A number of press releases and registrar statements over the past week touted the ability to preregister Russia’s “forthcoming” .РФ IDN ccTLD extension.

The problem is that Russia hasn’t received ICANN approval to release the .РФ extension. Only recently has .РФ jumped the String Evaluation hurdle (link) but it has not passed the String Delegation threshold, which means that it is not ready to be released.

In fact, ICANN issued a strong statement to the contrary (here) noting that .РФ is not ready to be released or preregistered:

“[.РФ] must go through the final step in the Fast Track Process – String Delegation . . . [o]nly after String Delegation takes place will these TLDs be in the DNS root zone, and only then can resolutions requests against them be performed.” Moreover, ICANN emphasized that it “has not authorized pre-registration of domain names in any potential future TLDs” which includes .РФ.

(Zangief image courtesy of Street Fighter)

Today, Russian Internet Week opened in the Exhibition Center of Moscow. Starring is the first Cyrillic extension .РФ, which stands for .RF or Russian Federation.

Russia is a country of intense nationalism, where .ru is the current TLD leader in domain registrations rather than .com.  Russian language nationalism is so rampant that in August 2008, the Russian search engine leader, Yandex, switched its logo to Cyrillic.

Moreover, Russian Federation President, Dmitry Medvedev, imagines Russian as becoming a national language and sees .РФ as an important step towards that lofty goal.  Medvedev is a self-proclaimed techie and is focusing much of his attention on the .РФ launch.  Medvedev pridefully said of the .РФ extension:  ” It is a symbol of the importance of the Russian language …”

Between nationalism, overwhelming government support, and the fact that the leading Russian extension (.ru) doesn’t support IDNs, .РФ has a good chance of being the .com equivalent in Russia.

There are negatives to .РФ as well.  It has already been reported on IDNDemystified and elsewhere that .РФ will be heavily regulated.  Many city domain names as well as other terms will be reserved for governmental use from the get-go.   The initial registration prices were in the ballpark of $300,000 per domain, decidedly not domainer friendly.  And the perpetual challenger is IDN.com and if aliasing goes according to plan, perhaps IDN.ком as well.

****Update: In response to questions, April 2010 is the current target for the .РФ sunrise period to commence.

Copernicus believed the opposite of the masses.  When it was supposedly common knowledge that the Earth was the center of the universe, Copernicus had the guts to say that it was the Sun, and he had the research to back it.

If you missed out on the domain gold rush of the 1990s, don’t resign yourself to the common wisdom of the day that you should collect “niche” four and five word names.  There is still great opportunity.

Many countries have not yet realized the unlimited value of premium domains.  As a result, foreign language domains are often searched for, are brandable and are cheap.  Domain names that use foreign characters are called IDNs and they are the new gold rush.

Here are some ignorant reasons that lead people to avoid IDNs:

-The major players aren’t doing it: Though big name celebrity domainers aren’t registering IDNs, you can’t follow the herd and should think for yourself.  Think of any great minds and whether they listened to the prevailing logic of their time.  For the full Copernicus story, check the link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernicus).

-People supposedly won’t want to type a domain name in one language and the extension in another.  Guess what?  They do.

The traffic stats are there (sometimes upwards of 10,000 hits a month for a handreg).  In many cases, a .com ending is actually seen as fashionable and western.  In addition, Verisign will likely alias (or forward) .com IDN names to forthcoming IDN extensions so that owners of IDN.com will get a free corresponding IDN.IDN.

-A bunch of new .IDN extensions are coming out soon (such as .РФ) and it is too hard to predict which extension will be the leading .com equivalent.  It is true that the IDN industry will be fragmented by multiple extensions but you should hedge your bets with various extensions rather than avoid premium IDNs altogether.

-It will take some countries years to fully recognize the value of domain names.  So what?  Have patience and you will be rewarded.