Naughty sites may slow down
Many foreign Internet companies ignore the decisions of the Russian courts and state authorities, citing the fact that they work according to the laws of the countries in which registered.
Officials figured out how to solve the issue, told “Vedomosti” the staff of several Internet companies, Telecom operators, officials of the two departments and the person familiar with the staff of the presidential administration. According to them, the spring in the legislation could be amended to allow a court decision to slow down access to the sites to offenders of the Russian legislation. And to spread this rule will not just for foreigners.
Among the developers of the bill — the Federal Antimonopoly service (FAS), says one of the interlocutors “Vedomosti”. This was confirmed by a person close to the FAS, adding that the development involved APTLD and other departments. According to him, the initiative is in the final stages of negotiation, including in the presidential administration. The probability of introduction of such regulation is very high, says one person who knows about this project from members of the administration.
Another person close to the administration have heard about the idea: he believes that it is difficult to implement and unlikely to be adopted in its current form. According to him, easier fold increase in fines for offenders, than to implement such a complex technical task. Press Secretary of the President Dmitry Peskov does not know about this initiative. To the state Duma this draft law has not yet been reached, said a representative of the Committee on information policy. Presidential aide Igor Shchegolev, who oversees communications and the Internet, did not respond to calls.
The idea was born during discussions of the case, the FAS against Google, say some interlocutors of “Vedomosti”.
FAS at the end of 2015, Google has recognized a violator of the law on protection of competition: the company had forbidden the manufacturers of mobile Android devices are preinstalled apps of its competitors, one of which is “Yandex” has complained to the FAS. Service fined Google for 438 million rubles and ordered to eliminate violations, but Google didn’t do it. FAS leadership has made in his address a few harsh statements, for example, threatened by its senior managers with jail time. And recently the head of service Igor Artemyev has informed that can apply other measures to Google: “no state will agree that decisions of its courts were not fulfilled. So Google will find many interesting things”. However, recently, the FAS said it is prepared to conclude with the Google settlement agreement.
This kind of regulation has the right to exist and not directly related to the FAS case against Google, said a person close to the state Duma: “There are a number of foreign Internet companies, earning money in Russia, but do not implement our laws. It is a kind of civilized form of coercion to dialogue.”
Facebook and Twitter refused to remove illegal content under the court decision, Roskomnadzor has achieved perpetual locking in the Russian social network LinkedIn, the court found it violated the law on personal data, but the company refused to rectify the violations. However, close access to major resources is impractical, especially during the election period, so it was decided to have recourse to this measure as the reduced speed of communication, said one person familiar with the staff of the presidential administration.
Operators are not enthusiastic about the initiative, says the employee of one of them: the subscribers are to blame for slowing down access to YouTube or Facebook it communication company.
Top-Manager of “Yandex” heard about this initiative and says that her company has nothing to do. “Due to the adoption of such a law may be a violation of network neutrality, which will affect all resources, including us,” he explains. According to him, “Yandex” involved in the development of other amendments that would oblige manufacturers of mobile devices and operating systems to give the user a “window of choice” services (search, browser, maps, etc.) when you first turn on the device.
On the preparation of such amendments know several officials and employees of Internet companies. Amendments about decrease in the speed of the Internet and the “selection window” can go in one package and are likely to be introduced in the Duma in the spring, said an employee of a large Telecom operator. Together with them, may be held and amendments initiated by a working group under the leadership Shchegolev about regulating “large user data”.
It’s a bad idea and, more importantly, difficult to implement, said a top Manager of a large Internet holding company. However, officials are actively discussing this idea, he knows. Technically it is much more complicated than a lock, especially fixed-line operators who have a huge decentralized network, said an employee of the relevant Department.
Mobile operators to make it easier as they have already established a system of deep traffic filtering deep packet inspection (DPI): they allow you to provide subscribers access to portions of sites by blocking or slowing down access to others.
But, for example, “Rostelecom” single DPI throughout the network, and its installation will require investments of hundreds of millions of dollars, said the source “Vedomosti”.
The representatives of FAS, the Ministry of communications, Roskomnadzor, “VimpelCom”, “MegaFon”, MTS, “Rostelecom”, Mail.ru Group, “Yandex”, Google declined to comment.