Nov 22, 2010 11:51 GMT  ·  By

Russian authorities are planning to investigate six domain registrars suspected of violating competition laws by striking a deal to hold actions for certain .рф domains during the first days of open registration.

The .рф Cyrillic country code top-level domain (ccTLD), which in the Latin alphabet translates to .rf (Russian Federation) became operational in back in May.

However, public registrations were held back until November 11, 2010, in order to allow for government bodies, media agencies and registered trademark owners to secure domain names in advance.

The Coordination Center for TLD RU (CCTLD.RU), which oversees both the .ru and .рф TLDs, was hoping to have 100,000 .рф domains registered by the end of 2010.

However, their expectation were wildly exceeded, that number being reached after the first three hours. The figure grew to 200,000 within six hours and reached 500,000 by the end of the first week.

In comparison, Russia's .ru domain extension, introduced in 1994, currently counts around 3,000,000 domain names, many of which – if we are to consider the latest reports from security vendors – are being abused for spam and other cybercriminal activities.

The PRIME-TASS business news agency reports that Russia's antitrust body, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), has initiated legal proceedings against six domain registrars it suspects of breaking competition law in relation with .рф domain sales.

The service received multiple complaints from the general public and organizations, according to which the registrars used their favored position to buy a significant number of possibly popular Cyrillic domain names and auctioned them off during the first days of open registrations.

FAS suspects the registrars might have reached an agreement amongst themselves in advance and plans to thoroughly investigate the issue in December.

The Coordination Center for TLD RU will also look into the matter. The center's Director Andrei Kolesnikov gave assurances that measures will be taken if the accusations hold truth.

A spokesperson for the Regional Network Information Center (RU-CENTER), the largest domain registrar in the country and one of the six to be investigated, said that the measure was meant to deter cybersquatting.