<nettime> FC: Russian government wants to restrict sites in .RU domain

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

     [orig to <politech@vorlon.mit.edu>]

**********

>Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 18:19:31 -0500
>To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
>From: Barry Steinhardt <Barrys@aclu.org>
>Subject: Governmental control over .RU zone
>
>
>Declan,
>
>Here is a disturbing report from Russia that was posted to the Global 
>Internet Liberty Campaign (www.GILC.org) list. Sergei Smirnov of the 
>Russian Human Rights Network reports that the Russian government plans to 
>control the .RU domain with the prospect that web sites might be licensed.
>
>Russia, of course, is also the home of SORM the edict which forces ISPs to 
>route all email traffic to the state security service the FSB. (The FSB is 
>the domestic successor to the KGB). SORM is currently being challenged by a 
>St Petersburg ISP and the human rights group Citizens Watch as a violation 
>of European Human Rights Law. The issue. is likely to end up in the 
>European Court of Justice, where it could set an important precedent for 
>all of the European nations who belong to the Council of Europe..
>
>Barry Steinhardt
>
>
>On 28 December 1998 Russian premier minister Vladimir Putin and members of
>the goverment met Russian Internet community representatives. During that
>meeting the minister of communication and information Leonid Reitman
>announced his plans on governmental control over registration of new domain
>names in Russian .ru zone. A new structure will be created for this purpose
>only, said the minister. In draft document obtained from the government it
>is described as new sites must be created and registered.
>
>Separately from all other events this information means almost nothing since
>there are no strict limitations in papers presented by the government.
>However the growing interest of Russian government towards Internet became
>bad tradition after Reitman declared earlier that Internet should be
>controlled by the government for "bad sites" to be closed and next attempt
>of Russian powers to review the Internet "official status" as mass media
>with mandatory registration and licensing of websites.
>
>The governmental discomfort has been amplified after two major events. The
>first one was the Chechen site which offered "alternative" information about
>the current war campaign (often polar to one produced by governmental
>media). The second one was scandal around the results of parliamenrtary
>elections published on the Web (it is prohibited by Russian laws to publish
>such materials in mass media while elections are going on; however, Internet
>is not mentioned in home legislation as "mass media").
>
>Sergei Smirnov
>Human Rights Network
>http://www.hro.org
>
>
>
>________________________________________________________
>Barry Steinhardt				212 549 2508 (v)
>Associate Director				212 549 2656 (f)
>American Civil Liberties Union		Barrys@aclu.org
>125 Broad Street
>New York, NY 10004				http://www.aclu.org
> 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology
To subscribe: send a message to majordomo@vorlon.mit.edu with this text:
subscribe politech
More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net