19.07.2012
These days the State Duma of the Russian Federation (the lower house of the Russian parliament) approved another masterpiece of legislation in the third reading. The bill was submitted by a group of parliamentarians which included members of four parties represented in the Duma. So, Elena Mizulina, a representative of the Just Russia party, Sergey Zheleznyak representing the United Russia party, Yaroslav Nilov, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, and Sergey Reshulskiy representing the Communist Party took part in drafting the bill. All legislators found their own reasons to support the bill “About creating the register of banned mass media” they had presented. The bill is aimed at protecting citizens against hazardous web-content. However, is this law necessary? Is it really safe for freedom of speech?
Note: according to the law, from now on a special organization authorized by the Russian government is to review content in the network and convey this information to the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications, if child pornography, instructions on drug production and drug purchase or suicide guideline are found at a certain site.
The law says: “A consisted integrated automated information data system called The Integrated Register of Domain Names and (or) Integrated Page Selectors of Internet Sites and Network Addresses Containing Information the Dissemination of Which Is Banned on the Territory of the Russian Federation is set up”.
"For the time being, there are no fines imposed under administrative law, nobody is going to be sent to prison, it is just a blow to the reputation."
The Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications, in its turn, is to inform the site owners and the administration of hosting providers, where the site is located, of the situation. But, in any case, the result is the same: they will be given 24 hours to delete “the improper content”. If the site’s owners do not the appropriate measures, the hosting provider will do it within 24 hours.
One of the authors of the bill, head of the State Duma Committee on Women and Family Matters Elena Mizulina said: “… If neither owners, nor providers correct the content, the site or its page and its IP address are to be included in the register. For the time being, there are no fines imposed under administrative law, nobody is going to be sent to prison, it is just a blow to the reputation, as the register will be available for free access. ”
Even during the second reading a number of amendments was made to the bill to enable owners of sites to challenge the expert evaluation of their sites as “inappropriate” in court, also it was determined that the register is to appear as soon as 1 November, 2012. In the nearest future, existing laws “About information”, “About protection of children”, “About communications” and Administrative Offences Code of the Russian Federation are to be amended.
Also this initiative has its disturbing aspects: what effect will filtration of Internet sites’ content have on the work of portals with ambiguous content? Often specialized web sites may publish materials which censors can find provocative or even illegal, while in fact their aims are didactic and preventive.
How is the authorized body going to differentiate one thing from another? The answer is velar. It will differentiate them somehow, but also there will be many mishaps, manipulations, frauds, corrupt practices, abuses for the sake of certain organizations and institutions, because there will be opportunities to ban inconvenient or dissenting web sites without judicial safeguards.
“All the fuss against the bill is initiated by pedophile lobbies, afraid to lose their profit.”
In this view, the response of the Russian online community is easy to understand. The law is criticized for its extremely obscure wording which is a potential loophole for prosecution of sites, undesirable for certain institutions. A number of leading Russian dotcoms, non-governmental organizations, Internet experts, Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation and the Russian Electronic Communication Association raised an outcry. The Russian version of Wikipedia site was off the line for 24 hours as a sign of dissent. LiveJournal, Yandex and VContacte social network also clearly demonstrated their resentment of the law.
However, officials still persist obstinately that the law will work for greater good only. So, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Education Vladimir Burmatov says: “The register must be increased to include everything harmful for education.It also should include pages selling school certificates, diplomas, academic transcripts and certificates of all kinds”.
Yaroslav Nilov, one of the authors of the law and a parliamentarian representing the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, said: “Many secondary school students who committed suicide had been members of various groups at a popular Russian social network which described various methods of committing suicide and propagandized death”.
“If we don’t take measures, we will lose Internet.”
Elena Mizulina in her comments regarding the protests of site owners gave the following tough characteristic of the situation: “All the fuss against the bill is initiated by pedophile lobbies, afraid to lose their profit. We intend to appeal to the US Department of Justice demanding to investigate the initiative of deactivation of Wikipedia site”.
