Russian Internet regulation is debated in an Interesting piece from the Russian News & Information Agency outlet Novosti here.
"Account, control, licensing and censorship are the factors that, according to some zealous politicians, will bring discipline and order to Web-content. The Federation Council, the State Duma, the Education and Science Ministry, the Information and Communications Ministry and different expert groups are all drafting bills and enactments."
...Says the piece. But there is a debate....
"Russian Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko said 'the state should control the use of scientific technologies, including the Internet.'
On March 1, 2005 Information and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman spoke against a special law that would regulate the Internet. 'Proposals are often made to draft a special law to regulate the Internet. In our opinion, this approach cannot be viewed as correct,' he said at parliamentary hearings in the State Duma. 'The only thing that needs changing is the regulation of legal relations between information suppliers and consumers.'"
Interestingly, there is also a Russian parallel to the "secondarly liability" fights in the U.S. over the distribution of pirated content....
"The discussion then moved on to the responsibility of Internet providers for the distribution of illegal information. Vadim Gorshenin, the editor-in-chief of the e-newspaper Pravda.ru, believes that censorship on the Internet is necessary, while providers are simply interested in high traffic regardless of its origin. He says, 'If it were advantageous to providers to stop spam they would stop it, if it were not profitable to run porn traffic, it would disappear.'"
As an aside, Pravda.ru has interesting pieces up about the Soviet Army fighting UFOs and a boy from Mars. Back to the story....
"Major General Konstantin Machabeli, the deputy head of the Interior Ministry's special technical operations department, agreed that providers should be responsible for illegal content. "You cannot relieve providers of responsibility, this makes no sense," he says."
Then there's this appropriate rejoinder from a leader of a Russian Internet organization....
"Not enough Russians have Internet access yet, only 10% of the population. So before regulating the Russian Internet, it should be developed first."
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