Articles prepared by Michael Novikov for EuropeMedia in 1999
A draft of the Federal law on electronic signature developed by the State Duma (lower house of the Russian Parliament) was heavily critisized by Internet and legislation experts. A seminar to discuss the law draft was organized by the "Internet Payment Systems" Group on December 21 in Moscow. It was a third IPS seminar on that subject. Nina Solovianenko, a leading Russian expert on Internet legislation from the Institute of State and Law, provided paragraph by paragraph comments and critics of the law draft. Basically there is a real need to have electronic signature legislation in Russia, specifically for the e-commerce market regulation and court practice. However, the law draft still has so many gaps and obscure formulations that makes it even harmful if ratified in a current version. Elena Volchinskaja, a consultant of the State Duma Committee on Security, stressed that the law proposed does not fit a standard structure of a law document. Andrey Marchenko from the Institute of Investors Protection pointed out some specific misleading statements of the law draft. The seminar participants have agreed that it is necessary to provide a broad public discussion on the electronic signature law, involving e-commerce experts, legislation specialists and lawmakers. That is the only way to have the law accepted and applied for benefit of both the industry, the state and enforcement bodies.
"Internet Payment Systems" Group, http://www.emoney.ru
On November 25 the Russian Public Center of Information Technologies (ROCIT) organized a seminar "Electronic media: problems and perspectives" The seminar covered the following issues: experience in electronic publishing, future development, mistakes to avoid. The event geathered over 50 people from online media, traditional publishing, Internet experts. Mikhail Gurevich delivered a speech "E-newspaper 'Utro' as an example of commercial and political media in the Russian Internet". Anton Nosik talked about his new project Vesti.ru, a successor of the recently sold Gazeta.ru. Alexander Sherman shared his experience in development of online version of the "Nezavisimaja Gazeta" ('independent newspaper' in Russian). Alexey Rubtsov (RosBusinessConsulting) discussed how traditional media find their way to the Internet and After the panel presentations the audience discussed a wide spectrum of problems affected the on-line media. A representative of the State Parliament was 'heavily bitten' by the audience for a legislative initiative to elaborate an Internet Law. Most of the speakers stressed out that the Internet does not require a special legislation, all of the issues are already covered by the traditional law, and the problem of the authorities and lawmakers is to apply the current legislation on any area, including the Internet. Russian lawmakers should not reinvent a bicycle but should follow the world experience and feel the global trends.
ROCIT, http://www.rocit.ru
The Second Russian Conference on Electronic Commerce has been launched on November 11 in St. Petersburg. The event was organized by ADMIN Ltd., a St. Petersburg based Internet and investment consultancy, and by the "Mir Internet" magazine, the largest Russian Internet monthly periodical. Two day conference has gathered 239 participants from a number of Russian cities, representatives of the CIS countries and Finland. 180 companies and other organizations, including the Central Bank of Russia, attended the event.
There were 20 panel presentations followed by hot discussions.
The conference programme included the following sections: According to the conference organizers the Russian e-commerce annual turnover is estimated in 100 million USD, while business-to- consumer sector is about two million USD, business-to-business sector exceeds 90 million USD. The market is expected to flourish with 200 per cent of annual growth rate during the next two years. The third Russian Conference on E-Commerce is scheduled on November 2000. Michael Novikov, CEO of ADMIN Ltd. and the conference moderator, announced another annual event of ADMIN Ltd. - Internet and Investments Forum - to be held in St. Petersburg starting from April 2000.
ADMIN Ltd., http://www.adminltd.com
NeurOK company officially announced kick-off of the first Russian system for adaptive exposition of advertising banners. The system is based on its Internet Semantic Server, a product designed for performing associative search. The project is running at the IT InfoArt Stars web portal. The system analyses meaning of a web page content and selects a topically coherent banner to be shown at the page. Banners are described by a set of keywords which present its topical category. The technology allows to make banner advertising less annoying and more interesting for the user. For the first time, advertisers can perform 100% tagreting of their advertising for individual users rather than groups of consumers. Operation of the adaptive banner system is based upon Internet Semantic Server (ISS) ability to determine sense categories in arrays of documents, index texts, and look for documents according to their content. This becomes feasible due to broad application of neuron algorithms and neuronetworking theory. In exact terms, the text of a page is considered by ISS as a set of keywords; then the server searches for the most adequate item in its banner pool and submits it to the banner system for presentation. Banner search is performed as an analysis of associative links between banner description and text of the document. The technology is primarily destined for application at large websites with topically diverse arrays of documents. NeuroOK company and IT InfoArt Stars portal closely cooperate in development and promotion of products and technologies based on associative search mechanisms, adaptive data filtering and navigation guided by semantic links in large arrays of text information. The Internet Semantic Server associative search engine is running at IT InfoArt Stars website since April 1999.
