Notorious internet regulation decree suspended at presidential administration

The president's decree draft "On improving the use of Internet" will not be passed in the near future as it was reported earlier. The European Radio for Belarus has learned that the draft was discussed and approved by the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Justice. However, it was blocked at the Office of the President, according to internet expert Yury Zisser who took part in the discussions over the draft late last year.

"The draft is allegedly at the Office of the President now. It was blocked and now they are studying it", said Zisser.

The decree was not approved by the president at the end of 2009 and has not been signed up to now. It is actually unclear when the decree could be signed.

"Nobody knows when it is going to be signed, because they at the presidential administration are yet to work on it", says Zisser.

The internet regulation decree draft might become even softer. According to Yury Zisser, the presidential administration is studying some alternative options. Possibly, they will reject the first option and it will be revised.

The European Radio for Belarus failed to get a comment from the Office of the President.

Yury Zisser says that initially the draft was developed in order to obtain a monopoly for the internet external gateway by the Operative and Analytical Center at the Office of the President. But there was very little time, so the wording of the draft was full of errors and pre-election restrictions.

"It was being developed in a hurry. There was only one month of time available. They had no time to have consultations or maybe they did not want to. The document is very raw. It was aimed at making the Hi-Tech Park the second ISP. But, after, the draft contained a lot of provisions that mostly deal with the upcoming elections, so there were incorrect wordings in in the document", says Zisser.

The expert notes that the ideas, outlined in the internet regulation draft, are worthy. But the wording should definitely be improved. For instance:

“The first paragraph envisages that any internet services -- information or advertising -- provided by the resources that are not registered in Belarus or registered within the international domains are banned on the territory of Belarus. It means that Google or Mail.ru would be outlawed! This is a clumsy wording”, notes Zisser.

The decree draft has been frozen now. One should not rule out that it will be seriously revised.