru and .рф domains. Established domain names, like fine wine, will continue to be in demand.
