"Russia 404": How much free Internet is left to live
We made the Russia 404 website dedicated to the law on Internet isolation - a timer that counts the time until the law enters into force.
The law on isolating the Russian segment of the Internet will be effective from November 1, 2019: from this day, Russian authorities can oblige Internet providers to block all foreign traffic.
The project is accompanied by a story - a fictional letter written on April 17, 2020, which describes the new reality in which families found themselves living in different countries and isolated from each other by a digital border.
In the telegram channel of the project of the same name, the authors discuss possible options for the development of events after November 1: from the extremely positive, suggesting a boom of Russian Internet services and media, which will replace inaccessible Western counterparts, to the extremely pessimistic, suggesting maximum isolation, stagnation, and lack of freedom.
The law on isolating the Russian segment of the Internet will be effective from November 1, 2019: from this day, Russian authorities can oblige Internet providers to block all foreign traffic.
The counter shows how much we have left to live in a free, uncontrolled Internet; it can also be regarded as a visual deadline for emigration.
- Nick McFly, Eugene Kudashev, authors of the project
The project is accompanied by a story - a fictional letter written on April 17, 2020, which describes the new reality in which families found themselves living in different countries and isolated from each other by a digital border.
Sender: ************ <................ @ mail.ru>
Recipient: ************ *** <................ @ gmail.com>
Date: April 17, 2020
Subject: Another day on the isolated Internet
Hello. I do not know if you receive my letters. I hope that you receive, and that your answers simply do not make their way through the strong walls of our secure, reliable, sovereign Internet. I hope someday by some miracle to immediately get a pile of news from you and read them all day. However, I can’t be at all sure that my letters are really sent somewhere, so rather I write them for myself - like a diary.
In the telegram channel of the project of the same name, the authors discuss possible options for the development of events after November 1: from the extremely positive, suggesting a boom of Russian Internet services and media, which will replace inaccessible Western counterparts, to the extremely pessimistic, suggesting maximum isolation, stagnation, and lack of freedom.