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Published in News

Russians fear Cyrilic domains will give way to censorship

by on23 December 2009

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Government yays, people nay


We've
already written about the initiative to allow for Cyrilic web addresses and while this is set to materialize in 2010, some apparently aren't quite hot for it.

Users' opinions on whether such a move is necessary are at large. Aleksei Larin, a Russian construction engineer said how such a move is "one more step towards isolation, and since this is a Kremlin project, it is possible that it will lead to the introduction of censorship, which is something that certain officials have long sought.” He is not the only one who thinks so, and is joined in his views by some of the most prominent technology experts including some who are politically active.

In fact, the most popular Russian search engine, Yandex, estimates that less than 10 percent of Internet users would favor Cyrilic domains, whereas Livejournal blogging platform said it will simply not resort to using it.

The government refutes the censorship claims saying they were unfounded and says that these new domains will open Internet doors to a whole class of people who are unfamiliar with or intimidated by Latin characters. It has been suggested that Internet in Russia is mostly tied to the big cities and that Cyrillic domains would help it grow in the surrounding areas.

The response is still slow it seems, as only about 4,000 out of 50,000 companies registered for the upcoming Cyrilic domains.

More here.

Last modified on 24 December 2009
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