A joint meeting of the Board and the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development was held on the 23rd of May. Alexander Arabey, Deputy Chief of the Department of Information Technology of Moscow, attended the meeting focusing on the current state of operations related to the project for implementation of the .МОСКВА and .MOSCOW top-level domains.

The summary of the public comments on the Concept of Second-Level Domain Name Registration in the .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА Domains was presented at the meeting, along with the proposals suggested by those involved in the discussion of the document. Two major Concept amendments were adopted following the meeting’s results. First of all Russian trademark holders will get the priority at the Sunrise registration phase over the holders of trademarks from the Trademark Clearinghouse (TMCH).

Also FAITID Board has approved an addition to the Concept according to which trademark owners will be able to block domain names equal to the respective marks to avoid their unauthorised use. The amendments suggested were adopted by the Board without a dissentient voice.

Dmitry Burkov, Foundation Board Chairman, talked about the current status of the New gTLD process. According to him, starting from the 1st of June the speed of applications’ initial evaluation (IE) will be increased, and IE results for the .MOSCOW TLD may follow later in June. He also covered the further action plan to develop the domain registration policies: by mid-June draft policies for names’ reservation, Sunrise registration, as well as general rules for second-level domain registration will be prepared based on the approved Concept, then these documents will be discussed with the government and public organisations of Moscow and the federal government. Following the discussion results, the documents will be amended accordingly, and by the end of July the set of policies for the .МОСКВА and .MOSCOW top-level domains will be approved.

Alexander Panov, President of the Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development, briefed the meeting participants on the engineering infrastructure that is being prepared within the .МОСКВА and .MOSCOW implementation project. According to the plan the domains’ stable performance will be maintained by the nodes located in Russia and abroad.

Alexander Arabey, Deputy Chief of the Department of Information Technology of Moscow, proposed to supplement the list of organisations involved in the process of selection of the domain names to be reserved for the city needs within the Moscow domain extensions.

In conclusion, the meeting participants approved the promotion strategy for the .МОСКВА and .MOSCOW TLDs and discussed several related events. One of them is GeoTLDs Group Meeting to be held in the Russian capital jointly with the Moscow City Government. The Group unites New gTLD applicants implementing geographical top-level. Dmitry Burkov, Foundation Board Chairman, first made his proposal to organize a GeoTLDs meeting in Moscow during the same event held in Berlin in March 2013. The proposal was supported by the Group members. Now it has been defined the meeting will coincide with the City Day festivities and will be held on the 5th of September 2013. Besides, the .МОСКВА and .MOSCOW Domain Week is to be arranged in Moscow in early September as a series of events to promote among Muscovites the idea of the capital-related TLDs’ introduction.