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

Internet Governance in Russia – Sovereign Basics for Independent Runet

RusNet on the Offensive

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Russia’s nuanced approach to internet governance, focusing particularly on its management of the Runet (Russian Internet). Through an in-depth exploration, the article examines the intricate strategies and tools employed by the Russian government to regulate online content and control the dissemination of information. Central to this analysis are the surveillance mechanisms of SORM (System for Operative Investigative Activities) and DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) technology, which the article meticulously scrutinizes to elucidate their role in enabling state censorship and surveillance. Moreover, the article delves into the multifaceted implications of Russia’s internet governance tactics. It explores how these strategies impact civil liberties, political dissent, and the overall landscape of online expression within Russia. Additionally, the article investigates the effects on technological innovation, considering how stringent internet regulations may stifle the growth of Russian internet giants and impede the development of innovative digital solutions. By navigating the complexities of Russia’s digital governance landscape, this article aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the broader implications for global internet governance norms and practices. Through its detailed examination and analysis, the article sheds light on the evolving dynamics of internet regulation and the challenges posed by authoritarian control in the digital age.

The paper is devoted to the complex space-time analysis of the development of the Internet in the Russian Federation. The following quantitative and infrastructural aspects of regional disparities in the spread of the Internet are discussed: the regional distribution of the Internet audience, growth poles, disparities in the penetration level, etc. Changes in the geography of the Internet that took place over the first decade of the 21st century are revealed. Features of the Russia’s geographical position and the related significant role of wireless technologies and of the mobile Internet in particular are described. The network and organizational structure of the Russian Internet and its development prospects are covered. Qualitative aspects of regional disparities in the spread of the Internet in Russia are analyzed separately (the activity and effectiveness of the use of the Internet by the population). The dynamics and regional disparities in the development of the Internet and e-commerce market in Russia are examined. Conclusions about significant decentralization in the regional distribution of Internet users in Russia, which occurred in the first decade of the 21st century, are made. The rapid proliferation of mobile communication technologies and mobile Internet penetration, in terms of which Russia is among the world leaders, plays a significant role in smoothing of geographical contrasts. However, a sufficiently rapid reduction in quantitative imbalances inside the country is accompanied by the preservation of significant qualitative gaps in the sphere of creation of Internet information resources and the Internet market, where there is still a monopoly of metropolitan areas.

The paper is devoted to a complex spatiotemporal analysis of the development of the Internet in the Russian Federation. The following quantitative and infrastructural aspects of regional disparities in the spread of the Internet are discussed: the regional distribution of the Internet audience, growth poles, disparities in the penetration level, etc. Changes in the geography of the Internet that took place over the first decade of the 21st century are revealed. Features of Russia’s geographical position and the related significant role of wireless technologies and the mobile Internet in particular are described. The network and organizational structure of the Russian Internet and its development prospects are covered. Qualitative aspects of regional disparities in the spread of the Internet in Russia are analyzed separately (the activity and effectiveness of the population’s use of the Internet). The dynamics and regional disparities in the development of the Internet and e-commerce market in Russia are examined. Conclusions are made about the significant decentralization in the regional distribution of Internet users in Russia in the first decade of the 21st century. The rapid proliferation of mobile communication technologies and mobile Internet penetration, in which Russia is among the world leaders, plays a significant role in smoothing geographical contrasts. However, a sufficiently rapid reduction in quantitative imbalances inside the country is accompanied by retention of significant qualitative gaps in the creation of Internet information resources and the Internet market, where metropolitan areas still have a monopoly.

Discourse about sovereignty and Internet in Russia is predominantly focused on control of harmful content and information and its negative influence on the political regime and society. However, content control is not the only way to exercise sovereignty over digital media and the Web. Recently, the Russian government started to realize that without controlling Internet infrastructure, most strategies to filter and block Web sites and services are wasted. In the past five to seven years, Russia invested a lot of efforts in the development and adoption of new laws and regulations that deal with RuNet infrastructure, where the aim of centralized Internet traffic control was a real novelty, albeit a very ambitious political goal. This article tries to address the pitfalls of the control-by-infrastructure endeavor of the Russian government through four emblematic cases: the implementation of the “Revizor” system to control ISPs’ compliance to filter Internet resources from the blacklist; the battle to block Telegram messenger in Russia; the implementation of law FZ-90 (popularly referred to as the law “on Sovereign RuNet”); and finally, the ongoing experiment with free access to ‘socially significant Web sites’, which may have serious consequences in the future if used as a ‘white list’ of permitted Web resources. These four cases were chosen because they are deeply interconnected and show how the government has been gradually implementing infrastructure control in connection to content control.

