It’s not 1984 — Russian web community decries Putin’s proposed curbs

Khotin’s reference to George Orwell’s novel is his response to several proposals from Putin’s ministers over the past month. The proposed ministerial acts outline new, aggressive regulations for the Russian internet.

Two proposals are causing the most concern. The first, which became public a few days before the new year, would transfer control of “.ru” domain names, Russia’s equivalent of .com, .org., etc., from a private organisation to the government bureaucracy. The second would require news sites on the net to get a license from the Media Ministry, raising fears of restrictions on press freedoms.

“Business can’t grow insuch circumstances,” says Khotin about the government’s increasing interference with the net. Business use of the internet has surged in Russia. Market-research firm Dataquest, San Jose, Calif., predicts the number of businesses using the Web will grow 80 per cent this year. Other recent estimates put the business-to-business sector of Russian e-commerce at a modest $40 million to $90 million in 1999, but growing at a rate of 200 per cent annually.

Business-to-consumer sales online are believed to be between $1 million and $3 million for 1999 and doubling each year. Another research firm, International Data Corp. of Framingham, Mass., estimates that 1.95 million Russians were using the internet by the end of 1999. And Dataquest predicts compound average growth in internet-access revenue of more than 47 per cent from 1998 to 2003.

Many of the news sites responsible for those rising usage figures are abuzz with discussions about the government proposals.Some say that because the proposals aren’t yet law, await-and-see attitude is best. But others see the government’s mere consideration of such regulations as bad news.

“The existence of such drafts is an evidence of totalitarian-oriented minds of our Russian bureaucrats,” says Anatoly Levenchuk, moderator of Russia’s Libertarium site. Libertarium.ru is a base of operations for discussion about SORM-2, another proposed ministerial act that lets authorities read incoming and outgoing e-mail messages via monitoring devices placed at internet-service providers. “There is a clear intention of the state to control the internet,” says Michael Novikov, chief executive officer and founder of Admin Ltd., an Internet and e-commerce consulting group in St. Petersburg.

Levenchuk and others from various nongovernmental organisations have written and posted an open letter to the government, objecting to the proposals. Novikov thinks public resistance to the government’s plans is critical, as it may set the tone for all further interactions between the internetcommunity and the government.

“I think those Internet-regulation initiatives are tests on society resistance,” Novikov says. “If they are swallowed, then society is easily manipulated.” Others worry that such a back-and-forth between the Putin government and the internet community could produce trouble. “The stabilising effect of some tightening of control will be good for Russia’s economy. The question is just how far Putin can push before there is a destabilising backlash?” says David Bain, chief executive of Global Information Services and Technologies Inc., an Arlington, Va., consulting and publishing company specialising in emerging markets. “And how will Putin restrategise when the backlash does happen?”

If the proposals become law, Russians might well find ways to work around the regulations, as they have learned to do. But those work-arounds could again land businesses in hot water.

“And that’s another stupidity of the document [about government control of .ru domain names] it’s soeasy to technically avoid the proposed regulation,” says Novikov, explaining that a Russian company could register itself as a .com, for example, rather than a .ru. “The problem is how enforcement bodies will react to such an avoidance.”

Khotin, whose company employs more than 80 people, says he hopes the government will allow the internet and software markets to keep growing. But he’s not overly optimistic. “Let’s hope we will live long enough to see it,” he says.

— The Wall Street Journal