MOSCOW, November 12. /TASS/. Russia’s telecommunications industry should be regulated not only through bans and prohibitions but also by using stimulating measures, head of Russia’s communications supervisory service, Alexander Zharov, said Wednesday at the opening of Internet forum RIW 2014 (Russian Interactive Week 2014) in Moscow.
The official positively evaluated all the new bills the government adopted this year against online extremism, Internet piracy, children’s pornography and other dangerous and unsorted material.
“These protective measures that the government has taken are logical. Nevertheless, taking into account the immense contribution of telecommunications industry to the country’s economy, which is bigger than 10% of Russia’s GDP, it is time to consider encouraging bills and real stimulating measures for mass communications and the web”, he said.
Zharov believes the country needs a consolidated strategy of telecommunications development, which would adapt to the governmental and market changes, “a strategy that would be based not only on prevention and prohibition, which, I believe, are in normal operation at the moment, but also on encouraging measures”.
Meanwhile, head of State Duma Committee on Information Policy and Technologies Leonid Levin said that Russian Internet was new to the legal environment. “Evidently, sooner or later Russian and global Internet will be somehow regulated, despite the fact that the web has been free of any restrictions and limitations for a very long time”, he stressed.
Levin added that many countries had already adopted the same strict policy in the Internet as in other spheres, so Russia should also be ready for online restrictions. He stressed, though, that State Duma did not intend to put the entire web under strict control, and it was not their ultimate goal.