Ivan Davydov. The dominance of amateurism

The dominance of amateurism
Interpol Issue 75

Ivan Davydov

Publication date: December 7, 2001

I have regular readers. Honestly. And from time to time my regular readers ask me - why don’t I write about the next “Claws”? Am I missing out? Do not notice?

Yaroslav Grekov, who put the local production of “Claws” on stream, even once sent me a letter in which he asked the same question, but in relation to his resource. Exactly - he asked, and he answered his own question: the point, as it turned out, is that Pavlovsky (why not Voloshin? Why not Putin? A mystery) personally forbade me to write about the resource "RIKN", on which once (or more than once ?) some truth was told about one of my leaders.

Taking this opportunity, I answer publicly: dear colleague (you, too, it seems, are an analyst ), my leaders, unfortunately, have climbed to such heights that a rare newspaper today does not tell the whole truth about them. What now? Do not read? The point here is completely different. To explain, we will have to start from afar.

Heroes of Yesterday

Anton Borisovich Nosik, author and publisher of the once popular review “Yesterday’s Internet” (perhaps I made a mistake with the name, the years take their toll), while still the editor-in-chief of Gazeta.Ru, spoke about online compromising evidence as follows :

“But in general, the topic of “network compromising evidence,” in our opinion, should be considered exhausted long ago. It’s time to scrap this vile word itself, inherited from the worst Soviet times of totalitarian control over the dissemination of information.”

And two more pages in the same spirit. The pretentious speech was timed to coincide with the release of the site “Claw-7” dedicated to the showdown between mobile operators.

So here it is. I leave discussions about totalitarian control and the worst Soviet times to the author. This topic is of the same order as network incriminating evidence. Both are subject to closure. Exclusively because it’s not interesting.

This technology doesn't work anymore. Yesterday, entertainment for citizens deprived, excuse me, of a creative streak. The trouble is that the environment in which you have to work dictates rather harshly unpleasant conditions. It is not possible to develop a universal weapon. You can, of course, continue to fight like our glorious ancestors - running out onto the field with a heavy club. But we don’t even feel sorry for such warriors - their bomber pilots simply cannot see them.

It turns out that this banal thought has not occurred to many people until now. But it never occurred to me that this might not be understood. After Marina Litvinovich and I gave reports at one of the Kyiv Internet events on the experience of using the Internet in Russian political campaigns (about history, that is, about what happened and ended!), a certain local newspaper thoughtfully remarked: Russians do not afraid to share know-how. But the Russians are not afraid mainly because this is not know-how. We will describe the next know-how later, when, after a single, alas, use, its service life comes out. In this regard, Internet projects that are not designed to function in the media mode are purely disposable goods, such as condoms.

So what's the point of writing about something that stopped working two years ago? We will probably write about this in history if we get together. In order of announcement: it looks like we'll get together.

This long philippic was brought to life by the appearance of the project "Kidala.Ru" , stylized as the magazine "Itogi" and dedicated to the activities of Andrei Drobinin, one of the leaders of Legprombank, which is probably of interest to law enforcement agencies, but does not interest us at all. The project was carried out on a grand scale; it is even alleged that a paper edition of the fake Itogi was also printed. But at the same time, the project was not noticed even by the online press, not to mention the traditional one. And this despite the fact that a number of media outlets are now conducting an aggressive information campaign against the dishonest businessman.

This fact seems to me very, very gratifying. This very convincingly confirms the thesis formulated above: comromat is now entertainment for non-professionals. It’s also not very interesting for me to talk about ethics in this context. Colleagues, if you want to play dirty tricks, go ahead. But it's smart. Evgeny Schwartz once said: “Smart people act outrageously for good reason.” I will add on my own behalf - and in a variety of ways. Otherwise it turns out just boring, like in the show “Behind the Glass” . And for a project that claims to be significant in the information sphere, such an assessment is equal to a death sentence.

So don’t be offended, dear readers, if in these reviews you don’t read about yet another uninventive and dull waste. Read about the inventive ones. Even if their materials concern my beloved grandmother, not to mention the respected leadership.

Five Minutes of Mathematics

To conclude the plot, since Grekov and Nosik collided above by pure chance. Let’s write it down for memory, giving readers a reason to show off their erudition.

Not long ago, Anton Nosik gave an online press conference on the Izvestia website. Quote :

Yaroslav Grekov (or MOSKA RUNET) When RAMBLER goes bankrupt, what will you do? Already have an alternate airfield?

There is not the slightest sense for Rambler to go bankrupt now, when it has a few months left until it breaks even.

And one more quote , a little more recent, from the AK&M agency tape:

"OJSC Rambler Internet Holding ended 9 months of 2001 with a loss of 6.96 million rubles. This is evidenced by the company's reporting received by AK&M. The amount of its losses is increasing - for the third quarter of this year they increased by 1.7 million rubles. At the same time, "Rambler Internet Holding's assets are decreasing - at the end of the third quarter of 2001, their size was 34.8 million rubles, while at the end of the first half of the year - 36.38 million rubles."

Apparently, it still takes a few months. Stand for a day and hold out for the night. And then, with the money raised, build a monument to a Russian investor - naive, gentle and undemanding.