Techno-Politics as Network(ed) Struggles

While much Internet research focuses on Internet content and usage, another important set of questions exists at a level of technological design and governance orthogonal to content and therefore generally outside of public view. Internet governance scholars, rather than studying Internet usage at the content level, examine what is at stake in the design, administration, and manipulation of the Internet's actual protocological and material architecture. This architecture is not external to politics and culture but, rather, deeply embeds the values and policy decisions that ultimately structure how we access information, how innovation will proceed, and how we exercise individual freedom online. "Governance" in the Internet governance context requires qualification because relevant actors are not only governments. Governance is usually understood as the efforts of nation states and traditional political structures to govern. Sovereign governments do perform certain Internet governance functions such as regulating computer fraud and abuse, performing antitrust oversight, and responding to Internet security threats. Unfortunately, some governments also use content filtering and blocking techniques for surveillance and censorship of citizens. Many other areas of Internet governance, such as Internet protocol design and coordination of critical Internet resources, have historically not been the exclusive purview of governments but of new transnational institutional forms and of private ordering. Without this qualification, the Internet governance nomenclature might incorrectly convey that this type of scholarship somehow advocates for greater government control of the Internet (Johnson, Crawford, and Palfrey 2004).The study of Internet governance is concerned with a number of overarching questions. How are we to understand the role of private Internet ordering and corporate social responsibility in determining communicative contexts of political and cultural expression? How can conflicting values be balanced: for example, the desire for interoperability versus the need to limit some exchanges based on authentication and trust? How should critical Internet resources be allocated, and by whom, to maximize technical efficiency but also achieve social goals? How do repressive governments “govern” the Internet through filtering, blocking, and other restraints on freedom of expression? What is the appropriate relationship between sovereign nation-state governance and nonterritorial modes of Internet governance? What are the connections between Internet protocol design, innovation, and individual civil liberties? To what extent are the problems of Internet governance creating new global governance institutions and what are the implications? Internet governance research brings these important public interest issues to light and produces the theoretical and applied research that influences some of the most critical policy debates of our time. This paper presents a taxonomy for understanding current themes and controversies in Internet governance, presents a canon of interdisciplinary Internet governance scholarship, and identifies some emerging issues that present a moment of opportunity for new research. The following are the current themes this paper describes: critical Internet resources; Internet protocols; Internet governance-related intellectual property rights; Internet security and infrastructure management; and communication rights. Areas in need of additional research involves the increasing privatization of Internet governance, particularly at the level of infrastructure management. Recommended areas for additional study include: 1) private sector backbone peering agreements at Internet exchange points (IXPs); 2) network management via deep packet inspection; and 3) the increasing use of trade secrecy laws in information intermediation.

In reference to Russia, the concept of “Internet sovereignty” is commonly used to evoke the state’s efforts to tighten its control over the Internet in order to consolidate a non-democratic political regime. Many scholars have discussed Russia’s “sovereign Internet law,” adopted in 2019, yet the precise meaning of both “sovereign” and “Internet” in this context has largely been overlooked. In this article, we attempt to problematize the use of both concepts by drawing on the history of the Internet in Russia to accentuate the structural asymmetries of power in “global” Internet governance. We argue that Russia’s Internet sovereignty claims, grasped in the context of these asymmetries, can be seen as an expression of counter-hegemonic tendencies. Moreover, a historical account of the Internet’s transformation in Russia problematizes a conception of “Internet sovereignty” as unitary and unchanging.

