Owners of large information resources with a daily audience in the Russian Federation of 500 000 people are to be required to open official representative offices in Russia. A bill containing this provision will be submitted to the State Duma soon, according to Alexander Khinshtein in his Telegram channel.<\/p>\n
He described the document as a “landing” bill, which would set “the rules of the game” for the activities of large internet companies in Russia.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cMany of the IT giants openly abuse their monopoly position, violating the requirements of our legislation. Primarily this concerns the dissemination of the most socially dangerous information,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The official noted that, because most of these companies lack Russian representative offices, it is virtually impossible to hold them to account for violations of the law in Russia.<\/p>\n
To ensure that companies do not ignore the requirement to open offices within the Russian Federation, the bill introduces a series of enforcement measures. Among them:<\/p>\n
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- informing users of the resource about violations of Russian law;<\/li>\n
- prohibition on advertising about the platform, and on it;<\/li>\n
- prohibition on making payments to the internet resource;<\/li>\n
- prohibition on collection and cross-border transfer of personal data.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
President Vladimir Putin instructed the development of additional requirements<\/a> for foreign technology companies operating in Russia, including obligations to open representative offices in Russia, in early 2021.<\/p>\n
At that time, the State Duma Committee on Information Policy reported development of the corresponding bill<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Apparently, the new bill is aimed primarily at social networks. According to the law that came into force in February<\/a>, social networks are considered internet resources with the ability to create personal profiles and a daily audience of more than 500 000 users from Russia.<\/p>\n
In March, Roskomnadzor began throttling Twitter’s operations<\/a> in Russia due to the platform’s refusal to remove content the agency deemed illegal.<\/p>\n
Later, a Russian court fined Twitter in the amount of 8.9 million rubles<\/a> for violations of the law, namely for disseminating information urging minors to participate in an unauthorized protest in Moscow.<\/p>\n
Fines for similar violations were imposed on other social networks as well. TikTok was fined 2.6 million rubles<\/a>, \u201cVKontakte\u201d<\/a> \u2014 1.5 million rubles, Telegram \u2014 5 million rubles.<\/p>\n