Russia's Attempts to Legitimize its Internet

This week, I chose to look at the article "To fight scammers, Russia cracks down on .ru domain". I think this topic is very relevant to our class discussion with Gretchen Klebasko of Legg Mason (yes, I dropped her name again!) about the future of second-level domain sales. Additionally, I just finished a project for International Management which focused on intellectual property theft from countries such as Russia.

In the past, Russia has always been regarded as a hotbed for piracy. In my research for my project, i was astounded to find out that the Office of the United States Trade Representative specifically singled-out Russian websites as a major international concern for intellectual property theft in 2009. In fact, Russia is one of very few countries listed on the USTR's Priority Watch list (those countries which are unsafe for trade). Furthermore, one of the key parts to my research had to do with Russian websites serving as an incredibly massive black market for illegal trade copyrighted works. Apparently, these websites were so fraudulent, that many were in the business of openly selling pirated works and sending them around the world. Interestingly, this type of internet mail-order piracy is unique to Russia. Even in China, pirated works are largely exchanged in person or in a brick-and-mortar or street vendor format.

After reading this article, it definitely seems that Russia is finally taking a significant stance against piracy, probably because the U.S. did include Russia on its priority watch list only recently. According to the article, " anyone who registers a .ru domain will need to provide a copy of their passport or, for businesses, legal registration papers. Right now, domains can be set up with no verification -- a practice that has allowed scammers to quickly set up .ru domains under bogus names". In fact, it is estimated that only 23 percent of current domain database records in Russia are accurate.

Personally, I don't see how the Russian government can possibly plan to tackle this issue effectively. The level of corruption in Russia's internet domains is astounding, and I'm certain that the already well-established criminal operations will undoubtedly resist these initiatives; probably with a great deal of success. Perhaps there is significant pressure from the U.S. and other free trade nations to crack down on piracy, or perhaps the Russian government would like to actually transform Russia into a safe country with which to trade. Only time will tell, but for now I think I'll steer clear of .ru websites.