Let’s Control Copies instead of Originals! New Way of Controlling National Internet

Abstract

New Internet governance policies in Russia aim at making the Russian Internet independent of the global Internet network. This paper discusses how this aim could be achieved. By combining the Internet governance and legal approaches, this paper offers an original argument that the Russian government is planning to intensify control of the Russian Internet not by trying to control original Internet resources, but rather by setting control over their copies. This paper introduces and discusses a new theory – the theory of copied Internet. This theory explains what points in the Internet infrastructure Russia is planning to copy. Furthermore, this paper addresses the role of foreign Internet companies as builders of this copy. These paper stresses that the coexistence of two Internet infrastructures, the original one and the national copy, may endanger online free expression. The main threat consists in duplicating the Russian Internet’s content layer, which opens a way to manipulate digital speech.