O’k, finally we arrived to the point where Belarusian authorities consider to “take care of internet”. Or shall I say, to regulate it one step at the time?
Charter97 reports:

Law “On Press and Other Mass Media” would not be replaced by some new law, it is supposed that it would be improved article by article, the Information Minister of Belarus Uladzimir Rusakevich said. Saying about what essential amendments would be introduced into the law, Uladzimir Rusakevich said that they would primarily concern legislative control over Internet in the state. The Minister has underlined that “such a need had been faced not only by Belarus, many other countries are considering this question”.

As we can see, an explanation provided by Belarusian officials sounds everything like but…explanation. Bunch of general words, evasive phrases…Obviously, Internet is one thing that simply has been uncontrollable to authorities. And while they managed to suppress all traditional independent mass media, Belarusian Internet communities has retained its independent status…so far. It would be interesting to see, what will happen to Internet in Belarus. Shall we expect some sort of modified search engines, a la China style that return, “Legislatively approved sites?” Or maybe, it is going to be cyber police, carefully enforcing “essential amendments”?

Folks, I am sorry, but this whole thing seems to be much more than an attempt to strengthen “legislative control over Internet”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 18th, 2006 at 12:02 am and is filed under Free Belarus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.