Source: InfoArt News Agency (http://agency.infoart.ru)
According to data presented by Yandex.Ru search engine, a volume of Internet resources in Russian has exceeded 100 Gbytes of text and 10,000,000 documents (unique web pages). Taken into consideration that a single printed page typically hosts 2 Kbytes of text, the above amount is equivalent to 50,000,000 pages. For a comparison, a year ago there were 833,000 Russian Internet pages totaling 6,15 Gbytes. During one year, from September 1998 to September 1999, a number of documents in the Russian Internet increased by 1224%, a number of servers - by 245%, the total volume of texts - by 1518%, average number of pages at webserver by 284%, average page volume - by 22%, and average volume of a Russian webserver - by 369%.
Source: InfoArt News Agency (http://agency.infoart.ru)
Late in September a webste devoted to public relations in Russia was released. The purpose of the project is covering activity of Russian PR-agencies and media. According to the site developers a news section will be updated daily, the "Articles" and "Interviews" will be weekly sections. "Announcements" section will announce PR events, "Presentations" section will publish information about PR agencies activities. "Resources" section will contain links to the Russian PR agencies and media. One of the site founders is Modest Kolerov. Other names will be announced at the site official presentation.
Source: Algorythm Group (http://www.adaily.ru)
Establishing of a new fund was announced on October 5 in St. Petersburg. The Internet Culture Development Fund was found by 45 individuals, including prominent representatives of science, culture and business of St. Petersburg. According to Mikhail Charny, the fund president, the new organization is aimed to support cultural projects on the Net, first of all in the field of education, science and art. Among the fund first projects are development of the Russian Internet- encyclopedia, a server of scientific publications, "Web-deposit" copyright protection programme, chronicle of the St. Petersburg city and its townsman. The Fund activities will be tightly cooperated with the city projects. Originally the Fund website content is in Russian. Then English, German and other languages interface will be added.
Source: PCWeek/Russian Edition (http://www.pcweek.ru)
A three-party agreement signed in October in Moscow will make documents in another field of legislation available online in Russia. Its participants are Moscow office of the International Red Cross committee, Legal Department of the Body of the State Duma (Low House of the Russian parliament) and the Consultant Plus company. The agreement will result in development of the ConsultantPlus:HumanRights legislation reference system, which will be carried out by the above software vendor. The system will include documents on international rights, which are applied during military conflicts: conventions on rules and customs of performing military activity, on treatment with prisoners and civilians, on protection of culture values, the Red Cross charter and other basic documents, and a lot of other international documents on human rights. The ConsultantPlus:HumanRights legislation reference system will be available via the Internet at the company's webserver free of charge. Information contained in the system will be free for distribution by any Russian organizations and individuals. The company officials say that development of the system is already approaching its completion.
Source: InfoArt News Agency (http://www.infoart.ru)
The Internet day, which terminated the Moscow International Internet Festival, became an official birthday of a new nonprofit organization, the Union of Internet Operators. Establishing of the Union was initiated by the Institute of Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a number of telecommunication and Internet service providers, including the Russian Telecommunications Network, Global One Network, Relcom Business Network, Teleross, Zenon N.S.P., East Telecom, Combellga, AG Telecom, ROSTELECOM, Cityline, Nevalink, Regional (Russian) public center of Internet technologies (ROCIT), National Electronic Library, Russian Internet content provider IT InfoArt Stars, RELARN association, Russian Scientific and Research Institute of Development of Public Networks. Principal fields of the Union activity include coordination of efforts of companies and organizations involved into development of the Russian Internet segment. The Union will assist federal and regional governmental institutions building legislation base for the Internet development in Russia as well as helping to projects and programs related to global information and telecommunication networks. Another important mission of the Union is establishing principles of distribution and control of the Internet address space in the Russian segment. The Union will take upon itself the distribution and exchange of information about the Russian Internet. It will also cooperate with international organizations for the Internet development. The Union of Internet Operators is an open association. Membership is possible for any organizations, both Russian and foreign, which perform professional activities in the Internet area and pay a membership fee. Detailed information is available at the Union website.
