Officials plan to reduce the speed of access to sites of unwanted companies

Officials have come up with a new way of putting pressure on foreign companies outside the jurisdiction of the Russian authorities, Vedomosti reports . Already this spring, amendments can be made to the legislation, which will, by a court decision, slow down the speed of access to the websites of violating companies.

This practice will be extended not only to foreign companies. The document developers are the Federal Antimonopoly Service, Roskomnadzor and other interested departments. According to sources, "Vedomosti", the document is at the final stage of approval, and the probability of its adoption is extremely high.

Russian authorities have long been trying to find methods of influencing foreign Internet companies. Many of them, even after the adoption of restrictive laws like the law “On Personal Data”, continue their activities on the territory of the Russian Federation and ignore the requirements of the law.
')
For example, since 2015, the FAS is trying to force Google to pay fines and comply with all the requirements of the department, but the search giant continues to sue and does not intend to pay and obey even in case of loss. Other large players, Facebook and Twitter, also violate the law, which the authorities cannot legally influence: social networks and microblogging services simply do not have official representation on the territory of the Russian Federation, and blocking them is fraught with serious consequences and discontent in society.

Major players are not even afraid of blocking. Not so long ago, LinkedIn social network was blocked on the territory of the Russian Federation, and after failed negotiations with representatives of Roskomnadzor, the company's management publicly admitted that it would not fulfill the initial requirements of the regulator anyway.

“There are a number of foreign Internet companies making money in Russia, but not fulfilling our laws. This is a form of civilized coercion to dialogue, ”said one of the officials.

Representatives of the sphere are not enthusiastic about the initiative of officials. First of all, they point to the technical complexity of the project. For ubiquitous limiting the speed of access to specific resources, it is necessary to implement a system of deep traffic filtering (DPI), which only mobile operators have now. The modernization of the infrastructure of the same conventional providers will require hundreds of millions of dollars. In addition, restricting access to popular resources will lead to reputational damage: ordinary users will blame their provider for improper provision of services. One of the top managers of Yandex also noted that limiting the speed of access will lead to a violation of network neutrality , which will adversely affect Runet as a whole.

Official representatives of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, Roskomnadzor, VimpelCom, MegaFon, MTS, Rostelecom, Mail.ru Group, Yandex and Google declined to comment on Vedomosti’s request.