Wednesday, September 2, 2015
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RUSSIANS NOT FAZED BY WEB CENSORSHIP N
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early half of Russians (49 percent) believe information on the Internet should be subject to censorship, while 58 percent would not mind if – in the event of a national threat – the Russian segment of the Internet were shut down completely, according to a February 2015 report that drew attention from Russian media in early August. Titled “Benchmarking Public Demand: Russia’s Appetite for Internet Control,” the report was written by Erik Nisbet, associate professor of communication, political science and environmental policy at Ohio State University, as part of the Internet Policy Observatory, a program at the Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) at the University of Pennsylvania. The Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), in partnership with the CGCS, designed and implemented the survey that formed the basis for the study. Among the most “dangerous” content that should be banned, Russians name homosexual propaganda (59 percent), social network groups linked to organizing anti-government protests (46 percent) and videos by the Pussy Riot (46 percent). “From the perspective of assessing the public’s demand for Internet freedom, the results are somewhat discouraging,” concludes Monroe Price, head of the CGCS, in the report.
Source of a vague threat Although the study came out in English in February 2015, national Russian media took notice of it only in early August, after VTsIOM published the findings. The poll reached Russian residents more than 18 years of age in 42 regions of the country. Of those polled, 42 percent use the Internet all the time, 20 percent use the Internet from time to time, and 38 percent do not use it at all. Margin of error aside, the number of Russians who support Internet censorship remains stable at 54 percent as of an October 2014 poll, according to the Levada Center, another pollster that spoke with RBTH. “They are in favor of censorship when it comes to things like child pornography,” Levada Center analyst Denis Volkov explains. “And there is an important distinction between the opinion of those who use the Internet and those who do not. For the latter, the Internet is a source of a vague threat. They do not know what to do about it and so it seems to them that the best thing may be just to ban everything.” An invisible ban It is important to note that the question about a total ban was a hypothetical one: Russia’s constitution bans
49 percent of Russians are not opposed to Internet censorship censorship, and President Vladimir Putin has more than once declared that “Russia has no intention of restricting access to the Internet or taking it under total control.” But however supportive Putin may be in word, the Kremlin has created an environment of self-censorship on the Internet. In April 2014, the Duma passed amendments to an anti-terrorist bill that would allow Russian bloggers to be prosecuted or fined for publishing content that might threaten national security. In fact, since 2012, the number of initiatives aimed to block various Internet resources has grown steadily, says Karen Kazaryan, chief analyst with the Russian Association of Electronic Communications. “Not all of them become laws, but a large number of those initiatives, our experts conclude, were restrictive in nature, i.e. aimed not at developing the industry but rather at controlling the Internet,” Kazaryan points out. For example, 2012 saw the introduction of a mechanism for blocking websites without a court order, as
“From the perspective of assessing the public’s demand for Internet freedom, the results are somewhat discouarging.” well as a register of banned Internet resources. Since 2014, it has become possible to block Internet resources containing calls to extremism and mass unrest without a court ruling for an indefinite period of time. However, in an interview with the BBC Russian Service, Anton Nosik, a prominent Russian blogger and online media expert, questioned whether the study was truly representative. In practice, he added, censorship in the Russian segment of the Internet already exists. “There are several dozen or several thousand district courts in Russia, each of which has powers to ban
websites, including Wikipedia, YouTube, Google,” Nosik says. “All it takes is a ruling by a district court. When that ruling comes into force, the Justice Ministry enters the website banned by the court on the federal register of extremist literature. From that moment on, the website in question must be banned in the whole territory of Russia.” Obligation of the state Nevertheless, attempts to control the Internet are natural while the state is trying to develop the Internet sector, as there are also cyber threats to be taken into account, according to Irina Levova, director of strategic projects at the Institute of Internet Studies. “It is a direct obligation of any state to ensure the security of its basic infrastructure and citizens,” Levova says. “In the USA too, there is the first amendment that bans censorship; however, in 2001, the Patriot Act was adopted, which in effect makes it possible to do anything when it concerns national security.” On Aug. 24 the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) instructed telecom providers to block access to a Wikipedia article about the drug charas. Although Roskomnadzor ordered providers to block access only to the page that contains the article in question, since Wikipedia operates on the basis of the HTTPS protocol (which does not allow for individual pages to be blocked), access to the whole of Wikipedia was blocked. On Aug. 25, though, the article was removed from the unified register of banned information, and access to Wikipedia was restored. Overall, most people prefer not to pay attention to restrictive initiatives because they are not directly affected, conclude experts. At least, so far there has been no rise in protest sentiment toward this issue. “Many people took notice of the proposal by the Russian Union of Copyright Holders to charge 300 rubles ($4) a year from every Internet user for the benefit of copyright owners,” Levova points out. “But that was more of an exception since the move concerned people’s financial interests. Everything else is received normally; after all, people are not expected to grasp what legal risks these initiatives may cause for individual companies.” Denis Volkov of the Levada Center agrees: “The majority of people certainly do not see it as an attempt to restrict their right of access to information.” ■ YEKATERINA SINELSCHIKOVA RBTH