Medvedev.рф and Putin.рф are Reserved

The names Медведев.рф (Medvedev.rf) and Путин.рф (Putin.rf) are among the many reserved IDN ccTLDs in the forthcoming .рф extension. Why does this not surprise me? Could you imagine a political dissenter owning Putin’s domain?

A recent Russian report noted that approximately 7,000 domain names have been reserved so far. From that amount, roughly 7% is reserved for government applications. This is a sizable percentage, though it is consistent with what others in the ccTLD market have been doing. See the .me reserved list here for instance.

However with Russia, domain investors and Internet entrepreneurs are especially wary that the Russian ccTLD will be highly regulated, similar to the regulation of Russian print media. Maybe, the best thing Russia could do is allow (Putin).рф to be released to the public. Putin would then have to deal with some blogger’s criticism but he would show that in Russia, the Internet will be free.