Charhinets intimidating Belarusian Internet

2 October the autumn parliamentary session was opened. Today the project of the law “About information, informatization and information security“ was examined. The bill includes the articles aiming to directly regulation of the information in the Internet. Will it be possible to use censorship in the Internet and increase control?

Lawyer Andrei Bastunets said in the interview to “Euroradio” that many problems remain unsolved: “From the one hand, it is said in the bill that the Internet activity will be free, but as it is written below - in the frames determined by the Belarusian laws”.

What are the frames? Project e-belarus.org head Mihal Darashkevich considers the article about the registration of resources to be dangerous:

“Unfortunately, it is said that registration will be free-will, but we can suppose that free-will means the unregistered will not be admitted to some things. For example, you don’t register your resource and a situation arises that only the registered can participate in some actions”.

Last year a decree was passed that the e-shops can be registered only in BY domain and must be hosted in Belarus. Andrei Bastunets is sure that the regulation of the Internet in only one country is imperfect:

“Some sites can register in other domain zones, for example .org, .info and others. I don’t think there are bans to do so. From the other hand, it is a question of how the activity of these resources, not necessarily created by Belarusian citizens, will be regulated”.

Besides the above mentioned weaknesses, the experts mark out a great number of different spheres that are going to be covered by the law and the problem of the incomplete wordings. Mihal Darashkevich also remarks that the law is more a political symbol, which is used as an instrument of threat.

The chairman of the permanent committee of the “council of republic” of the “national assembly” of Belarus on international affairs and national security Mikalai Charhinets said to Euroradio that such a law is necessary, because every country wants to regulate such problems in the legislative way:

“The registration should be regarded as a simple calculation, it is made not to permit or forbid - it’s just a registration. The activity is taken under control, in case of need a site can be closed”.