Source: InfoArt News Agency (http://www.infoart.ru)
The Moscow International Internet Festival is on since July 30 till September 30, 1999 in Russia. In course of the festival, Internet users from throughout the world can get acquainted with the best sites of the Russian Internet, evaluate the most up-to-the-date Internet technologies, reveal new possibilities for human communication in the computer virtual world. One of the central events of the festival is the census of Russian-speaking Internet users. By the moment, the number of forms filled by the participants has exceeded 8,300, with the total number of visitors of the festival site being about 140,000. The fourth topical week of the festival was devoted to Russian and World Literature. Within the framework of that week, festival organizers asked editors of Russian literature websites to state their position on a number of the most urgent issues relating to development of Web-literature. Many responders sent their opinions, which were published during the Week. The festival jury continues to accept papers for the Golden Pen contest in two nominations, Poetry and Prose. Eligible for the contest are works which have never been published in printed media, submitted by either their authors or by literature sites. Results of the contest will be announced at the festival server on November 30, 1999. Selected works will take part in "The Catch" network literature contest. The latter is being held in cooperation with leading Russian literature magazines and key professional literature sites of the Russian Internet. The contest is aimed at search for new talented authors in the Web and increasing the entire professional level of Web literature. The fifth topical week was devoted to pocket and personal computers. During the week, visitors of the site could see the latest news in those fields, reviews, opinions, interviews and other publications. A lot of attention was paid to domestic solutions and to operating systems different from the Windows family. Special place was given to history of personal computers and programming languages, to the very first steps in computing and to ideas put in the basement of modern PC industry. Visitors could also see a project of the Internet museum of computing. The museum presents a lot of interesting exhibits, revealing many obscure aspects of modern computerization. Since September 6, the sixth week of the festival is on, the Week of Photography and Fine Arts. Within the framework of this week, two projects have already been presented, with one of them being devoted to flower and landscape design and the other to Japanese "NO" theater. Voting at the "Stars of Internet" contest of Russian websites started on September 7. Visitors can choose their favorite sites in five nominations: The Most Beautiful Site, The Most Informative Site, The Most Useful site, The Most Convenient Site, The Jolliest Site.
Source: InfoArt News Agency (http://www.infoart.ru)
Russian oil company NK Yukos is contributing technical equipment worth USD 10 million to the Siberian Internet Company, part of a project aiming to support the social sphere in towns in cities in Russia's far north. Yukos, www.yukos.ru
The Russian Association of Documentary Electronic communication (ADE) announced that internet telephone services are now legal in Russia.
Russian company Classica has successfully completed an experiment to integrate two satellite systems. The new system will provide high-speed internet access for users who cannot get online by conventional landline communications 15 Jun 1999: Anti-pirate campaign escalated PROMT, a Russian software vendor, has reported a significant success in its fight against computer pirates. PROMT, www.PROMT.ru
Two major vendors announce a joint e-commerce project suitable for any retail services via the internet.
The Federal Service of Tax Police (FSNP) announces completion of the first stage of its information database.
Russian Information Society Institute and Nachala Foundation called Russian Internet industry experts to join NetLaw project to discuss Internet law issues.
Kaspersky Lab and the MediaLingua company have announced their new joint project, the Viral Encyclopedia webserver.
Comstar Telecommunications and Lufthansa are jointly organizing the first Russian virtual auction of air tickets for economy and business classes on international air routes.
Over 600 thousand people use the Net from home (250 thousand households), about 500 thousand connecting from corporate networks.
Where you can find such a high concentration of top Internet professionals like at the third Russian Internet Forum held on March 10-13 by ROCIT.
A new Russian daily Internet newspaper Gazeta.Ru emerged on the Net this week.
Russian hackers destroyed a website of pro-Nazi organisation 'Russian Patriots'. Now, when visitors enter the nationalist site, they are greeted with the slogan 'Death to Fascism!'
Free-range monitoring of the Internet by the FSB, Russia's federal security service, may soon be as easy as clicking a mouse. The Internet Society Personality conference drew about 500 participants from all over Russia, including school teachers and NGO coordinators to prominent scientists and governors, from the largest non-commercial portal projects to one-page kindergarten websites.
At last Russia has officially anticipated the Millennium challenge. The Russian prime minister Eugeny Primakov signed a decree to form a governmental commission.
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