Canceling the domain name delegation for domains with illegal content located outside country domain zones was on the agenda.

On September 6, the Russian Civic Chamber hosted another meeting of the IT Security Working Group of the Public Council under the Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights. Experts of the Smart Internet Foundation (TLD .ДЕТИ) were invited to attend.

Canceling the domain name delegation for domains with children’s pornography, drug propaganda or distribution, and cyberbullying located outside country domain zones was featured on the agenda.

Experts noted that the Russian national domain zones (.RU, .РФ and .ДЕТИ) are self-regulating and require registrars to take effective measures to prevent access to negative content by cancelling the domain delegation, but this does not apply to domain names registered in other domain zones. This means that a registrar takes different measures depending on the location of a domain used to publish negative content for children.

Due to the fact that such procedures have the status of self-regulation, the global spreading of the internet and the situation in which the TLD coordinator is outside the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation (in addition to the fact that its accredited registrars are Russian legal entities) making it impossible to influence, the most effective way to stop illegal content that can pose direct danger to children would be to adopt national legislation that would envisage the Russian domain registrar’s responsibility and a procedure to stop the use of domain names for the abovementioned purposes regardless of which TLD it belongs to.

In particular, the participants of the meeting discussed the draft law to amend the federal law On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection (№ 149-FZ) that would eliminate this discrepancy. The bill would introduce a corresponding procedure that was earlier envisaged by Article 15.1 of the same federal law, but without adding responsibilities to the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) since the procedure concerns domain registrars. In addition, the draft law introduces a number of domain-industry terms to make these amendments effective.

During the discussion, the participants agreed that the proposed amendments to the Russian legislation are necessary and effective. They noted the importance of the additional terms that help normalize the application of the law in the domain industry.

A decision was made to prepare an explanatory note to the draft law; to submit the note and the draft law to industrial associations and the largest domain-industry players as well as Roskomnadzor for review; and to discuss the reviews at the next meeting.

The participants also discussed children’s security in the conditions of robotization, the development of basic requirements for family informational and educational materials regarding smart house security, and  young people’s participation in educational activities on information security.

The next meeting of the working group is scheduled for late September 2018.