State regulation of the Internet. Chronicle: Beginning and Direct Implementation (parts 1 and 2)

Part 1. Chronicle: The Beginning

Recently, the state has seriously decided to take up the global network. And this is not surprising, because the Runet in recent years is not so much about kitties, jokes, frivolous chats and photo collections of girls of different nudity (although this, of course, has not gone anywhere), but about the expansion and deepening of the interests of Internet users, including in the socio-political sphere.

In the mid-2000s, personal blogs blossomed, then social networks came in large numbers, the development of broadband access brought many terabytes of content onto the heads of Web users. Mass media came to the Internet en masse, many already remained only in it, either having closed their offline representations, or originally born to live in online space. Internet users, whose number is growing progressively, have received a huge number of alternative points of view on all aspects of life, both globally and in our country.

Television began to lose its percentages of information consumers year after year. Naturally, it is now a serious player in mass media, but has already lost its global lack of alternative among the population. And a number of the largest online media and Internet portals are already bypassing the popularity of federal TV channels. For example, back in the spring of 2012, Yandex gathered a larger audience on its portal than any individual television company.

In the spring of this year, the penetration of the Internet in Russia crossed the psychological threshold of 50% of the population of our country, as evidenced by research data from several TNS , RAEC , FOM companies. Moreover, the increase is 10-15% per year! And the most active audience is young people in the most active age of 18-25 years, who almost all online is online daily (96% according to RAEC). And a significant share in the Russian economy of all Internet-dependent markets in the amount of 4.62% of the country's GDP is also very significant.

All this, together, left no chance for Runet, so that our state structures would not be interested in him.


(From the TNS Russia report on RIF + CIB 2013)

So when did the state penetrate the Internet in our country?

You can take different dates and events as a reference. Some even refer to the decree of President Yeltsin of 1995 “On measures to comply with the law in the development, production, sale and operation of encryption tools, as well as the provision of services in the field of information encryption”. When the development of special equipment in the field of ICT received the status of the presidential program.

Or you can take the introduction as a countdownSORM-2 at the very beginning of the two thousandth, which replaced the purely telephone surveillance for storage and tracking, including Internet traffic from the special services of our state. All this was enshrined in the relevant laws, Government Decisions and Orders , but the Constitution ... But the Constitution is a good theoretical document and it almost becomes bad form to make references to it when it comes to civil rights and freedoms.



Well, after all, I will quote article 23 of our country's main document:
1. Everyone has the right to privacy, personal and family secrets, protection of their honor and good name.
2. Everyone has the right to privacy of correspondence, telephone conversations, postal, telegraphic and other communications. The restriction of this right is allowed only on the basis of a court decision.

But I think that the development of state encryption and decryption tools, as well as various systems of operational-search measures, can be left out of the picture. For this separate big topic and many of its aspects are either classified or strictly regulated by special services, although the numbers of wiretap coverage of the population are very impressive:


( RIA Novosti , infographic “Telephone wiretapping and traffic interception in Russia”, fragment)

But what about the official, more public history of the relationship between the state and the Internet?

This happened not so long ago, in 2011, when Dmitry Medvedev, as President of Russia, at a number of meetings raised issues of development of the Russian segment of the Network and information security.

2 such meetings are noteworthy. In April 2011, the President met with representatives of the Internet community , where the issue of legal regulation in the Internet space and in the field of copyright was raised. Medvedev formulated a message to society:

“I would just like to understand your position, talk, of course, about the responsibility for the information that is posted on the Internet, talk about topics that I think are extremely important and very complex: I mean copyrights. [...] This topic is not extraneous for me, and it is really extremely important for the future, because everything that is happening now is considered by some to be the death of copyright, and by some it is seen as a corridor that leads to a new plane of copyright which will be completely different. In any case, the Internet provides fantastic opportunities for moving large amounts of information, for copying, and at the same time creates problems with the regulation of intellectual property. There are many other things, there are crimes that are committed, there are things

(Photo: drugoi.livejournal.com)

The result of that meeting is also interesting: the President signed a list of instructions , among which:
1. To prepare proposals on amendments to the civil legislation of the Russian Federation aimed at making it possible for authors of works to submit their works under free licenses unlimited number of persons (similar to Creative Commons, GNU FDL).
2. To conduct, with the participation of representatives of the media, including those posted on the Internet, television channels, other copyright holders, copyright organizations, Russian and international experts, a discussion of the problems of using protected works, taking into account modern methods of reproducing them, and analyzing world experience in order to develop a model of such use to expand and facilitate citizens' access to cultural property, including for information, scientific and educational purposes. Following the discussion, prepare proposals for discussion at international forums.

