Anton Khodakovsky. Russia-OFF-line?

Russia-OFF-line?
Anton Khodakovsky

Publication date: July 3, 2000

Remember the uproar in the United States when Congress tried to pass the Telecommunications Decency Act? Here the Electronic Frontier Foundation perked up, seeing an intention to introduce censorship on the Internet, and newspapers and magazines recalled the First Amendment to the Constitution on freedom of speech, and ordinary online citizens became angry and decorated the pages with blue bows... They defended their freedom of speech. At that time, anyway.

Now things are sadder: a strict bill on censorship on the Internet has been in force in Australia since January, the UK seriously wants to build a Government Technical Assistance Center (analogous to SORM-2), the case with the Echelon system has come to light , France has practically abolished online anonymity by law... I don’t want to I may seem like a pessimist, but somehow I don’t feel inclined to rejoice. The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow can only shed a nostalgic tear.

"I declare that the world community we are building is in no way subject to the tyranny into which you wish to yoke us again. You have neither the moral right to rule us nor the coercive methods that we fear."

Everything was found quantum satis: both rights and methods.

In Russia, a precarious balance is still observed: the Supreme Court slowed down, at least at the legislative level, the introduction of SORM-2, and the Volgograd provider Bayard-Slavia fought off attempts by the local FSB to install traffic listening equipment. What am I getting at? Moreover, in fact, the introduction of censorship can happen almost unnoticed - without public protests and lawsuits.

Let's be honest with ourselves - how often do we read various official documents? The ones that are written in small print and include a bunch of numbered paragraphs with words like “including, but not limited to,” “except as expressly stated,” and so on... It’s rare, right? But in vain. Sometimes the most interesting things come across.

Here, for example, is the “Agreement on the provision of the Russia-On-Line Service” (by “Service” we mean access to the Network). The link to it is placed at the very bottom of the main web page of Russia-on-Line. An ordinary user is unlikely to read it even to the middle - there are a lot of points, the font (as was said) is small, and the language is clerical. An interesting picture will open to the inquisitive eye.

Let's move straight to the berries and leave the flowers for dessert. Read paragraph 7 - “Rules for using the Service”.

"When using the Service it is prohibited: 7.5. Send or make available via the Internet any information, the distribution of which, in one way or another, is contrary to Russian or international law.

7.6. Transmit any information or software that contains viruses or other harmful components ."

The wording of clauses 7.5 and 7.6 is very arbitrary. In this case, “Russian law” seems to mean the Law of the Russian Federation “On Information, Informatization and Information Protection.” OK. What does the concept of “international law” include? What about information that contains "harmful components"? Does a three letter word in an email count? Give me the legal definition of "harmful ingredient"!

"7.8 .... send, transmit or distribute in any way any component of the Service provided or works created on its basis, since the Service itself is also the subject of copyright and other rights."

What does it mean to ban the distribution of works created “based on the Service”? That is, the web pages or programs I created using data from the Internet automatically belong to Teleross LLC? Unclear. Probably so...

But the most interesting things are contained in the following subparagraphs.

"7.9. The Contractor will not intentionally view or disclose any private email messages (except as required by law). The Contractor is not obliged to monitor the content of information distributed through the Service. However, the User accepts the condition that the Contractor has the right to periodically monitor information passing through the Service information and disclose any information if necessary in accordance with the law, the requirements of authorized government agencies, or for the normal functioning of the Service , or to protect the Contractor and its other users, as well as third parties whose legal rights and interests have been violated.

7.10. The Contractor reserves the right to refuse to forward or delete from its servers any information or materials , in whole or in part, if they, solely from the Contractor’s point of view , are unacceptable, undesirable or violate this Agreement."

What polished formulations! What power of legal thought! Instead of the mentioned Russian and international law - “exclusively the point of view of the Contractor.” That's all. What do you think of the word “deliberately”?
So, we have read and divulged your business or love correspondence. You, guided by the Law of the Russian Federation “On Information, Informatization and Protection of Information,” are filing a lawsuit because “the collection, storage, use and dissemination of information about private life, as well as information that violates personal secrets, family secrets, privacy of correspondence, telephone negotiations, postal, telegraph and other messages of an individual without his consent, except on the basis of a court decision,” and they say to you: “So we did it unintentionally!” It follows from the Agreement that it is possible unintentionally.