From the lives of extraordinary and unique personalities

The number of specialized publications dedicated to the Internet is growing at a speed never before seen. Before we had time to take a good look at Toaster, another competitor to Netoscope appeared.

The publication bears the loud, but painfully unoriginal name "Planet WEB" . We have already seen “Planet Internet”, and what we saw was not impressive. We are promised a lot here. So much that I want to quote the press release:

“The main advantage of the publication is its independence from various publishers, Internet companies, holdings and, as a result, an independent point of view on various events and processes occurring in the everyday life of the Runet and the computer world.

The main emphasis will be placed not on the mass nature of news, but on exclusivity. “Many interviews are planned with various famous and unknown figures of the Runet and simply with extraordinary and unique personalities.”

And so on. The main observation of the first days of the existence of the shakers of the foundations comes down to a rather simple conclusion: not so many events happen in the everyday life of the Runet (what words) for an independent look at them to add anything to the overall information picture.

However, discoveries may await us. One can expect a lot from people who, judging by the quoted fragment of the press release, confuse exclusivity with elitism. For example, that with the stylistic sophistication of their independent news they will replace the “Country” of the first months of its existence for discerning connoisseurs. An indirect confirmation of this can be the phrase “many interviews are planned.” Its author, an unknown figure on the Runet, is undoubtedly an extraordinary and unique person.

However, we have always been proponents of maximizing the diversity of fiber optic life forms.

Old rake

And life, contrary to our wishes, tends towards monotony. Not a year, but whole years have passed since the first anonymous editor of the first news feed replicated an error, more likely due to illiteracy than out of malice, made by an anonymous correspondent of a news agency. And these rakes lie in an open field, and millions of roads around allow you to get around them safely.

But enthusiasts of the “copy-paste” method, of whom there are more and more every day, persistently step on the said rake. Details are in Netoscope.

“The Investigative Committee (IC) under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation has completed an investigation against nine people accused of stealing funds from plastic card owners by creating a fake online store “Politshop.”

The message about this, which came from the RIA Novosti agency, shocked the editors of Netoscope both with its “accuracy” and “timeliness”.

Firstly, the text of RIA Novosti states that the basis for initiating a criminal case was the materials of the verification of the statement of the management of the capital's bank "Latina". And although there is no bank with such a beautiful name in the capital, the name "Latina" is repeated throughout the entire message RIA News".

Having bought into such persistent repetition of the incorrect name, the leading RuNet media (such as Internet.ru and Strana.ru) immediately copied the RIA message without correction. Obviously, many more media outlets will repeat it today, so there will be one more Latin bank in Russia.

At the same time, it is not difficult to guess that in fact we are talking about Platina Bank and its CyberPlat payment system. Stories with fake online stores using the services of this bank usually happen in the spring: the “Politshop” case dates back to the spring of 2000, and in the spring of 2001 the same thing happened with the fake store “Alexia-X”.

Buddha teaches us, Vanya, but life teaches us nothing, as one exalted young lady sang. However, this story is not as impressive as the new details from the life of the late painter Guaguin (better known as Gauguin ), which RIA Novosti and, following him, a dozen online publications pleased readers with a couple of months ago. Hands down.

And new projects

And when you give up, it’s best to talk about something highly spiritual. If you please, take a bite or something.

“Magazine Hall” - a long-standing project, well-known to connoisseurs, well-deserved and long-suffering, has finally found a reliable roof. Now it is something like a section in the Russian Journal, and this is logical. And it's nice. And I, a bilious person, would not have written about this if it had not been for the online newspaper Vesti. Staffed by highly trained professionals. From whom you expect to demonstrate a high standard of journalism. Landmarks, so to speak. Yes, however, you get it. To receive, only one thing is required. Ignore everything that the online newspaper Vesti writes directly about the Internet.

But it’s impossible to ignore. The online newspaper "Vesti", also in an impulse to talk about highly spiritual things, chooses a specific way to notify citizens about the opening of the old "Magazine Hall" in a new location. The online newspaper Vesti interviews Maxim Moshkov on this matter. Why not Tema Lebedev remains a mystery to us. We think Tema also has something to say about the “Magazine Hall”. And his relationship to the project is no less direct. That is, none.

But that's okay. In the end, I’m exaggerating, and the choice of my interlocutor is clear: Moshkov has a library, “Magazine Hall” is also not a hardware store. It is a pity that both the interviewer and the interviewee begin the conversation with a demonstration of exceptional knowledge :

- Maxim, on the last day of the exhibition “Non/fictioN3” there was a presentation of the online project “Magazine Hall”. I know that this is an association of such magazines as “New World”, “Znamya”, “October”, “Zvezda”. What do you think are the prospects for this project?

- Looking for someone. In general, it’s wonderful that such a project has appeared, because before that the Internet was completely “amateur.”

And neither one nor the other cares that the project did not appear, to put it mildly, yesterday . Well, a special hello to Evgeny Gorny and the entire team of philologists who are working on compiling the “Russian Virtual Library” . This is about amateurism.

In a word, we started today with amateurism (in the difficult task of effectively distributing information via the Internet that discredits the honor and dignity of citizens and organizations), and we ended with it (in the even more complex task of digitizing cultural property). Sorry, what we see is what we sing about. Necha on the mirror. Maybe next time there will be a reason to talk about professionalism, although...