The Belarusian Official Authorities Justify the Intention to Regulate Belarusian Web Segment with the Need to Defend Copyright and Morality
"The Internet has to be regulated as it is done everywhere in the world", told Natallia Piatkievich, the First Deputy Head of Presidential Administration.
Photo by naviny.by
The supreme state officer shared her views with journalists during a regional seminar for ideological workers of Homiel region on January 22, 2010, the BelTA News Agency reports.
Natallia Piatkievich noted that "everyone, interested in solving the problem of copyright, is interested in the Internet regulation."
Moreover, she advocated for the Web regulation, referring to the idea of "morality defence". "The parents, the church, and the whole society in general emphasize the necessity of defending morality. Therefore, we have to introduce barriers in the Internet, so that out children woudn’t have access to the materials that can be banned in other information sources", noted Natallia Piatkievich.
"Both arguments, articulated by Ms. Piatkevich, are quite arguable", Andrei Bastunets, Deputy Head of BAJ commented upon the expressions, mentioned above.
Photo by baj.by
"The BAJ representatives have been underscoring repeatedly that the lack of control over the Internet is just a mere myth. The current legal norms, including the norms from the Belarus" Law "On Copyright and Coherent Rights" apply to all the Internet-users, who distribute information through the Internet either for commercial or non-commercial purposes. I would like to stress that the law is entirely applicable for solving conflict situations, e.g. a copyright claim, filed by a Belarusian photograph and a BAJ member Siarhei Hudzilin, who managed to win the case", said A. Bastunets.
At the same time, the media lawyer noted that people rarely to go law to defend their copyright in Belarus. He supposed that such reluctance on the part of potential claimants is caused by high litigation fees for such cases. Consequently, the media lawyer advised the Belarusian state authorities to look into the possibilities of improving the current legislation instead of creating new regulations.
As far as the "morality defence" is concerned, A. Bastunets noted that firstly, the governmental authorities had all technical opportunities for following and suing the authors for "immoral" or "dangerous" content in the Internet (e.g., a Web-user, who placed information about "a possible blast in Minsk" on a Russian Web-site on July 8, 2008, got detained on the following day.). Secondly, he recollected the system of local filters, broadly applied by parents in the West that could be promoted and used in Belarus to prevent children and youngsters from visiting "harmful Web-sites". "Still, it should be mentioned that presently, these filters are far from working properly and sometimes may disable entrance to the totally legal Web-pages", A. Bastunets emphasized.
Internet at the Center of Attention of Ministry of Internal Affairs and KGB
