Presentation for 4th Euro-SSIG, July 2010

1. Internet in Ukraine
Actual Stats Critical Issues
Olena Boltushkina for 4th Euro-SSIG
Meissen, Germany
July 27, 2010

2. One of the lowest levels of Internet penetration
among European countries — 25%
► Approx. 46 million people
► Over 12 million Internet users
► Over 500 000 domain names
registered in ccTLD .UA since 1992

3. .UA needs redelegation
► Company that is stated in IANA Delegation
Record (Communication Systems Ltd.) doesn’t exist.
► People stated in the Record have established another
private company (Hostmaster Ltd.) in 2001 to support
ccTLD administration. It runs the domain today.
► There is another organization having a claim to run
ccTLD — UANIC. It was created in 2002 by
telecommunications providers and operators together
with state telecommunications and security bodies. Its
actions are mostly not concerted and non-transparent,
but presented as a full-fledged Multistakeholder
Approach.
► Ukrainian Telecommunications Law demands the
organization running ccTLD to be non-governmental.

4. ‘Tough IG’ happens,
and they call it ‘common European practice’
► State law-enforcement authorities attack
hosting providers in a rude way
to confiscate servers with or without court
decision.
► Sometimes they mix up addresses, and
threaten people who have nothing to do
with the ‘criminal’ servers. My former
employer experienced that.
► These attacks are not frequent, but quite
regular. Ministry of Internal Affairs
presents them as a ‘common European
practice’ of fighting cybercrime.
► The method is also used in censorship
issues and business wars.

5. Parliament doesn’t care
► When you hear that Ukraine adopted a
new law, you have to understand what the
word ‘adopted’ means. You never know
how many real and conscious votes were
made.
► After voting on the last serious changes
to national telecommunications law
journalists asked Parliament members
what they’ve just voted for. The common
answer was ‘Oh, I don’t know!’.

6. The 404 Law:
Fight against child porn or for total control?
► In October 2009 Parliament gave a new important telecommunications bill aimed
at fighting child pornography its first reading.
► The bill arouse indignation
among bloggers, ISPs, IT and law
experts together with human rights
organizations as technically
illiterate and too dangerous for
common Internet users.
► The bill received name
'The 404 Law' after the number of
votes for it and after the HTTP 404
Error as an illustration of impact
the bill could have on Ukrainian
Internet users' experience.

7. The 404 Law:
Fight against child porn or for total control?
If The 404 Law was adopted in whole, ISPs could become obliged:
► to limit the access of their clients to certain websites indicated by law-
enforcement authorities — without any court decision and precise conditions.
► to store and present to Government upon their request information about all
their clients' connections to Internet — without any conditions of storing or type
of data defined.
► to monitor the whole Internet activity of their clients and report every
suspicious case to Government, though the core law doesn't give ISPs a right to
conduct such investigations.

8. The 404 Law:
Fight against child porn or for total control?
If The 404 Law was adopted in whole:
► The new term 'Illegal Content' could emerge with no definition and huge
opportunities of abusive interpretation by the Government.
► Internet users could become obliged to report illegal content to Government.
► Uncertain excessive definition of child pornography could emerge (though
Ukraine ratified European Convention on Cybercrime wich already contains
one), so even a picture of naked little baby from a family album could be
interpreted and prosecuted as child porn.
► Any pictures or other information in spam messages or temporary files stored
on user's computer hard drive without his awareness could make the user guilty
of storing illegal content, and cause criminal liability.

9. The 404 Law:
Fight against child porn or for total control?
Due to the common efforts of Ukrainian Internet users, experts and journalists
The 404 Law was adopted with significant changes on January 2010, but still
remains dangerous:
► ISPs are obliged to store and present to Government upon
their request information about heir clients' connections to
Internet, but it's stated that certain procedure must be defined
and adopted as a law. There's a big chance they will never
adopt that law and use the judicial system to use this norm the
way they need.
► The final law contains non-executable norms conflicting with
the rest of national legislation.

10. Thank you!
Please, feel free to contact me for questions
or more information on the subject:
olena.bo@gmail.com