And it is also possible to monitor you day and night “for the sake of the normal functioning of the Service” without any court decisions. And it is also possible to censor your “unwanted” correspondence and personal pages. Almost anything is possible.

The right to freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitution of the Russian Federation? Sorry, but it seems to me that the drafters of the document simply threw freedom of speech and other rights into the trash. There is only one right: “If any changes and/or additions are not acceptable to the User, he has the right to immediately stop using the Service.”

III

Here, in fact, is censorship and surveillance in all its glory and power. The mentioned points, by the way, have remained virtually unchanged since the first time I saw this document (and this happened at least two years ago). Ever since then I've been waiting, will anyone pay attention? There was even some excitement.

To be honest, I myself don’t go online through ROL. I just want someone to read it. And he told me that I was wrong, for example. And nothing terrible happened at all.

Driven by a desire to get rid of slight paranoia, I decided to compare similar agreements from other providers. As they say, “one spoon is enough to taste the soup,” and therefore 5 Moscow providers were selected at random from the list: Zenon NSP , Demos-Internet , CITYLINE , DataForce and Portal .

Zenon NSP explicitly declares only liability for spam . I did not find any other documents regulating relations with the client on the site.

"Demos-Internet" concise (see Appendix 1 ).

"5.3. The subscriber is prohibited from:

5.3.1. Transmit information to the network that offends the honor and dignity of Other Subscribers and service personnel of the Internet/Russia network.

5.3.2. Distribution of advertising or commercial materials over the Internet/Russia, not carried out through a system of teleconferences corresponding to these materials.

5.3.3. Use the access to the Internet/Russia network provided to him for unauthorized access and damage to the computers of the Provider and other Subscribers of the Internet/Russia network and other networks that can be accessed via the Internet/Russia network."

Here, it seems to me, everything is quite reasonable. In any case, these points are difficult to interpret in two ways, and even more so there is no talk of any tracking of information and unintentional disclosure of email. Especially about censorship.

"CITYLINE" seems to have been partly inspired by the text from RoL, because in the document "On the provision of services..." there is a very similar paragraph about the prohibition "... to distribute in any way any component of the Services provided or works created on its basis, since The Services themselves are also subject to copyright and other rights . " No, still, what could this mean? If a document contains at least one hyperlink, then formally it falls under the definition of “created on the basis of the Service” and no longer belongs to you. Let's also remember the lawsuit by British Telecommunications demanding money for using hyperlinks...

The similarities are revealed further in the text. Clause 2.3.3:

"Cityline has the right to monitor information passing through the Services and disclose any information if necessary in accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation, the requirements of authorized government agencies, or for the normal functioning of the Services or to protect Cityline and its users, if this does not contradict the relevant constitutional rights of citizens" .

I have already commented on a similar passage in the RoL agreement, and I want to ask only one question: how can the disclosure of any information (without a court decision) not contradict constitutional rights? This kind of nod to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, however, does not mean anything. But on the other hand, user information cannot be censored. Thank you anyway.

DataForce provides for the user's responsibility for the dissemination of “information that offends the honor and dignity of Other Clients and the Provider’s service personnel,” as well as for spam, IP forgery, unauthorized access, network attacks, and the like (files are posted on the site in .rtf format).

The “Portal” can disable a user either for spam or “for using the provided access to the network to organize any operations related to unauthorized access, disruption of the Operator’s network or other networks, or other actions that directly violate the laws of the Russian Federation or the country in the territory of where the networks to which unauthorized actions of this kind are applied are located . " (more details about this document can be found on the website ).

The conclusions are interesting. None of the 5 providers had a paragraph in their agreements that was at all similar to this:

"7.10. The Contractor reserves the right to refuse to forward or delete from its servers any information or materials , in whole or in part, if they, solely from the Contractor’s point of view , are unacceptable, undesirable or violate this Agreement."

And yet - is this the rule or the exception? How do you think?

PS In general, there is a certain grin of fate in this. Russia-On-Line... Not just anything, but Russia.