"Law 404" is not as terrible as it is painted

    On January 20, the President of Ukraine signed the law “On Amendments and Additions to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine Concerning Counteraction to the Spread of Child Pornography,” which entered into force on February 9 after it was published in the newspaper Golos Ukrainy. This is the result of many months of struggle for common sense. The Domain Times

    correspondents decided to understand the real meaning of the provisions of the so-called “404” law, as well as to track the change in various versions of the bill No. 3271, which caused a stir in the Internet community of Ukraine.

    It all started on October 22, when the Verkhovna Rada adopted bill No. 3271, which immediately provoked a stormy reaction from the Internet public, which began to suspect its creators of the desire to establish total surveillance of users of the Uanet. The law immediately received the name "Law 404". Firstly, because 404 deputies voted for the bill in the first reading, and secondly, 404 is a server error “page not found”.

    Naturally, Internet access providers actively spoke out against the changes. In particular, the Internet Association of Ukraine sent an open letter to the leadership of the Verkhovna Rada (BP) with a request to support the amendments it had prepared for the second reading of draft law No. 3271 on counteracting the spread of child pornography and to reject draft law No. 1340 when considering second reading.

    The main problem was that the version of the bill prepared for the first and even second readings did not withstand any criticism. Some of the terms mentioned in it are not at all spelled out in the legislation of Ukraine. For example, one of the amendments to the bill obliged consumers of telecommunication services to “notify telecommunication providers of information related to violence, pornography, and violation of intellectual property rights found in information and telecommunication systems, including the Internet”. But this amendment was not accepted. Because, the legislation of Ukraine establishes liability only for concealing grave and very grave crimes. It, the legislation, assigns the functions of ensuring law enforcement functions (yes, exactly so, this is not a tautology) to law enforcement agencies, but not to communication providers. And thirdly, the imposition of certain obligations on the consumer without defining responsibility for the failure to fulfill these obligations does not create the corresponding legal consequences.

    Another problematic amendment obliged communication providers to “store information about all connections of their client with resources access to which is provided by the specified provider”. In addition, “In the event that a client violates the laws of Ukraine, including the distribution of pornographic products using children, telecommunication providers must inform law enforcement agencies.” In other words, the providers wanted to oblige to store all the information about the presence of any of their users on the Internet. Website addresses, IP addresses, referral directions made by users - all this should be kept by providers (for an indefinite period of time).

    And this amendment was reduced to: “operators, telecommunications providers store and provide information about their subscriber’s connections in the manner prescribed by law.” This is how the latest version of the project (dated 4.12.09), part 2 of art. 39 telecommunications law. And there are no contradictions with the current Ukrainian legislation. The second part of Article 32 of the Constitution of Ukraine allows the collection, storage, use and dissemination of confidential information about a person without his consent in cases specified by law, in the interests of national security, economic well-being and human rights.

    It is also important that now the restriction of subscribers to resources, is possible only by court order. Earlier, in previous readings of the law (or rather, bill No. 3271), access restrictions could be applied at the first request of law enforcement agencies. Moreover, special evidence that this particular user seeks to access child pornography was not required.

    It was also decided that the dissemination of child pornography would be punishable by imprisonment for a term of five to ten years. Naturally, with confiscation of both the product itself and the equipment through which these products were manufactured.

    In general, the adopted "Law 404" in its current form really ceased to pose a threat (at least obvious) to the rights and freedoms of law-abiding citizens of Ukraine.

    As a bonus, we present a table (in Ukrainian) of a comparison of amendments to Bill No. 3271 in all three readings + the current version of the Law.

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