June 21, the meeting of the Comission of the Hosting Providers and Domain Name Registrars of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) was held. The topic of the meeting was the law in draft #89417-6, amending the Federal Law #436-FZ on the Protection of Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development, the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses, the Federal Law #126-FZ on Communications and #149-FZ On Information, Information technology and Information Protection. The meeting was held as a panel discussion.  

Dmitry Burkov, Chairman of the FAITID Board, and Matvey Alexeev, FAITID CEO, took part in the event.

Dmitry Burkov spoke about the results of the law in draft assessment process: "If the law in draft #89417-6 is adopted, the cost for additional technical equipment for  network providers will be at least $10 billion“. This cost was calculated by the expert only for operators of wired networks on the basis of available data on how many ISPs are operating in the country and what equipment they might need. However, the effectiveness of the "black lists" will be maximum 60%. The remained 40% of the filtered websites will continue to be available.

Matvey Alekseev added: "The idea of the law in draft introduction is noble, but if it is adopted in that form in which it is now, this step will bring multi-million dollar costs to the industry and the industry will have to start where it was 10 years ago considering the quantity and quality of penetration“. During the discussion Alekseev urged his colleagues to the consolidation of the industry efforts in the area of self-regulation.

FAITID representatives made several proposals to the further development of the industry. The project for the localization of the child content within .MOSCOW and .МОСКВА, as well as .ДЕТИ new gTLDs will facilitate children’s access to the content that is not forbidden on the territory of Russia, and will make "intranet for children“ transparent and pure.

After the discussion the following decisions were made:

• Amendments to the Federal Law 436-FZ should be welcomed: in parts that abolish of websites labelling, specify of sign forms of information products and examination procedures.

• Proactive activities of hosting providers and content pre-moderation are not acceptable.

• The "black list“ mechanism should be recognized as ineffective in combating illegal content.

• The fact of misrepresentation on mechanisms and blocked objects in the foreign registry analogues should be considered as unworthy.

• Self-regulation initiatives of the Internet companies in child pornography prevention, like The Russian Internet in the XXI Century: children’s safety Manifest and the operator‘s Charter for Child Pornography Prevention on the Internet should be encouraged and promoted.

• The initiatives for the creation and consolidation of the children’s content should be promoted. In particular, .ДЕТИ and .MOSCOW /.МОСКВА TLDs should be developed.

• Complex approach should be recognized as the most effective one. Under this approach inappropriate content will be blocked on the provider’s level and other inappropriate and harmful content will be blocked by security settings on the computers of end users or by administrations of Internet access points, including the services provided by the telecom operators such as Parental Control.

• The initiative of the Foundation for Assistance for Internet Technologies and Infrastructure Development on the development of information and analytical resource on the Internet, aimed at optimizing relationships among the industry and lawmakers, the Government, should be considered. Online project for discussion of various initiatives both from the industry and from the Government will help to receive the information in time and experts will be able to evaluate it as quick as possible.