Serbian state support in the delegation of the .RS and .СРБ domains

The Central Registry of the Serbian national Internet domains, which is managed by RNIDS, is a part of the global Domain Name System (DNS), administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The standard procedure for the delegation of national domains by ICANN is explained on the site of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The procedure involves meeting criteria relating to the technical and administrative capacities required to responsibly and competently maintain the Internet domain registry, ensuring all interested parties are treated equally and without discrimination in the domain registration process, and providing mechanisms guaranteeing transparency of operations and support for the work of the registry from the local Internet community and relevant state authorities.

The delegation procedure is explained in detail on the page Domains delegated to RNIDS.

RNIDS’ relationship to the government, and the legal framework

No current legislation directly addresses the area of Internet domains – in Serbia this area is governed by private law. Because of the importance of the Internet as an information infrastructure, various state institutions have taken a close interest and provided support in the establishment and operation of RNIDS from the very beginning.

• During the process of delegation of the .YU and .RS domain to RNIDS by ICANN, the Ministry of Science and Environmental Protection affirmed the technical and organisational capacity of RNIDS to conduct national domain name registrations by way of enactment no. 451-01-01600/2007-01 dated 10^th May 2007.

• During the process of delegation of the .СРБ domain to RNIDS by ICANN, the Ministry for Telecommunications and the Information Society affirmed the technical and organisational capacity of RNIDS to conduct national domain name registrations by way of enactment no. 401-00-00115/2010-01 dated 15^th July 2010, issued in implementation of the government’s ruling (no. 345-178/2010 dated 14^th January 2010) on the introduction of a Cyrillic-script national domain.

• On 24^th December 2010 the Ministry for Telecommunications and the Information Society and RNIDS signed a Cooperation Agreement (in Serbian), filed under registration no. 356-00-9/2010-01, whereby RNIDS took on additional obligations relating to strictadherence to uptime parameters for infrastructural services and to provision of financial reserves to ensure its stable functioning, as well as the obligation to regularly file a separate report on its operation to the relevant ministry.

In the preceding period, RNIDS has established good partnerships not just with the relevant ministries but also with a range of other state institutions, such as, for example, the Interior Ministry’s Department for High-Tech Crime, the Public Prosecutor’s office, and the Intellectual Property Office.

Management of national domains around the world

There are many other country Internet domain registries in Europe and the rest of the world which function in a similar way to RNIDS, such as the registries in Great Britain, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Israel etc. In most European countries and the rest of the world, the model for the organisation that manages the national Internet domains is very similar to that of RNIDS – a legal entity that is not state-affiliated and is usually not-for-profit.

According to data from a study by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in 2003 and research by the Council of European National TLD Registries (CENTR) conducted in 2011, the ownership breakdown of national Internet domain registries in Europe is as follows:

Looking at national Internet domain registries at the global level, most are set up as private, not-for-profit organisations.  On a sample of 64 registries from different continents, the breakdown was as follows: