What can Russian users and IT companies expect if new bills become fully operational?

2015 was generous with bills to regulate the IT industry. As stated in the report of the Russian Association of Electronic Companies ( RAEC ), this will allow "to ensure Russia's digital sovereignty and limit the information and technological dependence of our high-tech industry on the influence of the West."

At the same time, analysts of RAEC believe that 24 out of 39 bills are to some degree pernicious for the Russian IT market.

RBC selected the most important legislative initiatives in the industry and found out how this could turn out for users.
')

1. Blocking torrent trackers and sites with “pirated” content

Next year, Russian torrent trackers will be blocked, Alexander Zharov, the head of Roskomnadzor, promised on December 21. We are talking about at least the 15 most popular resources - Rutracker.org , Rutor.org , Pleer.com , Kinokubik.com , Kinobolt.ru, Online.stepashka.com , Tushkan.net , Kinozal.tv , Tvserial-online.net , Seedoff .net , Bobfilm.net , Wood-film.ru , Kinovo.tv , Torrentor.net , Dream-film.net . For all these sites, there are already decisions of the Moscow City Court on eternal blocking, most of them were taken on the claims of one of the rightholders - Bazelevs Distribution, a company belonging to Timur Bekmambetov’s Bazelevs group.

Created in 2004, RuTracker.org is the most popular website in Russia in the file sharing category: according to TNS, its audience in September was 10.1 million users, and according to the website itself, more than 14.5 million people are registered on the portal.

The opportunity to achieve a life-long blocking of resources with illegal content from right holders appeared from May 1, 2015, when the amendments to the Law “On Information, Information Technologies and Protection of Information” came into force. According to the amendments, if the same copyright holder wins the copyright case in court twice, the offending site will be blocked. The same amendments expanded the scope of the anti-piracy law: if until May it only extended to films and TV shows, now all types of content, including books, music, software, everything except photos.

However, the torrent trackers, whose representatives have said many times that they did not receive official notifications from supervisory authorities and learned about the claims against themselves from the media, are ready to block. The same RuTracker.org has already recommended its users to bypass restrictions using anonymizers, technical means that allow changing the device’s IP address and thus loading pages that are denied access for Russian users, but open to residents of other countries.

2. Transfer of personal data to Russia

Several bills in the IT industry, adopted by the State Duma or supported at the highest level, affect the work of foreign companies in Russia.

In September, the so-called personal data law came into force, obliging foreign organizations to keep personal information of Russians in our country. In total, 2.6 million firms in Russia work with personal data, Zharov noted. Many large companies, such as Samsung , Apple , Lenovo , Uber , Booking , Viber , have already reported that they have adjusted to the new requirement. But there is still the question of the readiness of Facebook , Twitter and Google to store some of the information in Russia.

If these corporations refuse to transfer personal data of Russians, their sites will be entered in the register of violators and may be blocked by a court decision. Roskomnadzor will begin checks from January 1, 2016.

3. Restricting government procurement and imposing VAT on software and IT service providers

In November, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a government decree, which obliges state agencies to substantiate the choice of foreign procurement programs from January 1. To determine whether a foreign product has a Russian counterpart, will help create a registry of domestic software. In December, President Vladimir Putin supported a similar demand in the procurement of state-owned companies. The Ministry of Communications and Mass Media proposed to give price preferences to suppliers of domestic IT-services, equipment and software in the amount of 15%. According to IDC, in 2014, government agencies acquired IT products by about $ 40 million. The loss of this segment could push foreign companies to either leave Russia or raise prices.

In addition, in late December, a bill was submitted to the lower house of parliament, according to which e-service providers will start paying VAT - it is primarily aimed at foreign companies. Under the action of this initiative are, for example, the App Store and Google Play mobile applications stores, all developers and sellers of games and software: the issue price for the market can be tens of billions of rubles a year, RBC wrote.

4. Monitoring the work of instant messengers

Roskomnadzor is developing proposals for regulating the work of instant messengers in Russia. As follows from the draft of the draft law, which the newspaper was able to familiarize with, the laws “On Information” and “On Communication” can include the concept of “information and communication services” - this activity will imply the transfer of “text, voice and graphic messages, technologically inseparable related to communication services provided by third parties on the data transmission networks of telecom operators ”.

The authors of the document propose, firstly, to make the development companies of such services work only under an agreement with telecom operators, and secondly, to force them to inform the authorized body, Roskomnadzor, about their work. “These are not only instant messengers. These are cinemas and financial services, ”specified the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov.

Zharov later stated that Roskomnadzor "does not want to impose restrictions on the work of instant messengers in Russia," while "developing proposals for regulating the activities of OTT operators" (OTT, over the top is a technology that allows you to transfer content over provider networks).

5. "The right to oblivion"

From January 1, the Russians get a chance to “clean out” disagreeable information about themselves from search engines: the State Duma adopted corresponding amendments, which received the unofficial name “law on the right to oblivion”, in June.

Now search engines are obliged to stop issuing links to irrelevant, unreliable and disseminated information in violation of the law, at the request of a citizen. For example, as the deputies themselves explained, a former official could come with such a request in order to erase references to publications about his civil service, or a person who has already received a diploma, and on the Internet he is represented without a higher education.

To hide information from the search engine, the user must contact the search engine operator and justify the request for deletion: if the operator does not need additional information, then within 10 days he either stops issuing links or motivates his refusal. The user can appeal the decision of the search engine in court; failure to execute a court decision threatens the search engine with a fine of up to 1 million rubles.

However, the law “on the right to oblivion” has a reverse side, representatives of Internet companies warned: the termination of the issuance of links is fraught for users with loss of access to truthful, but not pleasing to former officials and big businessmen information about their lives and careers.