But things are still there for 1 and 2 points. We have no de jure free licenses. And on the contrary, they try to limit access to cultural and scientific values ​​in our life and on the Internet.

And at the end of August 2011, a meeting of the commission on the implementation of priority national projects and demographic policies was held, at which Pavel Astakhov publicly mentioned the "hard-to-break" law on protecting children from information that is harmful to their health, moral and spiritual development. To which President Medvedev noted:

“There is nothing worse than if it all boils down to stupid prohibitions:“ do not climb there ”,“ do not climb here. ” Well, what does a schoolboy do in this case, what would I do instead of a schoolboy? I would only climb there. Therefore, it must be subtle and smart. ”

And after 10 days, speaking at the Bled Strategic Forum international forum, Igor Shchegolev (at that time the head of the Ministry of Communications) emphasized :

“The Internet as a global community will also naturally come to the development of its own rules for countering illegal content. The state should not come up with rules for the Internet, it should be an equal participant in this process, which proceeds freely and naturally in the network community. ”

But “subtle and smart” is not for us. And just a couple of weeks after that, the web appeared draining the text of the bill on censorship on the Web, prepared (as reported) by the League of Safe Internet. The cover letter said that the bill would soon be submitted to the State Duma for consideration.

This document proposed for the first time in Russia to legally secure the possibility of extrajudicial blocking of information on the Internet in a number of categories by telecom operators themselves by decision of the executive authority (Roskomnadzor).

This became a harbinger and prototype of the subsequently adopted 139-FZ on the "black lists of sites."

But that's another story…

Part 2. Chronicle: Direct Implementation

We stopped at the moment when in September 2011 the first texts of the document, the future prototype of the law on “black lists of sites” appeared on the Web.

After that, the state paused until the summer of 2012. The fall / spring 2011-12 period turned out to be very hot offline: we recall the tense situation around the 6th convocation of the State Duma and understand that government agencies were faced with a new type of opposition and anti-government sentiment, and their efforts were focused on that. But later it will come to the realization that the Internet, its technologies and tools also play an important role in such a new civic activity.

So, the elections were held, the passions did not subside, and the newly-convened State Duma convened its first steps in assembling and debugging its infamous "furious printer."



The summer of 2012 turned out to be hot due to the confrontation between civil society and the legislature. Tightening has come in almost all areas limiting the freedoms of citizens, let’s recall some of them: increased responsibility for rallies, demonstrations, processions ( 65-FZ of 08/08/2012), the introduction of the concept of “foreign agents” for NGOs ( 121-FZ of 20.07.2012 ), return to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation an article “for defamation” ( 141-ФЗ dated July 28, 2012 ).

The Internet has also come under general distribution. The text of the bill on extra-judicial blocking of Internet resources prepared by the League of Safe Internet was raised from state zagashniks. An interesting and mysterious story is the appearance of this non-profit organization, which was established in a bizarre connection of the Ministry of Communications with the Saint Savior Charity FundVasily the Great under the tutelage of now Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation Igor Shchegolev. And the Board of Trustees of the LBI itself consists of such figures as, for example, Konstantin Malofeev, Elena Mizulina, Peter Tolstoy, representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Investigative Committee, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the FSKN, the FSB, which already says a lot. A very difficult organization, created for the specific purpose of increasing the influence of the state and its law enforcement agencies in the Internet environment and limiting network freedoms.

And on June 7, 2012, the State Duma introduced bill No. 89417-6 on amendments to the Federal Law “On the Protection of Children from Information harmful to their health and development” and certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation (on the issue of restricting access to illegal information in Internet). Currently, for unknown reasons, this document has become unavailable on the official website of the State Duma of the Russian Federation. The initiators of the bill were the deputies Zheleznyak, Mizulina, Nilov, Reshulsky. A separate article in this document introduces the concept of the Register of prohibited sites and categories of information on the Internet, which may be blocked by state bodies out of court.

