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A Modest Russian Proposal to Keep Kids Off Wi-Fi

As Russia prepares for a new SOPA-like Internet restriction law that comes into effect on Nov. 1, the country's communications ministry has gone a step further towards ensuring that the web doesn't harm child welfare: It has proposed banning anyone...

As Russia prepares for a new SOPA-like Internet restriction law that comes into effect on Nov. 1, the country’s communications ministry has gone a step further towards ensuring that the web doesn’t harm child welfare: It has proposed banning anyone under 18 from using Wi-Fi networks in public. Under the regulation, those failing to meet the proposed measure would face a fine ranging from 20,000 rubles to 50,000 rubles ($640 to $1,600), Vedomosti reported Thursday.

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Besides being nearly impossible to enforce, the rule, proposed by the state telecom regulator Roskomnadzor, casts an excessively wide net. Teenagers aren’t kids, not like the 13 year olds that the FTC is concerned are being tracked by social media sites and apps in the US, or the three year olds that doctors in Britain now say should be banned from watching television. In Russia, people can obtain permission from regional authorities to marry and get a motorcycle license at 16.

Blocking kids from Wi-Fi is meant to keep them safe, not from the signals that some people think can kill kids but rather to protect them from the same scourge that Russian legislators are targeting with the Kremlin’s new Internet restriction law: child pornography and other “harmful information”, including suicide how-to instructions and drug “propaganda.” Under the law, the government can force websites, website-hosting companies and Internet service providers to block offending sites. But as Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia’s security services, told the AFP in June, the bill would lead to a mechanism for blocking foreign sites for the first time, by forcing Internet providers to install special equipment.

Just who would be responsible for keeping young people off Wi-Fi – the service providers or owners of businesses – is unclear, especially in cities like Moscow, where the government has already begun a plan that would seem utterly at odds with this proposal: installing free Wi-Fi in every student dormitory in the city. Many establishments in Moscow also tend to keep their signals unlocked, and the city happens to boast the world’s largest urban wireless network. The gorgeous Moscow subway also boasts free Wi-Fi, and this year, the service provider Megafon introduced free Wi-Fi to regional buses. (Statistics show that the number of Russians using the Internet rose by 14% in 2011, to 53 million people, making Russia’s online population Europe’s biggest, just ahead of Germany’s.)

What’s clearer is the spirit of the proposal, one in line with a parade of laws from the Kremlin meant to keep information – and political dissent – under control (see today’s final decision about Pussy Riot, or the Kremlin’s continuing quest to silence other protest leaders). Russia’s not alone, of course: finding new ways to restrict access to the Internet, however legitimate are the explicit concerns (it’s the kids!), has become a favorite pastime from Washington to Beijing. Then again, perhaps spending less time on the Wi-Fi will free up Russian youth to do more productive things, which hopefully don’t involve pointing lasers at airplanes.