Public Interest Registry Opens Registration For New Domain Name In Cyrillic

-- New Top-Level Domain in Native Cyrillic Script Now Available to the Public

RESTON, Virginia, May 27, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Public Interest Registry – the not-for-profit operator of the .org domain – today announced the general availability of a new Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) in the native Cyrillic script. This IDN is one of three new domains from Public Interest Registry in non-Latin-based scripts – including Devanagari and simplified Chinese – which translate to "organisation" or "institution" and is now available for registration to all interested companies, organisations and individuals.

"Our mission at Public Interest Registry has always been to help organisations maximize their audience reach and better communicate their missions, activities and accomplishments. The launch of these new international domain names speaks to the heart of that mission," said Brian Cute, CEO of Public Interest Registry. "Now, organisations of all sizes will have the opportunity to brand their website addresses in localized scripts, ensuring that their causes and passions resonate on regional and global levels."

With more than 50,900 .org registrations, Russia is one of the largest .org markets globally. Currently, there are 143.5 million people in Russia using Russian Cyrillic as the official alphabet for their national language. The new Cyrillic IDN will enable website owners to brand their addresses in the native script, and in turn, make their website more relevant to audiences who speak and write in the widely used language.

".ru country code has almost 5 million registrations, posing a potential challenge to new registrants who are looking for an address relevant to their cause," said Alexander Panov, chief executive officer of RU-CENTER. "With the new Cyrillic domain, not only are individuals and organizations gaining access to a fresh name space, but also, they have the added value of registering a domain address in the native language of their target audience."

In recent years, Public Interest Registry has emerged at the forefront of support for use of alternative scripts, having worked closely with standards-setting bodies and members of the engineering community to create and launch a number of alternative scripts for second-level names associated with .org. To date, the registrar supports 11 IDNs available for user adoption with .org in languages that include Danish, German, Hungarian, Polish, Spanish and Swedish, among others.

For more information about Public Interest Registry or for the full list of registrars offering the new IDNs, please visit www.pir.org.  

About Public Interest Registry
Public Interest Registry is a nonprofit corporation that operates the .org top-level domain -- the world's third largest "generic" top-level domain with more than 10 million domain names registered worldwide. As an advocate for collaboration, safety and security on the Internet, Public Interest Registry's mission is to empower the global noncommercial community to use the Internet more effectively, and to take a leadership position among Internet stakeholders on policy and other issues relating to the domain naming system. Public Interest Registry was founded by the Internet Society (http://www.internetsociety.org) in 2002 and is based in Reston, Virginia, USA.

Contact:
Lindsay Hyman
+1-202-223-9260
pir@allisonpr.com