In June, an expanded round table of the Commission of hosting providers and registrars of RAEC took place, at which the position of the Internet industry on this legislative initiative

was highlighted : - Proactive activities of hosting providers and content moderation are unacceptable;
- The mechanism of the "black list" as a means of combating illegal content should be considered ineffective;
- The fact of misrepresentation regarding the mechanisms and objects of blocking in foreign analogues of the registry should be assessed as unworthy;
- The self-regulation initiatives of Internet companies in the field of counteracting the spread of child pornography should be encouraged and developed.

A few days later, RAEC introduced“Article by article comment and suggestions for amendments to the bill No. 89417-6,” which details the essence of the comments and suggestions to the bill from the Internet industry.

Among the likely consequences of the application of such a bill was the possibility of:

- Mass counterclaims against an organization authorized by the Government of the Russian Federation related to the mass closure of bona fide resources that do not contain content prohibited for distribution on the territory of the Russian Federation;
- Restrictions on access to information prohibited for children for all users of the Russian segment of the Internet;
- Limitations of the scope of the bill due to fuzzy definitions of site owners and hosting providers, many of which do not fall under the bill, will not be required to comply with the bill, and will evade liability;
- Abuses, sabotage and unfair competition between Internet platforms related to too wide a class of materials to be entered in the Register on the basis of a decision of the federal executive body authorized by the Government of the Russian Federation.

It should be noted that at the beginning of 2012, RAEC made attempts to self-regulate the industry itself in relation to the safe for children Internet environment by publishing the draft Manifesto"Russian Internet in the XXI Century: Child Safety." This document noted that "the filtering of Internet content by the backbone provider, which does not give the user the right to choose, contradicts the constitutional principles of the free flow of information, the rights and interests of users and states and leads to a violation of technological connectivity and network space security." And it was proposed as an alternative “Development and implementation of technologies or methods to limit access to Internet content that allow parents to protect their children from information that may seem unacceptable to children”.

Along with an active and deep analytical reaction from the RAEC, a number of Internet giants also expressed their protest positions.



Yandex :

“The proposed methods provide the basis for possible abuse and raise numerous questions from users and representatives of Internet companies. We believe that it is necessary to maintain a balance of public interests, as well as take into account the technological features of the Internet. Therefore, it is necessary to postpone consideration of the bill and discuss it in open areas with the participation of representatives of the Internet industry and technical experts. ”

Livejournal :

“Lobbyists supporting these amendments claim that they are directed exclusively against content that is prohibited or objectionable to children. However, the system for blocking such content does not imply appeals or retrial procedures, nor does it impose any restrictions that would make it possible to interpret these measures as not introducing censorship. In fact, this means that the provider will be able to block a particular site by IP as directed by the ministry and without a court order. Amendments to the law may lead to the introduction of censorship in the Russian-language segment of the Internet, the creation of a blacklist and stop lists and blocking of individual sites. Unfortunately, the practice of applying legislation in Russia indicates the high probability of this, worst-case scenario.

Google :

“The adopted law provides for blocking of Internet resources by hosting providers and telecom operators by domain names and network addresses. Since many websites and services can be hosted on the same IP address, this means that while restricting access to a single material, other resources that do not violate the law may be closed. We are convinced that there are more effective ways to combat illegal content than those proposed by law. We hope for a constructive dialogue between lawmakers, industry and the user community to jointly develop effective methods for protecting Web users that would not restrict access to legal information and would not become an obstacle to the development of the Internet in Russia. ”

And the Russian-language Wikipedia segment announced on July 10 an online strike:

“These amendments can become the basis for real censorship on the Internet - the formation of a list of banned sites and IP addresses with their subsequent filtering. Lobbyists and activists who support these amendments claim that they are directed exclusively against content such as child pornography “and the like”, but following the provisions and wordings introduced for discussion will lead to the creation of an analogue of the “Great Chinese Firewall” in Russia. The practice of applying legislation existing in Russia indicates the high probability of the worst case scenario, in which access to Wikipedia will soon be closed throughout the country. ”

Another interesting point is that during all these internal Russian battles of the industry and society against the legislators, our state ignored the UN resolution on human rights on the Internet.