Russia’s Surveillance State

When the prevailing system of governing divides the planet into mutually exclusive territorial monopolies of force, what institutions can govern the Internet, with its transnational scope, boundless scale, and distributed control? Given filtering-censorship by states and concerns over national cyber-security, it is often assumed that the Internet will inevitably be subordinated to the traditional system of nation-states. In Networks and States, Milton Mueller counters this, showing how Internet governance poses novel and fascinating governance issues that give rise to a global politics and new transnational institutions. Drawing on theories of networked governance, Mueller provides a broad overview of Internet governance from the formation of ICANN to the clash at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the formation of the Internet Governance Forum, the global assault on peer-to-peer file sharing and the rise of national-level Internet control and security concerns. Mueller identifies four areas of conflict and coordination that are generating a global politics of Internet governance: intellectual property, cyber-security, content regulation, and the control of critical Internet resources (domain names and IP addresses). He investigates how recent theories about networked governance and peer production can be applied to the Internet, offers case studies that illustrate the Internet's unique governance problems, and charts the historical evolution of global Internet governance institutions, including the formation of a transnational policy network around the WSIS. Internet governance has become a source of conflict in international relations. Networks and States explores the important role that emerging transnational institutions could play in fostering global governance of communication-information policy.

Today, the internet has become a very fragmented research object that can be understood differently depending on contexts, research goals and methods. However, the internet [in this text, we write “internet” with a lower case “i”, following the process of decapitalisation of this term. The logic behind this process is that we understand internet as “computer network connecting a number of smaller networks” rather than as “the global network that evolved out of ARPANET, the early Pentagon network” (Herring S. Should you be capitalizing the word “internet”? Wired, 2015)] of a particular country is often treated by researchers as an umbrella term combining heterogeneous phenomena and practices. In this chapter we propose an alternative way of analysing the internet in Russia’s regions. Contrary to the concept of RuNet as common space, we explore diversity of what the internet is in different localities in Russia. The cases of five cities aim to illustrate the variety of histories and usage patterns of the internet in particular locations, such as in cities in Russia’s regions. Qualitative data consisting of interviews, observations, digital ethnography and archival documents have paved an additional (to more conventional quantitative data) way to explore the internet as a complex phenomenon rooted in previous development, local cultural and societal norms and political and economic situations. In particular, we stress the significance of the early internet, the diversity of basic and alternative platforms, the access and infrastructure divide as objects that are important to understand the development of the internet in a particular location.

Andrey A. Shcherbovich - Lecturer, Department of the Constitutional and Administrative Law, National Research University Higher School of EconomicsAddress: 20, Myasnitskaya Street, Moscow, 101000, Russian FederationE-mail: ashcherbovich@hse.ru The decision-making system in international organizations is still very conservative. The composition of international forums that can generate significant international instruments has not changed for centuries. Only diplomats and representatives of international organizations whose credentials have been confirmed in a certain way are admitted to international decision-making. The Internet Governance Forum (IGF), under the auspices of the UN, UNESCO and the International Telecommunication Union, was established in 2006 on the basis of the World Summit on the Information Society, which is today the world’s most authoritative international discussion forum on Internet governance, though its potential to achieve the best regulation of international Internet governance processes is not fully used. The basis for this regulation is the multistakeholder approach, which consists in a multiplicity of categories of the decision-making mechanism, including, in addition to the traditional representatives of states and international organizations, civil society, business, the academic and technical community, the media, and other interested stakeholders. This research is expected to provide guidance for improving the global Internet governance arrangements, taking into account the interests of all categories of participants, as well as to establish procedural rules for decision-making based on the multistakeholder approach in Internet governance to give the Internet Governance Forum the opportunity to adopt international “soft law” instruments. An example of this is the Draft Charter of Rights and Principles on the Internet, developed by the Dynamic Coalition on Human Rights and the principles of the Internet Governance Forum - something comparable to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with regard to the Internet. The need to bring human rights instruments to the Internet determines the direction of the development of programs and policies in global Internet governance and the role of the Internet Governance Forum in these processes.

Subject Control of the internet in Russia. Significance Aware of the opportunities the internet offers political activists as well as criminals and terrorists, the Russian government is developing technologies and regulations to monitor and control the web. Intrusive measures introduced this year give security agencies access to personal information and web traffic within the country. As a warning to foreign service providers, the social media platform LinkedIn has been subject to a blocking order since November 17. Impacts Foreign companies operating in Russia will be pressured or persuaded to comply with restrictive regulations. Where compliance lays users open to scrutiny, it will entail reputational costs for foreign firms. Security agencies will acquire greater powers and technical ability to monitor and intercept internet traffic.

Coding and Encoding Rights in Internet Infrastructure. Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Grassroots Ordering in Internet Governance