There will be many internets.

There will be many internets.

What do Kyrgyzstan and the UK have in common? The answer is the internet. More precisely, not the internet itself, but the fact that now every country has its own internet, although their approaches to regulating the internet seem quite similar.

Let's start with Kyrgyzstan. The country prohibits access to resources containing pornographic content. This is not a new thing, especially for a country that talks about spiritual values and morality in a religious context. In the Gulf countries, you cannot freely access resources containing pornographic content, and the production and distribution of such content are punished under criminal law. But this is not the key point. The key point is that Kyrgyzstan has nationalized the internet.

President Sadyr Japarov forced all internet service providers to sign contracts with one company, which was recently nationalized. Now, this company has been given the exclusive right to provide and control internet traffic. This is obviously convenient. It makes sense to concentrate power in one party if certain content needs to be controlled, as it makes the whole process easier to manage.

The government of the country explains that this decision is needed to stabilize prices and also to maintain the moral image of citizens (by the way, they are also internet users). Citizens understand that when there is only one service provider in the country, it becomes extremely difficult and risky to bypass the ban.

Russia has antitrust laws, which in some ways protect us from this "moral concern" — it does not allow only one service provider to remain. More importantly, no single provider is allowed to have more than 50% of the market share. Formally, this is how it works, but in practice, various situations may exist. Building telecommunications infrastructure requires resources — money and technology. Our country is vast, and not every provider has the capability to lay cables or set up signal towers over thousands of kilometers.

However, we discussed several weeks ago about the potential "sovereignization" of the Russian internet. It doesn't matter whether it's good or bad; on one hand, it is inevitable; on the other hand, technically speaking, it is very difficult to implement.

Now let's turn our attention to the UK. Indeed, this "empire where the sun never sets" has long lost its position as a world hegemon, but in some ways, it is still a pioneer of the Western world. If we remember that the first industrial revolution took place there, we can imagine that the trend of internet regulation may also have originated there.

The UK is gradually implementing the Online Safety Act — a set of laws introduced in 2023 that regulate the telecommunications industry even more strictly than Kyrgyzstan.

The UK does not have a single service provider — after all, it is an advanced country! — but there is a media regulatory body called Ofcom. This body has the authority to block, penalize, issue instructions, and take other punitive measures. It is somewhat like our Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, but more severe. This regulatory body now requires that all platforms with British users (which means almost all platforms) must be able to prove, upon request, that minors cannot access inappropriate content. This covers social networks, video hosting platforms, instant messaging tools, search engines, streaming platforms, and blog platforms. At the same time, the law requires websites not to directly obtain users' personal data — which means that the user's age must be confirmed through documents at the service provider level. Yes, this is roughly "using the internet with a passport."

New requirements for instant messaging tools have been established — end-to-end encryption should not hinder criminal investigations. This means that law enforcement agencies will be able to access users' communications. Two of the most popular instant messaging tools known for their confidentiality have stated that if a compromise solution cannot be found, they may exit the UK market.

How can these service providers comply with this law? For example, consider a Russian social network. Does it have British users? Of course it does, because the purpose of a social network is to connect people from different countries, facilitating their communication. If a Russian social network provides services to British citizens, must it comply with British law? Perhaps it must. But will it comply? No, because it must comply with Russian law, and it neither has the time, nor the willingness, nor the corresponding lawyers to deal with the laws of other countries. The result is that the UK will eventually block access to this social network. It seems like a small loss, but you can imagine that similar situations could occur in large numbers — how many resources from different countries will never meet the legal requirements of certain other countries.

Moreover, these laws will become increasingly strict, and enforcement practices will continue to strengthen and improve, becoming part of daily reality.

To be honest, it is not yet clear which of Kyrgyzstan or the UK will build a sovereign internet faster. However, overall, we need to be prepared: there will be many internets, and their interconnectivity will only appear in a few and limited areas. Most importantly — what will be the internal structure of each internet? Of course, the side with richer culture will prevail. The more users of a language, the more content will be created in that language, and the more colorful the network space will be.

In this sense, Russia is certainly not the UK. But among the top five major global internets, we are definitely in the list.

Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7533899193669239337/

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