On June 29, the UN Human Rights Council adopted the resolution “The promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet”. Document underlinesthat the same rights that a person has in an offline environment must be protected online: the right to freedom of expression; recognizes the global and open nature of the Internet, which is one of the driving forces for accelerating progress along the path of development in its various forms; calls on all states to promote and facilitate access to the Internet; speaks about the protection and implementation of human rights, including the right to freedom of expression on the Internet and other technological environments.

Russia refused to sign this document .

But inside the country, some legislators did not hesitate to speak openlythat all opponents of the introduction of “black lists of sites” are a “pedophile lobby”, which once again pointed to the estrangement of senior government officials from understanding how the Internet works, the principles of its work and the significance for the development of both the country's economy and civil society in Russia.



And as a result, all suggestions, comments and protests from the Internet business and the public (and there were open appeals to the President of the Russian Federation and offline protests ) were not taken into account and for 5 days (!!!) from July 6 to 11 this The bill passed immediately 3 readings in the State Duma without any public discussion. And already on July 18, the new legislative act was approved by the Federation Council.

On July 28, Vladimir Putin signed a new law , which received the designation 139-FZ, amending the federal laws “On protecting children from information harmful to their health and development”, “On communications” and “On information, information technologies and information protection”

From the certificate of the State Legal Department it follows that this law is aimed at improving the mechanism to ensure the protection of children from information that could harm their health and development. At the same time, in order to limit access to sites on the Internet that contain information the dissemination of which is prohibited in the Russian Federation, this law provides for the creation of a “Unified Register of domain names, universal indexes of pages on Internet sites and network addresses to identify sites on the Internet, containing information the distribution of which is prohibited in the Russian Federation. ” The federal law partially changes the procedure for the examination of information products, the right to initiate which will be granted to legal entities, individual entrepreneurs,

But at the same time, no public control over the actions of state bodies or expert data on the prohibition of certain Internet resources is prescribed. In fact, experts are given carte blanche to make decisions on extrajudicial blocking of sites, and supervisory authorities - to stamp the relevant orders and instructions, while frivolously and extremely ambiguously interpreting information materials on the Internet.

Clauses of the law relating to the introduction of "black lists of sites" will enter into force on November 1, 2012, but it remained to determine those government agencies that would directly implement 139-FZ. There were also departments that were not at all eager to take on the additional burden of in-depth immersion in the process of blocking Internet resources. For example, the Ministry of Internal Affairs tried in every possible way to disownfrom keeping the Register in the category of “child pornography” and therefore this role has been assigned to Roskomnadzor. At the end of October, a Government Decision was issued that identified those state bodies that received the secret status of Internet censors: the Federal Drug Control Service gained control over the circulation of drug information, Roskomnadzor, as already mentioned, began to look after child pornography, and the most controversial category of prohibited information - about suicide moved to Onishchenko’s department.

It should be noted that subsequently each of these supervisory authorities will make very controversial decisions and by no means in isolated cases, but all this will be discussed in the next article.

In the meantime, on November 1, 2012, the odious 139-FZ came into force in our story and the same day the society made an asymmetric response to such a policy of the state, which does not take into account the opinion of the Internet business or the public: the project was launched " RosKomSvoboda ", which laid the foundation for a civil reaction to the categorical introduction of the state into the Internet sphere. Public control, informing and providing assistance to victims of blocking Internet resources - these are the main goals of this and similar civilian projects that will arise subsequently in the enforcement of blocking laws.

Naturally, government agencies could not like such uncontrolled public initiatives and almost immediately after the introduction of “black lists of sites” appearedstatements by lawmakers that it would be nice to think about expanding the list of grounds for blocking Internet resources. And the first bell sounded, a question about the legality of such tools as, for example, anonymizers or sites that explain by what means you can restore access to information and monitor the actions of government agencies to block.

This was predictable, as well as the emergence of an increasing number of government departments and lobbying groups wishing to expand the grounds and categories of information out of court.

But how events developed further - this is our next story ...

Based on materials:
NAG.ru ( part 1 , part 2 ) and
RosKomSvoboda: Chronicle - timeline