MOSCOW, May 22./TASS/. The chairman of Council of the Federation Committee on Information Policy Alexei Pushkov has expressed confidence that foreign IT companies, in particular Facebook and Google, will open their branches or representative offices in Russia so that not to lose "a huge part of the information market".
The bill submitted to the State Duma on Friday obliges owners of large foreign Internet resources with a daily audience of over 500,000 Russian users to create branches in the Russian Federation, open representative offices or establish Russian legal entities that must fully represent the interests of parent companies. Large foreign internet companies, whose owners do not comply with requirements for opening branches or representative offices in Russia may find there services blocked. The authors of the document were members of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy and Alexei Pushkov.
"I don’t envisage that Google or Facebook will refuse to register in Russia. If they refuse to register, they will be blocked, they will lose the Russian segment. I don’t see any reason whatsoever for these corporations to lose a huge part of the information market due to a stupid principled stance," the senator told TASS.
The senator does not believe that any foreign IT company will decide against opening a representative office in Russia. According to him, the requirements of the bill are "reasonable enough" and are not punitive or prohibitive.
"These IT companies see Russia as a major part of their global system of incomes, along with the digital and ideological presence. We must not underestimate this," he said. "The Russian segment of the Internet is very sizable - not only nationals of the Russian Federation, but also Russian-speaking citizens of Kazakhstan, Central Asia, the Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus, Europe, the US. They are all users of social networking sites and are the advertising potential that the activity of these network corporations relies on," Pushkov stressed.
He noted that the bill appeared among other things because global social networks "showed no intention whatsoever to abide by the Russian legislation".
"We should have no illusions here: global social networks are not our partners, business partners. Global social networks are political opponents or Russia’s foreign and domestic policy, and we must be realistic about this," he stressed.
"This is not about establishing partnership relations, this is about encouraging global social networks to meet the demands of the Russian legislation since they are working on our territory," the senator summed up.