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Fighting illegal content requires joint action of domain industry players
#BRICS #coronavirus #cybersecurity
Fighting illegal content requires joint action of domain industry players

On September 16, Andrey Vorobyev, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, took part in a meeting of the BRICS Working Group on ICT Cooperation. The participants discussed the present-day challenges and threats to global, regional and national security.

Andrey Vorobyev spoke at the seminar on “Fighting illegal content and inaccurate information/fake news on the internet” moderated by a representative of the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media, Arseny Nedyak. Representatives of businesses, academia and NGOs from the BRICS countries exchanged best practices and national legislative initiatives in tackling illegal content and discussed ways to coordinate state and non-state agencies responsible for the national information infrastructure’s operations, organizers of information broadcasts, internet service providers and hosting providers based on cooperation within the BRICS.

Andrey Vorobyev explained in detail how the national domain registry works and what issues are within its competence. “The area of responsibility of the registry, as a rule, includes the management of the technical infrastructure of the domain name system, the domain registration process, and maintenance of the domain name base so that domain names can be used to address resources on the internet. That said, it is important to understand that registries and other industry players only deal with internet addresses. They do not post any content online or organize traffic to reach that content. Accordingly, ccTLD registries cannot remove any illegal content from the web. Nevertheless, registries and registrars can and should comply with decisions taken by courts or other organizations with appropriate powers in accordance with the legislation of a particular state,” he said. He stressed that registries do not have the necessary competencies to determine which content is illegal. Such decisions are made by authorized bodies. However, registries can contribute to the fight against illegal activity, including taking proactive steps on a voluntary basis, especially in relation to illegal acts that are specific to the domain industry and are not regulated by law.

Many of the domain market players monitor newly registered domains to spot those that can potentially be used to address illegal content and other illegal activities. However, a decision whether the content of a particular resource is illegal can only be made through interaction and cooperation between industry players and other interested parties, and registries are building just such a system today.

To cite an example, Vorobyev mentioned the monitoring of coronavirus-related domains – something the Coordination Center has been doing since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We monitor new registrations of names containing words such as virus, corona, covid, etc. The Coordination Center has submitted lists of such domain names to the Kaspersky Lab for analysis. The cybersecurity provider actually confirmed some cases of unwanted activities on the resources addressed by these domain names,” Andrey Vorobyev said.

He also presented to the meeting participants the Domain Patrol project – a new website promoting cooperation between competent organizations and accredited domain registrars, an initiative that the Coordination Center has been developing and supporting for eight years. “The idea is to create the right conditions for cooperation between the TLD registry, registrars and expert organizations to effectively combat such threats as phishing, malicious code distribution, and management of botnets,” Andrey Vorobyev explained. He cited statistics on domain names registrars blocked in .RU and .РФ in 2019 and 2020 at the request of such expert organizations, pointing to a twofold increase in the number of cases during the pandemic.

BRICS is a group of five countries including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa established during the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in 2006. The purpose of the association is to create conditions for effective cooperation and promotion of the members states’ economic and technological potentials. Russia chairs BRICS in 2020.