However, the words of the politicians are not too convincing. Online community leaders stay determined that the law places the final nail in the coffin of the freedom of speech in Russia. Some of them put it mildly, while others call it genocide.
“I think that the situation is quite the opposite one and the law has a different purpose: not to restrict, but to protect. But, let’s say, it’s inevitable, and we will have to pass this stage anyway”, Gleb Klinov, an active blogger writes in his blog.
Co-chairmen of the Internet Party of Russia Kirill Feodorov and Georgy Efremov, on the contrary, emphatically warned: “If we don’t take measures, we will lose Internet.” They announce that they intend to arrange a protest action in order to protect “the only territory of freedom that remained” in Internet.
“As a result, illegal content will be posted on pages undesirable for someone, and they will be banned without judicial safeguards,” Georgy Efremov says. He thinks that it’s a step toward censorship, towards the Chinese model and revision of users’ private correspondence.
Anton Nosik, a famous public figure, a blogger and the founder of Lenta.ru, thinks that the opinion of the online community should be articulated to the authorities by those people and companies which contributed a lot to the development of Russian Internet. “Setting up such a register threatens not only to Wikipedia, but to the freedom of communications and information interchange in Russian cyberspace. Really, it’s a very dangerous document. On top of everything else, the practice of collective punishments provided by the law is a catastrophe. It says that your blog can be banned just because some other blog at the same hosting writes something illegal. We can witness an example of such things - LiveJournal is banned in Kazakhstan. However, I’m sure that these problems will be solved somehow. Users are much smarter and more talented than bureaucrats.”
“It will be done not for children’s sake, either the children or public morality won't benefit from it, only censorship will benefit from it. State authorities met after the events of spring and winter and decided that Internet is to blame in all their troubles. This idea – that World Wide Web is a dangerous western invention and it should be taken under control somehow - hang thick in the air in the cloakrooms of the executive power for a long time,” Nikolay Svanidze, a journalist and a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, commented.
“And if a child goes abroad on holidays or to study there, how can we control his search on the Internet? If he goes to a beast’s den, to the nest of immorality, molestation, obscenity, indecency, lewdness, the vortex of morphine addiction, depravity and harlotry, let’s say, to London, - shall we doom the child, give up on him? Is it better for him to stay here to drink beer and urinate in the escalator of your block of flats? Then he will grow up like a real man clear at his heart!” Sergey Dorenko, journalist and chief editor of Russian News Service radio station, allegorically spoke on the new law.
“The idea that World Wide Web is a dangerous western invention and it should be taken under control somehow hang thick in the air in the cloakrooms of the executive power for a long time.”
Major general of the Federal Security Service of Russia, expert of counter-drugs project Mayaplanet Alexandr Mihailov also sees a certain danger of the law: “There are no doubts that Internet needs a kind of censorship. But there are very delicate ambiguous subjects, very difficult to define categorically. An idiot can take any mentioning of the word “drugs” as propaganda of drugs. If there is a certain task, it’s easy to find an expert who will make the report someone who holds grudge against certain web sites needs. It’s obvious! So, it may happen that useful sites talking seriously of the problem, discussing debatable subjects - truth is born of arguments, anyway! - can catch hell. We must be ready for the fact that a lot of things done for common good may bring harm. In all ages, wisdom and progress developed alongside with inquisition, scholasticism and obscurantism.”
We, the World League “Mind Out Of Drugs”, the owners of counter-drugs portal Mayaplanet.org, are also be apprehensive about ambiguous interpretation of the law. Our sites content is directed solely to the propaganda of healthy life style without drugs as a contrast to the horrors of wretched existence of drug addicts.
However, if someone take into his or her head (and there may be many volunteers to do so) to complicate the performance of our mission in the Russian Federation, they can do it easily: it’s enough to declare our site a harmful one. All we can do is just rely on the sanity of judgement of Russian officials and on tight control over making decisions on banning a certain site or allowing it to exist.
