[Fwd: "Russia will create independent Cyrillic WEB"]

[Horacio T. Cadiz]

Begin forwarded message:

>
>> Subject: [ssac] "Russia will create independent Cyrillic WEB"
>>
>> This is only partly about IDNs (and IDN TLDs).  More centrally, it
>> seems to be about an alternate root or network in not only Russia,
>> but also the other CIS states (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus,
>> Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and
>> Uzbekistan).
>>
>> http://www.cawa.fr/rossiya-spletet-sobstvennuyu-v-ev-ev-
>> e.pautina.rus-article001436.html
>>
>> Translated from the original Russian article authored by
>> Konstantin Getmansky at Russia’s premier newspaper web-site
>>
>> (Note : A few days after the announcement below by President Putin
>> at the Security Council meeting of the Russian Federation, further
>> Russian language press reports appeared stating that the Security
>> committee within the Russian Duma (parliament) had publicly
>> enodorsed Putin’s initiative)
>>> At the latest session of Security Council of the Russian
>>> Federation it’s been declared that by 2015 Russia will become one
>>> of the leaders of the global information space. This matter
>>> includes the creation in Russia of its own web.
>>
>> Russian analogue of the Internet will be completely independent
>> from the traditional World Wide Web (www) and at first stage of
>> the project is going to include the CIS countries. This
>> information was received from a governmental source.
>>
>> There are several reasons for creation of an independent network
>> in Russia.
>>
>> Firstly, there are reasons related to information safety and
>> security. Today it is a matter of fact that Russian users are
>> accessing the Internet via channels which are in the control of
>> the US government. Experts say there is the potential for the US
>> to block these channels in the hypothetical scenario of an adverse
>> development in the bilateral relationship between Russia and USA.
>>
>> Secondly, at present only the US is engaged in the process of
>> making decisions relating to the distribution of domain names
>> amongst all the countries. Thus in essence the US is operating and
>> supervising all global Internet traffic.
>>
>> Two years ago in Tunis at the United Nations World Summit of the
>> Information Society (WSIS) the rights for making decisions
>> relating to the distribution of domain names between the countries
>> was reviewed for change but ultimately remained under the US-
>> controlled organization - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
>> and Numbers (ICANN). This occurred against the will of the other
>> countries such as Russia, India and China.
>>
>> At the same Tunis summit the US senator - Republican Norm Kohlman
>> - declared, that only the US can have a supervisory role over the
>> Internet. He strongly rejected any idea for transferring any
>> Internet authority to the United Nations. Further he labeled the
>> United Nations as absolutely incompetent and corrupt.
>>
>> Thirdly, domain names in the proposed independent Russian network
>> will use a Cyrillic script. Those proposing this project say it
>> will help to strengthen the influence of Russia in the CIS
>> countries. They further say that it will also increase the status
>> of the Russian language in the countries of Commonwealth territories.
>>
>> It is not determined yet what organizations will undertake the
>> creation of the Russian web and how much it will cost. Also it is
>> not clear yet, how the Russian network will interact with the
>> traditional World Wide Web.
>>
>> By the way, a similar project of an independent computer network
>> already exists in China and is in development in the Arabic
>> countries. They have the same motives : safety, creation of an
>> independent cyber space for their own language communities and the
>> convenience of using of the Internet for their native language
>> speakers.
>>
>>
>

Ronald J. Deibert
Director, The Citizen Lab
Munk Centre for International Studies
University of Toronto
r.deibert at utoronto.ca
http://deibert.citizenlab.org/







--- Bombim Cadiz
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