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Comment by ainar-g | Hacker News Reader

> We haven't blocked the domains, we are asking people to move.

Putin has announced recently that cross-border payments in USD and EUR are to be blocked. Which means that most Russians affected by this won't be able to pay for a registrar outside of Russia.

People here have mentioned transferring their domain names to NIC.RU, the state-owned registrar. Which means that Putin actually receives more money because of this.

Speaking of taxes. What about people who used the domains for personal use? Or for non-profit orgs?

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Putin receives not only more money, it also makes censorship easier.

> Putin has announced recently that cross-border payments in USD and EUR are to be blocked. Which means that most Russians affected by this won't be able to pay for a registrar outside of Russia.

THIS

I've paid upfront exactly because of this, I was expecting some kind of ban of cross-border bank transfers. The same reason I've paid for my VPN upfront. No one in Russia, especially those who are politically active, can't really go around without some kind of self-hosted infrastructure.

Now, should Namecheap lag even a little bit with a transfer, which I've HAD to pay for (thankfully, I was able to use other provider rather than nic.ru), I will be left without my private XMPP service, self-hosted e-mail and a lot of stuff which makes my communications at least relatively safe.

While making such moves, they just made my life more dangerous, at time when government already looks for someone on the inside to blame.

> thankfully, I was able to use other provider rather than nic.ru

May I ask you which one you transferred your domains to?

I would prefer not to disclose this due to concerns to my personal safety. Thank you for understanding.

Wouldn't that mean those people couldn't pay namecheap anyway?

These people have already pre-paid namecheap services.

> Which means that Putin actually receives more money because of this.

When you cut a country off from trade, obviously some agents within that country are going to get more business.

So we shit on the people while we make Putin's friends richer?

Pardon my ignorance, but doesn't nic.ru already make money for each .ru domain that is registered?

Much like Verisign makes money for each .com/.net and Affilias makes money for each .name/.org that is registered?

Isn't the whole point of running a registry that you also get to collect some sort of fee for running the service?

Which is why a lot of Russians don't use .ru domains. But Namecheap throws them out anyway.

> Which means that Putin actually receives more money because of this.

Realistically how much money are we talking about?

About 10 minutes worth of oil supplies to Germany.

If everyone follows namecheap, this will be a boost to the Russian economy. Putin will be very thankful for namecheap's generous donation of all Russian customers to Russian owned businesses.

That’s not how global economies work.

Countries depend on each other for goods and natural resources.

North Korea is largely isolated economically and they’re not thanking the world for their self-sufficiency.

Check out Russia’s top 10 imports:

https://www.worldstopexports.com/russias-top-10-imports/

They don’t produce enough computers, machinery, vehicles, etc. to support their population.

If those imports get cut off no one is thanking Putin. You can’t just spin up a national car company or a pharmaceutical company that quickly to compensate. It’s just a loss as quality of life and consumer spending goes down, dragging the economy down with it.

Russia already tried this back when they were called the USSR and it was a disaster. Their envoys to DC thought our American grocery stores were staged because they couldn’t believe the US had fresh fruit available to the average citizen and no bare shelves.

> North Korea is largely isolated economically and they’re not thanking the world for their self-sufficiency.

North Korea is trying to establish itself on a foundation of self-reliance. Namecheap's actions confirm the importance of their philosophy.

Your "That’s not how global economies work." conveniently skips over that namecheap has a large number of Russian customers but probably zero NK customers. North Korea doesn't apply, except as a guide on how Putin can make Russia more self-reliant in the face of NATO.

> You can’t just spin up a national car company or a pharmaceutical company that quickly to compensate.

But Russia already has several major car companies, several major pharmaceutical companies, and several web hosting companies...

Webhosts would probably be the easiest to quickly spin up, especially since it would be company #25 or #125, not the first ones to pave the road.

You seem completely unaware of the entire 100 years of sanctions practice Russia has, as if Russia would be starting from scratch instead of their long established home grown industries.

Which means more tax money! This is so true.

> NIC.RU, the state-owned registrar.

But without SWIFT, will they have trouble to pay the ICANN fee?

Probably not:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Internet_Law

Most registers accept other currencies too, like GBP, CAD or AUD which you didn't mention as being blocked.

USD is a shorthand for any foreign currency in Russia. It's really hard to pay for anything in anything other than roubles right now in Russia (which is especially hard if you're trying to leave the country).

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-bans-forex-transf...

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