Internet strategy of the Kremlin

Another attempt by the authorities to somehow manage the Internet and make “strategic enterprises” from the popular services not only about the desire to expand the sphere of state work to infinity. But the fact that the authorities are concerned about the growth of the popularity of the Internet, and does not really know what to do with this.

The love of Russian bureaucracy is well-known something like that. And when a certain point of growth appears, some new segment, type of business, kind of services, there will certainly be a person who will say that it is urgent to regulate all this. For the good considerations, of course. This happened with the bill on recognizing a number of leading media strategic companies, which, according to Vedomosti, was again defrosted in the State Duma.

Deputies offer-by Russian tradition, they differ weakly or in any way-to recognize Internet services with strategic enterprises, the monthly audience of which is more than 20 million users, as well as the most important newspapers and magazines of the country. The bill was introduced two years ago, but somehow shouted. Now the work on it is continued.
The recognition of the enterprise strategic means that foreign investors who want to acquire a stake in more than some size (depending on the industry) will have to enlist the consent of the Russian authorities, and more specifically-a special government commission. And such a deal may well be blocked by the government.

In the case of Internet companies, however, there is a certain fact of reality that did not fall into the field of deputies-in the owners of the largest Internet services, to a large extent, if not directly foreign, then registered abroad. How can this be regulated is definitely difficult, but you can come up with. The life of Internet companies (and here Yandex and Mail.Ru, and even the VKontakte social network) can after that complicate a little.

Here the conversation, of course, is not only that the sovereign people are terribly afraid of foreigners who will come, buy up everything Russian in the bud, and even “orange democracy” will be arranged with the help of “ours”, almost “Orthodox” Yandex and the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, although this consideration should not be written off. There are people who think so.

Here, rather, we are talking about the recognition that not only television rules the world, about the understanding of this fact, almost all, including even deputies of the State Duma.

The other day, the same Vedomosti told the city and the world that the Yandex daily audience in April exceeded the similar indicator of Channel One. And this is no longer a joke, but a potential loss of control over media reality by the Russian authorities. Next, however, the anonymous Kremlin official reassured the audience of Izvestia with a message that the Kremlin does not see the fall in the popularity of television agencies and believes the old strategy of working with the media space is quite effective.

Having established almost complete control of television in the early 2000s, the Kremlin calmed down and almost completely “overslept” the media revolution, which has occurred in the field of communications over the past years. All these “Internet” seemed politically safe, newspapers were low -three, and TV, on the contrary, omnipotent. Interest was revived when suddenly Internet projects began to think about placing stocks on the exchange and it turned out that they were already worth (from the point of view of potential investors, at least) already billions of dollars. But even then the interest of the authorities did not go beyond purely economic.

No, attempts to influence the Internet audience and the Internet have nevertheless undertaken.

United Russia even once spoke of the party’s intention to become influential in the Russian segment of the Internet and blogs. And even dominate there. However, to perceive this differently than as the ritual statements of people who realized that the “train is leaving” is difficult.

And it was even a speech that we need to come up with a certain “national search engine”, not the example of the most pro -Russian. But here, the matter did not advance further than the conversation, although many have already calculated the profits from the innovation and turned the budgets for the project.

The “advanced” President Dmitry Medvedev, of course, paid attention to the Internet, but he seemed to have no thought that all these “bloggers” and other Internet legal entities would be released in December 2011 to Bolotnaya Square in Moscow. The self -organization of what is now called the "creative class" occurred just on the network.

Here it is already just right to think about the strategy of the work of the authorities with the Internet. Power and thought, but, as always, the answer is formal, but with a worse content.

And Vera, by virtue of the TV, as the commentary of the same Kremlin source of Izvestia shows, is still quite great among the authorities of the emerging. Nevertheless, something such a bureaucracy is at a bureaucracy-we should somehow regulate these all your medias.