Netoscope: A New Black Box Through Which the Russian Government Controls Content Dissemination?

Russia has increasingly adopted policies that leverage the power of private infrastructure owners, including algorithmic gatekeepers, to achieve more effective, but less easily perceptible, control over online content dissemination. This article analyzes the Netoscope project, which has compiled a database of Russian domain names suspected of malware, botnet or phishing activities. Within the framework of this project, federal censor Roskomnadzor cooperates with Yandex (which downgrades listed domains in its search results), Kaspersky, and foreign partners. The article concludes that non-transparency creates possibilities for misuse of the project

State regulation of online speech in Russia: The role of internet infrastructure owners

This article analyses recent developments in regulatory practices applied by the Russian government to online speech. The article relies on internet infrastructure-centric theories developed in the US legal scholarship by Lawrence Lessig and Jack Balkin, among others, and applies these theories to the Russian setting in a novel way. According to these theories, governments prefer indirect regulation of online speech by controlling the internet infrastructure to direct regulation by law. Indirect regulation is realized through cooperating between states and owners of the internet infrastructure. This article argues that this theoretical framework can be applied for analysing regulation in Russia as well. The article looks at how Roskomnadzor, a government executive agency in the sphere of telecommunications, cooperates with owners of the Russian internet infrastructure. The article reveals that this cooperation may bring drastic implications to the right to freedom of expression enjoyed by Russian online mass media and internet users.</p

Freedom of Expression in Russia's New Mediasphere

This chapter hopes to throw some light onto the relationship of censorship, legality and technology in contemporary Russia. In a digital age, the Russian government regulates online free expression not only in an old-school manner by penalising illegal content post ante in the result of court proceedings, but also in a new-school way by penalising allegedly illegal content ex ante as the result of administrative procedures. This new-school regulation presupposes assistance from internet service providers, who block websites in accordance with notifications issued by Roskomnadzor. The practice of website blocking, referred as the blacklisting mechanism, is explained by analysing relevant legislation, case law and official statistics. The explanation leads to the conclusion that, although digital technologies have made it easier for the state to censor online content by website blocking, side-effects of this technology-enabled censorship have surpassed the intentions of the legislator. These side-effects – over-blocking and malicious blocking – may put the future of website blocking in doubt.</p

Netoscope: A New Black Box Through Which the Russian Government Controls Content Dissemination?

Russia has increasingly adopted policies that leverage the power of private infrastructure owners, including algorithmic gatekeepers, to achieve more effective, but less easily perceptible, control over online content dissemination. This article analyzes the Netoscope project, which has compiled a database of Russian domain names suspected of malware, botnet or phishing activities. Within the framework of this project, federal censor Roskomnadzor cooperates with Yandex (which downgrades listed domains in its search results), Kaspersky, and foreign partners. The article concludes that non-transparency creates possibilities for misuse of the project.</p

Future of Internet News Portals after the Case of Delfi

The thesis analyzes liability of Internet news portals for third-party defamatory comments. After the case of Delfi AS v. Estonia, decided by the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights on 16 June 2015, a portal can be held liable for user-generated unlawful comments. The thesis aims at exploring consequences of the case of Delfi for Internet news portals’ business model. The model is described as a mixture of two modes of information production: traditional industrial information economy and new networked information economy. Additionally, the model has a generative comment environment. I name this model “the Delfian model”. The thesis analyzes three possible strategies which portals will likely apply in the nearest future. I will discuss these strategies from two perspectives: first, how each strategy can affect the Delfian model and, second, how changes in the model can, in their turn, affect freedom of expression. The thesis is based on the analysis of case law, legal, and law and economics literature. I follow the law and technology approach in the vein of ideas developed by Lawrence Lessig, Yochai Benkler and Jonathan Zittrain. The Delfian model is researched as an example of a local battle between industrial and networked information economy modes. The thesis concludes that this local battle is lost because the Delfian model has to be replaced with a new walled-garden model. Such a change can seriously endanger freedom of expression.Siirretty Doriast

Controlling free expression “by infrastructure” in the Russian Internet: The consequences of RuNet sovereignization

Russia has been coaxing foreign Internet companies into building the Yarovaya-Law infrastructure, by listing them as “information disseminators”. This infrastructure, aimed at storing content data collected by information disseminators, might develop into a state-controlled content layer for the sovereign Russian Internet, presenting a new digital lock to curb free expression. However, by the summer of 2020, the building of the Yarovaya-Law infrastructure had faltered due to cost and implementation obstacles; this may now have hindered the continuation of the RuNet sovereignization strategy

The Vulnerabilities of Trusted Notifier-Models in Russia:The Case of Netoscope

Current digital ecosystems are shaped by platformisation, algorithmic recommender systems, and news personalisation. These (algorithmic) infrastructures influence online news dissemination and therefore necessitate a reconceptualisation of how online media control is or may be exercised in states with restricted media freedom. Indeed, the degree of media plurality and journalistic independence becomes irrelevant when reporting is available but difficult to access; for example, if the websites of media outlets are not indexed or recommended by the search engines, news aggregators, or social media platforms that function as algorithmic gatekeepers. Research approaches to media control need to be broadened because authoritarian governments are increasingly adopting policies that govern the internet through its infrastructure; the power they leverage against private infrastructure owners yields more effective—and less easily perceptible—control over online content dissemination. Zooming in on the use of trusted notifier-models to counter online harms in Russia, we examine the Netoscope project (a database of Russian domain names suspected of malware, botnet, or phishing activities) in which federal censor Roskomnadzor cooperates with, e.g., Yandex (that downranks listed domains in search results), Kaspersky, and foreign partners. Based on publicly available reports, media coverage, and semi-structured interviews, the article analyses the degree of influence, control, and oversight of Netoscope’s participating partners over the database and its applications. We argue that, in the absence of effective legal safeguards and transparency requirements, the politicised nature of internet infrastructure makes the trusted notifier-model vulnerable to abuse in authoritarian states

Political Regime Stability / Universities / Agriculture

The topics of this issue are the political regime stability in Russia a month after the start of the attack on Ukraine and the impact of the war on Russian agriculture and Russian universities. The five contributions on political regime stability discuss the reliability of Russian opinion polls on the war, the authoritarian consolidation of recent years, the unity of the elites, the possibilities for protests and opposition, and the control of Russian online media.Die Themen dieser Ausgabe sind die politische Stabilität in Russland einen Monat nach dem Beginn des Angriffs auf die Ukraine sowie die Auswirkungen des Krieges auf die russische Landwirtschaft und auf russische Universitäten. Die insgesamt fünf Beiträge zur politischen Stabilität diskutieren die Zuverlässigkeit russischer Meinungsumfragen zum Krieg, die autoritäre Konsolidierung der letzten Jahre, die Geschlossenheit der Eliten, die Möglichkeiten für Proteste und Opposition sowie die Kontrolle russischer Online-Medien.ISSN:1863-042