The Higher School of Economics hosted a round table discussion "Regulation of Internet Platforms - New Challenges for Russia"
Organizers were Department of Digital Law and Biolaw of the Faculty of Law of the HSE University, together with the International Laboratory of Digital Transformation in Public Administration of the HSE University. Leading Russian scholars and experts participated and noted a number of serious problems and unresolved issues, facing legislators and industry players.
First of all participants (Channov S.E., Kovaleva N.I., Polyakova T.I., Fedotov M.A., Diskin E.I.) noted the lack of tools to protect the rights of Russian netizens who continue to use the services of foreign Internet platforms, including those which are blocked in Russian Federation.
The second most mentioned topic was the development and concept of the Digital Code as a new framework of legislation in the field of information exchange. A number of participants noted (Fedotov M.A., Morozov A.V., Kabyutov P.P., Polyakova T.A.) that it is reasonble to use the term "Information Code" as more precise from the point of view of the subject of regulation, which are the relations regarding the creation, dissemination and consuming of information. At the same time, there were a number of objections to this position, in particular, Ashmanov I.S. expressed support for the current concept of the code name, which is being developed by the Ministry of Digital Development.
In addition, different views were expressed on the further development of regulation in the field of internet platforms. Ashmanov I.S. stressed the fact that now foreign Internet platforms are engaged in an extremely hostile policy towards the Russian Federation, the answer to which should be their blocking or use of other tools to reduce their availability and distribution.
Polyakova T.A., Kharitonova Y.S., Diskin E.I., Tereshenko L.K., Kovaleva N.I. also voiced their opinion on this issue. In particular, Polyakova T.A. largely agreed with the voiced position of Ashmanov I.S. and called for ways to influence on foreign Internet platforms. Kharitonova Yu.S. called on colleagues to carefully assess the experience of Chinese legislators, which is not always applicable to Russian specifics. Diskin E.I. drew the attention of colleagues to such consequences of total blocking of foreign Internet platforms as a significant increase in the load on domestic platforms, as well as the possibility of technological strangulation of domestic platforms by increasing the pressure on them. Strengthening the sanctions on Russian technological companies as a possible response in case of complete blocking of foreign platforms is a possible outcome in such hostile scenario. Also, Diskin E.I. told colleagues about possible difficulties with the use of mobile devices because most of them require access to Google or Apple accounts which can be blocked along with these services.. Tereshenko L.K. together with Kovaleva N.I. stressed the need to develop competition between domestic and foreign Internet platforms, which directly affects the quality of services provided by national platforms.
Kharitonova Y.S. emphasized the importance of paying attention to the tools of private-law protection of users' rights related to the restriction of illegal access to personal data, protection of rights to the results of intellectual activity when using Internet platforms.
This view was supported by Kovaleva N.I., Soldatkina O.L., Diskin E.I. and other participants of the round table.
The round table was held in a hybrid format – at the HSE and online.
The video recording of the event: