Russian Paper Reports on Lawmakers’ Move to Regulate Internet

Text of report by heavyweight centrist Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 12 February

[Article by Ivan Rodin: "Senator gets on web. Slutsker proposes registering popular sites as mass media outlets"]

A draft law is being prepared in the Federation Council [the upper house of the Russian parliament] that would require virtually all of the more-or-less popular internet sites to be registered as mass media outlets. The criterion would be the number of hits. The authors refuse to talk about the details, but clearly what is at issue here is an attempt to introduce censorship on the internet. Political party websites, as well as the popular Kompromat.ru and Antikompromat.ru, would all come “under fire”. Not to mention certain pages of LiveJournal [Russia's most popular blogging platform], which are viewed by thousands of people every day. Experts say this undertaking is hardly realistic.

The document’s author, Senator Vladimir Slutsker, has proposed establishing a threshold of 1,000 daily hits, beyond which a site would be classified as a media outlet requiring mandatory registration.

This figure – 1,000 hits a day – was chosen by analogy with the print media. Article 12 of the Law “On Mass Media” requires that a publication be registered if its circulation exceeds 1,000 copies. Vladimir Slutsker, deputy chairman of the Federation Council’s Joint Commission on Nationalities Policy and Relations Between the State and Religious Associations, announced yesterday that the relevant amendments to the media law would already be submitted to the State Duma during the current spring session.

The senator’s staff explained to Nezavisimaya Gazeta that no date has yet been set for submitting [the amendments], and that the text is still being worked on – both the conceptual and legal aspects. At the end of this month, for example, the draft will be discussed by internet experts. As for Slutsker, he has stated that “first of all, the official registration of web-based media will force internet publications to play by civilized rules, and, secondly, it will serve as a kind of proof that publications are not publishing ‘dirt’”. By all appearances, it was precisely the recent events surrounding Slutsker himself, which culminated in the arrest of journalist [Oleg] Lurye for blackmailing the senator with the threat of publishing compromising information, that forced the lawmaker to devote himself to this issue in real earnest.

Slutsker openly says that the reason he is proposing the mandatory registration of highly-visited sites is not just to civilize them, but also to ensure that the real media cannot with impunity use whatever information has been posted on the virtual media. The senator reminded journalists that “Article 57 (of the media law – Ed.) currently exempts the media from liability for publishing slanderous or unreliable information if this information is a verbatim reproduction of reports and materials disseminated by another media outlet”. In Slutsker’s opinion, “this provision creates a loophole in the law for unscrupulous journalists and publications, who can reprint any disinformation from the internet and bear no liability for doing so”.

In order to close this loophole, it is proposed that a single clarification should be added to Article 57. It will only be possible to cite information without fear or consequence if it comes from registered media outlets. And for that purpose it will be necessary to compel as many websites as possible to go through this procedure. The problem, according to the relevant experts we spoke with, is that 1,000 hits a day is, of course, a very good result, and not all sites can boast of such numbers. The well-known and interesting online publications have already passed this threshold, however, so all of the channels for the dissemination of information that sometimes really is unverified but which often comes from anonymous sources will in fact be shut off with the help of Slutsker’s amendments.

It should be pointed out that the authorities have so far managed to keep the virtual information sphere from breaking through to the real one. But this is clearly becoming more difficult with every passing day. It would appear, therefore, that Slutsker’s initiative is assured of Kremlin support. It was not without reason, for instance, that One Russia deputy Boris Reznik, despite already being aware of the initiative, turned down Nezavisimaya Gazeta’s request for comment. On the other hand, Mikhail Fedotov, the real author of the existing media law, which was adopted back in 1991 by the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta: “All attempts to regulate the internet are thus doomed to failure.” As he put it, “you cannot require anyone to register sites until you have decided who this obligation applies to: whether it applies to Russian citizens only or to American, Japanese, Chinese and others as well. Fedotov pointed out that a site can be posted in any domain, underscoring at the same time that Russian sovereignty does not even extend to the .ru domain. In the expert’s opinion, “the legislation should try to achieve feasible tasks”, not to regulate the internet. “There is no point trying to build dams in the ocean when what you should be building are ships,” he declared. Nevertheless, Mikhail Fedotov did not rule out the possibility that the fuss over internet regulation might be used as a cover to take specific measures against certain sites or individuals.

Originally published by Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Moscow, in Russian 12 Feb 08.

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