Groups are creating their own sanctions.
Companies and entities in the domain name ecosystem have taken action in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Here’s a round-up of what’s happening:
Namecheap took the most decisive (and perhaps controversial) action. The company, which has about 1,000 employees in Ukraine, told its Russian customers to take a hike. It gave them a couple of weeks to move their services elsewhere. But it made an exception today, saying that it would provide free anonymous domain registration and web hosting for any anti-war or protest website targeted at the governments of Russia and Belarus.
CENTR, an organization of ccTLD managers, suspended its Russian colleagues from the organization.
Tucows CEO Elliot Noss sent a letter to its bankers and lawyers asking them to take a look at any work they do with people connected to the Russian regime.
Separately, Ukraine asked ICANN to effectively cut off the internet to Russia. That’s not going to happen, but we will likely see a splintering of the internet so that authoritarian regimes can further control what their people see and say.
DNPric.es says
1. You have to understand that Europe did not see such unprecedented war crimes since WW2.
2. These measures are likely to be temporal to pressure Russia’s government, through its people too, to cease the fire and stop killing thousands of innocent people.
3. Ask yourself what you would ask to do, should you be a Ukrainian and in Ukraine.
4. As I stand now, I am in Ukraine right now dealing with the refugee crises. I can clearly see why the world responded this way.
5. This war needs to be stopped now.
6. United we stand.
7. No, I do not want to discuss the nukes etc.
8. If you care as a human, get yourself involved in a useful way.
Mark Thorpe says
Stay safe.
DNPric.es says
Thank you. Millions of people united with one goal and priority: to end this war and make sure such a catastrophe is not repeated again.
Patrick says
And you’ll be doing the same to Saudi Arabia for bombing Yemen right.
Rob says
Yeah. And to the US for invading and destroying countless countries over the last century or so.
Oh, and for the 2014 Maiden coup and overthrow of the Ukrainian government too which ultimately lead to this crisis…
Mark Thorpe says
Better to do something than nothing at all.
Squarely says
They need to publish the names of Olga and their properties and addresses
Rob says
Oh yes… the people of (insert demonized country here, eg: Russia) have been totally brainwashed by their evil governments and media, but of course we in the west are far too smart for that, plus our media and governments are far too nice and honest to do that for us.
People should do real deep research to figure out if everything they know might be completely false. Most people would be shocked if they ever got that far. It isn’t Russia that has propagandized YOUR minds.
Nic says
I have a more practical concern: under which approach do I have more exposure?
a) Keep .ru names with an EU registrar, who may choose not to, or may not be able to, deal with the registry very soon, or
b) Move .ru names to nic.ru in Russia and fund that account now while I still can?
Rhetorical questions.
It is a dilemma many others are facing, eg aircraft leasing operators who have billions on their balance sheet; when and how do they recover their aircraft assets?
Letting the names expire seems silly as the beneficiaries will likely be Russians.
Anthony Mitchell says
1/ If your organization is thinking of shutting down its online services to Russia, here are some things you may want to think about before you hastily roll out changes that can create impact beyond what you intended.
2/ First of all you need to figure out how you’re deciding to shut down service. Russian IP address? Note that Beeline is a Russian mobile carrier with an extensive footprint in neighboring countries, but they often route traffic through Russia and/or use Russian-assigned IPs.
3/ OK, maybe you’ll go after people who registered with an email address in the .ru top level domain. That won’t catch anyone in Russia who uses Gmail but will catch people outside of Russia who use Yandex (and a lot of people in Russian-speaking countries use Yandex).
4/ Ok, ok, if none of those work, PHONE NUMBER then! Only one problem: Kazakhstan shares the +7 country code with Russia, and they have nothing to do with any of this.
5/ It can be a significant engineering effort to block services in Russia, whether required by sanctions or whether independently decided by your organization. Given the pace at which sanctions are moving, it’s a good idea to start thinking about how you’d do this if required.
6/ Toll free numbers work in Abkhazia and Kazakhstan along with Russia, but there are carve-outs for Kazakhstan in the numbering plan. If you have a phone number, you can potentially avoid *some* collateral damage. Details in this ITU document: https://itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/oth/02/02/T020200006F0001PDFE.pdf
7/ Consider how you’ll deal with Russians living abroad. There are lots of them, especially students! They may have a Russian phone number and Russian email, but not be physically present in Russia.
8/ Some geographies are easy to cut off of services. Russia, not so much–at least without huge collateral damage. It’s geographically the largest country in the world, and their communications infrastructure has a significant sphere of influence in neighboring ex-USSR countries.
9/ Ask the right questions if you’re impacted by sanctions. Is providing services at all prohibited, or only providing *paid* services? If the latter, can you reasonably rely on your bank to block payments that would violate sanctions?
10/ If these conversations aren’t already happening in your organization, they likely will soon. Start thinking now about whether you should, and even if you think you shouldn’t, how you’d do it if legally required.
Source:
Thread from TProphet @TProphet 6:32 AM · Mar 3, 2022·Twitter Web App. Locked account. https://twitter.com/TProphet/status/1499196035637280768
Nic says
Many thanks for your effort writing this post.
DNPric.es says
Germans recently raised great concerns about Kasperski antivirus.