On the Internet Regulations in Russia
Date: 02.03.2012
On the Internet Regulations in Russia
It is an open secret that the content published in Runet is quite varied: one can find here almost anything to his or her liking. The legislative base leaves much to be desired, not mentioning law enforcement and punishment. As soon as a web site with a pirated copy of a popular movie is shut down, another one appears immediately. The web surfer is also offered a variety of more harmless nationalist and extremist sites along with resources containing children pornography (together with the US and Thailand, Russia is among top three countries distributing children pornography, according to U.N.O).
Still the Internet offers a common ground where people have a right to express personal opinions on certain events freely. Topics discussed here are of real interest for users, and their comments make true public position obvious. Apart from popular social networks collecting millions of Russian-speaking users, there are plenty of diverse web publications.
Now we witness certain steps aimed at possible Web regulation. After the new Law On Police had been signed in March 2011, granting law-enforcement bodies the right to eliminate causes and conditions abetting in security threats for citizens and public safety, commission of crimes, and administrative offences, some web sites were blocked by their service providers following an order from law enforcement bodies. Since the beginning of May till June, due to the claim of Central Partnership seven sites were blocked for distributing a new Russian movie “Exchange Wedding”. Not all operators obeyed the order saying that the resource was not their property and citing the right for a free Internet access. The media pointed out a huge amount of screen captured movie copies published on other web sites including Vkonkakte. But nobody tried to block Vkonkakte network for that. Still, social networks were not totally ignored. During the Coordinating Council of Prosecutors General of the CIS meeting that took place on September 14 in Minsk, Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika expressed the need to monitor social networks. He stressed that such measures would be reasonable for protection citizens’ freedoms and for control of crime rate. Yuri Chaika recalled that social networks were able to become a source of terrorist and extremist appeals like Facebook and Twitter microblogging service used for arranging the recent riots in London and disturbances in Egypt. It is interesting that experts from foggy Albion regard social networks only as communications means and not the cause of social disturbances. The statement of Yuri Chaika was followed by active public discussions and a series of critical articles blaming him in censorship.
In December, new steps were taken in this direction: the Russian Internet Safety League together with officials from the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media proposed a new law to blacklist sites with their further blocking by Internet service providers. According to the bill’s authors, online child pornography is under attack here. Meanwhile, Russian media managed to get a copy of the bill, which covered far more than anti-child-porn activities: the united database of web threats will also contain sites promoting usage, production, and distribution of drugs; extremist resources (according to the Russian Interior Ministry, there are about 7.5 thousand extremist sites in Russia); sites violating personal data privacy and business sensitive information. The initiative was backed by Russia's Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev who mentioned possible reasonable regulation in Russia, just as in the US and China. “We cannot ignore the use of the Internet by criminals and terrorist groups,” he added. By the way, “reasonable regulation” in China includes web page monitoring by key words, blocked blacklisted web addresses and foreign resources (except those ready for geographical content filtering for local users like Google does). Agora Human Rights Association reports 500 cases of rights abridgement in the Internet during last year in Russia, including 231 cases of site access restriction, 38 filed criminal cases, 11 attacks at web journalists and bloggers and 11 imposed sanctions on them.
A new wave of discussions on the Internet and Runet safety and censorship came after the US events. The SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) bill offered to block access to sites hosting unauthorized content following a court order regardless of the provider’s participation in its publishing and sharing. Largest web sites took part in the Internet blockout protests against the bill. The English Wikipedia was closed for 24 hours, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter posted appeals urging users to argue against the SOPA. The bill was opposed by Mozilla, Yahoo, eBay, Kaspersky Laboratory and many other companies. As a result, public and administrative pressure made the authors of the anti-piracy bill admit that the SOPA was to be opened for amendments. Igor Shchegolev, the Russian Minister of Communications and Mass Media, commented on the situation: “Adoption of the SOPA will not only undermine development of the Internet as a business space, but might also become an instrument for censorship, which runs counter to democratic principles.” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is also known for his support against restrictions of online freedoms.
Activities for a safer Internet are continuing into 2012. On February 7, during the International Safer Internet Day initiated by the European Commission in 2004, the Safer Internet Day Forum took place in Russia focusing at the children online safety issues. Starting from February 24, new regulations of RU-CENTER, the nation's biggest web-registration company, came into force. From that day on, the registrar received the right to block third-level domains “in order to prevent illegal activities and activities harmful to third parties, including distributing and promoting pornographic content, calls for violence and extremism, overturns, etc.” The “etc.” remark immediately gave rise to numerous questions from different parties including online media. Echo of Moscow radio station said it had already acquired a new domain name. New rules make the station doubt whether echo.msk.ru is the right choice for it.
Issues concerning online restrictions always get a strong critical reaction from Russian society. Vague wording makes them suggest possible encroachment on the online rights and freedoms translating into sharp protests. But will self-regulation be enough for the Web if nothing else is done? This question needs thorough discussion between all the interested parties regardless of the current political situation in the country.
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