A bill on a single meter of the Internet audience was submitted to the State Duma

The bill on a single audience meter on the Internet is submitted to the State Duma. This was announced on Thursday by TASS by the author of the initiative, a member of the Committee of the Lower Chamber on Information Policy Anton Gorelkin.

"In order to ensure the relevance, completeness, openness and reliability of the data obtained as a result of research, the bill proposes to extend the established mechanism for the functioning of the authorized audience of the organization’s audience to measure the audience on the Internet, the explanatory note to the bill says.

According to Gorelkin, a single meter of the Internet audience is a long -ripened need, which "will allow the state and the market to receive more clear information about viewing content on the network."

According to the bill, Roskomnadzor will choose an authorized organization to measure the Internet audience. Earlier, a source in the industry informed TASS that the creation of a new meter to count the audience of social networks and audiovisual services is not supposed to be expanding the powers of MediaScope, which is already responsible for the study of the audience of television channels.

"The main concern of the business about the single meter of the audience is understandable. Everyone is afraid that the organization chosen by Roskomnadzor will simply trade the data received - the most expensive and important, which is now on the Internet. The law is specially negotiated: the use of data obtained from measured resources can only be targeted - the measurement of the audience and related studies, no trade, no removal of cream from access to access Auditor indicators, ”Anton Gorelkin assured. In an interview with TASS, he noted that Mediascope is one of the candidates when choosing an authorized meter.

The study of the audience in the bill means “systematic collection, record, systematization and analysis of data related to the volume and preferences of the audience of information resources placed on them of the media products, audiovisual works and other public information, as well as transmission (provision, distribution, access) of the results of research”. The register of information resources, the volume of the audience of which is subject to study, will be formed by Roskomnadzor. At the same time, the procedure for maintaining such a register and the list of data included in it will be approved by the Government of the Russian Federation.

As follows from the text of the initiative, the measurement of the audience should be carried out on the basis of a method approved by Roskomnadzor. The owner of the information resource, in turn, will be obliged to "provide an authorized organization for the study of the audience's volume of the possibility of conducting research" and provide the necessary data for this. At the same time, several restrictions are established for organizing the meter: it is not entitled to use the data received from the owners of information resources, otherwise than for the purpose of conducting research, and also cannot disseminate advertising.

Foreign IT companies working in Russia are subject to the bill on a single meter of the Internet audience, said Anton Gorelkin. "The measurement of the audience of the Internet resource should be one of the criteria for the normal functioning of IT companies in the Russian market," the parliamentarian said.

According to him, cooperation in the field of measuring the audience will be one of the criteria for "landing" of foreign IT companies in the Russian Federation. "If a foreign platform wants to work in Russia, earn money here, it must pass a certain audit of the audience through the meter. The auditorial indicator will also be one of the criteria for landing the platform, the opening of an official representation in the Russian Federation," he explained.

As Gorelkin added in his Telegram channel , the rules for Russian and foreign companies should be uniform. "A single audience meter will be mandatory for foreign Internet platforms working in Russia, because otherwise it would be dishonest in relation to Russian companies," the deputy said.